Everyone in Japan could one day have the same surname unless its restrictive marriage laws change, according to a new study. But the country’s dwindling marriage rate could buck that trend and a rapidly declining population might render it moot entirely. Unlike most of the world’s major economies that have done away with the tradition, Japan still legally requires married couples to share the same surname.
Normally, wives take their husband’s name – and same-sex marriages still aren’t legal in Japan. A movement to change the rules around surnames has been brewing, led by women’s rights advocates and those trying to preserve the diversity of the Japanese surnames in a nation where a handful of names are becoming increasingly common. If the rules carry on, all Japanese people could have the surname Sato by 2531, according to Hiroshi Yoshida, an economist from Tohoku University in Sendai, who led the stud