Japan requires married couples to share a surname, so matchmakers are pairing singles who already have the same one to avoid changing it
· Fortune
When the paperwork involved with changing last names is making people not want to get married, there’s at least one solution: marry someone with the same last name as you.
That’s what’s happening in Japan, where by law married couples have to share the same last name. To try to get around this rule, one organization is hosting matchmaking events for people with the same surname.
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Asuniwa, a Japanese NGO that has advocated for changing the “family name” law, partnered with matchmaking services provider IBJ to host four events in Tokyo through May of this year, and an online event in June that brought together young people with the last name Suzuki, the second most common surname in Japan, the Japan Times reported. The first most common last name is Sato.
The events were meant to draw attention to the family name law requiring married couples to share a last name, known as Article 750, which has been on the books for 128 years. Each couple in Japan can choose which last name of the two they would like to adopt, but by tradition it is often the woman who gives up her last name after marriage.
The law has in some cases discouraged people, and especially women, from wanting to marry at a time when Japan’s birth rate has fallen to dangerously low levels. A government survey from 2021 found that 31.9% of women surveyed cited changing their last name as the reason they were not eager to marry, compared to 8.6% of the men who were surveyed, according to a government survey by Japan’s Gender Equality Bureau.
“Changing one’s surname is costly,” said Yuka Maruyama, an Asuniwa official who told the Japan Times it costs plenty of money and time to adjust official documents like passports and driver’s licenses. “Even if we can help only some people, we hope they will get married without worrying about their surnames.”
A country full of Sato’s
In 2024, Asuniwa worked with Hiroshi Yoshida, an economist from Tohoku University in northeast Japan, for a study that revealed by 2531, everyone in Japan will have the same last name, Sato, if the rules remain unchanged. A survey conducted last year by the Japan Public Opinion Research Association found 55% of 3,000 respondents supported the idea of allowing an option for married couples to maintain separate surnames, still attempts in Japan’s legislature, the National Diet, to overturn the law have not been successful.
Births in Japan have been on a downward trajectory for years and hit an all-time-low in the six months between January and June last year when 339,280 babies were born. That’s compared to more than a decade ago when more than 500,000 births were common during the same period. Marriages also fell 4% over the same six-month period.
For years, Japan has taken steps to try to reverse its falling birthrate by expanding monthly child allowances, bringing IVF and other fertility treatments under the purview of public insurance, and expanding parental leave benefits. Tokyo’s government in 2024 even launched a government-sponsored dating app requiring users to affirm they are looking for a partner to marry before joining.
In a February speech, prime minister Sanae Takaichi said the falling birth rate was a central part of her policy goals, saying “The declining birthrate and population decline constitute a silent emergency that is steadily eroding Japan’s vitality.”
Takaichi’s government has focused on reducing the cost of childbirth, by aiming to eliminate out-of-pocket costs for standard child birth, although the policy has not yet gone into effect.
To be sure, Japan got some good news earlier this year when births for the first six months of the year increased for the first time in 11 years—but just slightly. Births increased by 0.8% and marriages were up by 0.2% compared to the same period a year prior, according to Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare.
Still, some warned that this uptick did not mean Japan’s population decline was close to being reversed. It was still the fifth consecutive year where births did not exceed 400,000 for the first six months of the year.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com