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The Family, Koseki, and the Individual: Japanese and Korean Experiences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Yuki Miyamoto ,
Ninomiya Shuhei  and
Shin Ki-young
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On 14 February, Kayama Emi and Watanabe Tsuguo filed an administrative appeal to have the rejection of their marriage application by Arakawa Ward, Tokyo rescinded. Ms. Kayama wanted to keep her surname after marriage, as did Mr. Watanabe. The court rejected the appeal after only ten days without hearing arguments. “I've never had a gate closed in my face so quickly,” said Ms. Kayama.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 9 , Issue 36 , September 2011 , e1
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2011

References

Notes

1 The original suit involved Kayama, Watanabe and three other women. The court separated the original suit into two.

2 Yoshii and her son legally have the same surname. But she goes by her maiden name on a day-by-day basis.

3 Ueno and Chiba were once legally married. They are presently a common-law couple. The first child was born when they were legally married. Every time Chiba became pregnant, the couple filed for legal marriage again so as to prevent their second and third children from being at a disadvantage in terms of inheritance. According to the current civil code, children born outside a legal marriage have half the inheritance rights of siblings born from a legally married couple—even if the parents are the same and subsequently divorce in order to revert to their own surnames. Because they remarried and gave one or the other of their surnames for each child, their children had different surnames.