Japan’s Top Court Rules Married Couples Must Take Same Surname
- Case comes as business leaders campaign for freedom of choice
- Ruling comes after parliament fails to pass LGBT law
A poll by the Nikkei newspaper in March found 67% of respondents were in favor of allowing couples the option of having separate names, by contrast with the 35% who favored the idea in a previous poll in 2015.
Photographer: Soichiro Koriyama/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Japan’s Supreme Court rejected a challenge to a law that forces married couples to share the same family name, upholding provisions of a 19th century family registration system critics contend promotes gender bias.
The top court Wednesday ruled against a petition brought by three Tokyo couples who tried to submit marriage applications using separate surnames and claimed their inability to do so was a breach of their right to equality under the law enshrined in Article 14 of the Constitution.