 "Japan")
Japanese citizens will all have the same family name by 2531 unless married couples are permitted to use separate surnames, a new study has suggested. This study is part of a campaign to update a civil code dating back to the late 1800s.
According to a report in The Guardian, the study, led by Hiroshi Yoshida, a professor of economy at Tohoku University, reported that if Japan continues to insist that couples select a single surname, every single Japanese person will be known as “Sato-san” by 2531. "If everyone becomes Sato, we may have to be addressed by our first names or by numbers. I don’t think that would be a good world to live in," Hiroshi Yoshida said.
In Japan, Sato tops the list of surnames, accounting for 1.5 per cent of the total population, according to a March 2023 survey, with Suzuki a close second.
Hiroshi Yoshida said that a nation of Satos “will not only be inconvenient but also undermine individual dignity”. He added that the trend would lead to the loss of family and regional heritage. According to Yoshida’s calculations, the proportion of Japanese named Sato increased 1.0083 times from 2022 to 2023. Assuming the rate remains constant and there is no change to the law on surnames, around half of the Japanese population will have that name in the year 2446, rising to 100 per cent by 2531. However, married couples in Japan have to choose which surname to share when they marry.
The study contained an alternative scenario extrapolated from a 2022 survey by the Japanese Trade Union Confederation, in which "39.3 per cent of 1,000 employees aged between 20 and 59 said that they wanted to share a surname even if they had the option of using separate ones".
While the Japanese government has allowed maiden names to appear alongside married names on passports, driving licences, and residence certificates, the nation remains the only country in the world that requires spouses to use the same name.
