Linda E. White, Middlebury For centuries, women entering marriage in Japan have been bound by the Confucian notion of personal sacrifice for the good of the family – and that has extended to their names. Encouraged by a sexual double standard and shaped by a general perception of Japan as a society made for men, most women abandon their maiden names when tying the knot. The law doesn’t give them much leeway on the issue. Since 1947, Japanese Civil Code has stipulated that all married couples must share a common surname. Although in theory that name could be that of the husband or wife, in practice it is almost always the man’s. Indeed, around 95% of all marriages in Japan are registered under a husband’s surname. But there are signs that things could be changing. A 2025 Jiji Press survey found that a rising percentage of lawmakers – about 44% – back a system that would allow for dual surnames. This, along with Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s stated openness to a selective separate surname option, has given fresh hope that married women will be able to keep their names. As a scholar of gender relations and family law in Japan, I know a change would be welcomed by many across the nation. In interviews carried out during the past 15 years, many women have told me of their strong desire to keep their maiden names.

Barriers to change

Today, around 60% of Japanese people – both men and women alike – approve of a change in the law to allow husbands and wives to have separate surnames. But to date, lawmakers have failed in their attempts to change a Civil Code that is seemingly at odds with the Constitution, which guarantees equality between men and women and between a husband and wife in marriage. The main barrier has been the conservative Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP, which has been in power for much of the post-World War II era. LDP lawmakers have repeatedly squashed proposals, stating that a legal change would threaten the traditional family structure. Since Japan’s Supreme Court in a 2015 decision sent the question of separate surnames back to the National Diet, the LDP has prevented legislation from reaching the parliamentary floor. But despite a largely male and conservative legislature, the government is facing increasing pressure from opposition members in parliament, who argue that separate surnames should be permitted in marriage. In Ishiba, the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party as well as the country’s leader, they finally have a powerful ally on the LDP side of the ledger.

What’s in a name?

In Japan, a surname links a woman, or a man, to siblings, parents and grandparents, as well as to the places where their ancestors lived and worked. It’s a meaningful part of one’s identity. As a married woman I interviewed told me: “When they call me by my husband’s name at the bank, I feel they are referring to someone else. It doesn’t feel like me.” A woman technician checks a robot arm on the assembly line in Kitakyushu, Japan. Katsumi Kasahara/Gamma-Rapho via Getty ImagesBut beyond the symbolism and sense of identity, changing a surname has broader social consequences, especially in the workplace. The average age at marriage in Japan is 29.7 for women and 31 for men. By the time many women marry, they have been in the workforce for 10 or more years and have developed a professional identity using their maiden names. In Japan, work relationships are usually conducted using last names. As one interviewee explained to me: “We just don’t use first names at work in Japan.” Another interviewee said she wanted to have the same ease as her husband after marriage, to continue her profession with her own name. Contacting clients, co-workers, administrators and bosses about a name change draws attention to private matters that would not necessarily be discussed at work, she said. The concern among some women I spoke with is that once alerted to the change in marital status, bosses and colleagues will no longer take their commitment to the job as seriously as they did when they were single. Such feelings reveal the negative impact that marriage often has on a woman’s career – an effect some hope to avoid by not telling co-workers and clients of their changed status.

Demographic time bomb

Conservative lawmakers decry a change of the surname rule in the Civil Code as an attack on traditional values and tie it to concerns over a looming demographic crisis. They argue that Japan must work to maintain the traditional family system and to encourage more marriages and babies. Certainly, Japan is facing a demographic crisis. With a fertility rate of around 1.2 babies per woman, Japan has one of the world’s oldest and fastest-shrinking populations. But Japanese scholars have argued that if women had more equality in the workplace, and at home, they would be more likely to choose to have children and continue working. Sociologist Aya Ezawa noted in 2019 that “a culture of long work hours, combined with a persistent gendered division of labour in the home, and high expectations toward motherhood mean that work and family remain very difficult to combine for women in contemporary Japan.” Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, also a conservative LDP member, encouraged higher employment for women – married or unmarried – to help grow the Japanese economy in the early part of the 21st century. But his “Womenomics” plan bore little fruit. Without more policies addressing unequal treatment in the workplace, many educated and dedicated female workers will continue to be routed into dead-end jobs as their elder male bosses wait in vain for them to leave the workforce to have children. The vast majority of Japanese women give up their surnames upon marriage. Philip Fong/AFP via Getty Images

Finding a balance

Certainly, changing the surname rule will prove a major turn in Japan’s progress toward gender equality. The Civil Code limiting married couples to one surname is inextricably linked to the 150-year-old “modern” koseki, or household register, system. A single surname for each family is a central pillar of the koseki – recalling an era when a male head of household was responsible for not only key family financial and marital decisions but also the family name. For many older Japanese, the koseki stands in for the family itself. If someone is listed in a koseki, through notification of birth, adoption or marriage, they are legally and symbolically part of the family and share a surname. Invoking this tradition, some conservative lawmakers have argued that a multiple surname system is unworkable. Yet advocates of the change say that modern digitization of all koseki records means that there is no real logistical challenge to having dual surname households. And, clearly, many in Japan are ready to recognize that a family with two surnames is still a family. Moreover, many Japanese believe greater gender equality in the workplace will have a positive effect not only on the low birth rate, but on many other aspects of life, too. At present, elder care, child care and community participation tend to be left to people without jobs or with flexible jobs – in other words, mostly women. And Japanese workplaces have failed to adopt flexible work hours that would allow full-time employees to take on more family and community roles.

More women in parliament

In the end, popular support and political necessity may play a role in changing the surname law. It is clear from the latest surveys that more and more voters in Japan are in favor of loosening the one-surname rule. And despite still being underrepresented in politics, women are increasingly taking up political positions in Japan – last year’s election saw a record number of female candidates and a record number elected. Given those currents, Ishiba may need to convince more in his party that the time has come to accept social change and embrace a woman’s choice of surname. If not, his party may lose the dominant position in parliament it has enjoyed for most of the past 70 years. Linda E. White, Professor of Japanese Studies, Middlebury This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Hannah Wiseman, Penn State The U.S. Supreme Court in March 2025 ended a decade-old lawsuit filed by a group of children who sought to hold the federal government responsible for some of the consequences of climate change. But just two months earlier, the justices allowed a similar suit from the city and county of Honolulu, Hawaii, to continue against oil and gas companies. Evidence shows that fossil fuel companies, electric utilities and the federal government have known about climate change, its dangers and its human causes for at least 50 years. But the steps taken by fossil fuel companies, utilities and governments, including the U.S. government, have not been enough to meet international climate targets. So local and state governments and citizens have asked the courts to force companies and public agencies to act. Their results have varied, with limited victories to date. But the cases keep coming.

Attacking the emissions themselves

In general, legal claims in the U.S. can be based on the U.S. and state constitutions, federal and state laws, or what is called “common law” – legal principles created by courts over time. Lawsuits have used state and federal laws to try to limit greenhouse gas pollution itself and to seek financial compensation for alleged industry cover-ups of the dangers of fossil fuels, among many other types of claims. In 2007 the U.S. Supreme Court determined that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide emitted from motor vehicles were a “pollutant” under the federal Clean Air Act. As a result, the court ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to either determine whether greenhouse gases from new vehicles contribute to climate change, and therefore endanger human health, or justify its refusal to study the issue. In 2009 the EPA found that carbon dioxide emissions did in fact endanger human health – a decision called the “endangerment finding.” In 2010 it imposed limits on carbon dioxide emissions from new vehicles and, later, from newly constructed power plants. But related EPA efforts to regulate emissions from older power plants – the ones that emit the most pollution – failed when challenged in court on the grounds that they went too far in limiting emissions beyond the power plants’ own properties. The Biden administration had finalized a new rule to clean up these older plants, but the Trump administration is now seeking to withdraw it. The Trump administration is also now beginning the complicated process of reviewing the 2009 endangerment finding. It could try to remove the legal basis for EPA greenhouse gas regulations.

A common-law approach

In response to this federal executive seesaw of climate action, some legal claims use a court-based, or common law, approach to address climate concerns. For instance, in Connecticut v. American Electric Power, filed in 2004, nine states asked a federal judge to order power plants to reduce their emissions. The states said those emissions contributed to global warming, which they argued met the federal common law definition of a “public nuisance.” That case ended when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2011 that the existence of a statute – the federal Clean Air Act – meant common law did not apply. Other plaintiffs have tried to use the “public nuisance” claim or a related common-law claim of “trespass” to force large power plants or oil and gas producers to pay climate-related damages. But in those cases, too, courts found that the Clean Air Act overrode the common-law grounds for those claims. With those case outcomes, many plaintiffs have shifted their strategies, focusing more on state courts and seeking to hold the fossil fuel industry responsible for allegedly deceiving the public about the causes and effects of climate change.

Examining deception

In many cases, state and local governments are arguing that the fossil fuel industry knew about the dangers of climate change and deceived the public about them, and that the industry exaggerated the extent of its investments in energy that doesn’t emit carbon. Rather than directly asking courts to order reduced carbon emissions, these cases tend to seek damages that will help governments cover the costs associated with climate change, such as construction of cooling centers and repair of roads damaged by increased precipitation. In legal terms, the lawsuits are saying oil and gas companies violated consumer-protection laws and committed common-law civil violations such as negligence. For instance, the city of Chicago alleges that major petroleum giants – along with the industry trade association the American Petroleum Institute – had “abundant knowledge” of the public harms of fossil fuels yet “actively campaigned” to hide that information and deceive consumers. Many other complaints by states and local governments make similar allegations. Another lawsuit, from the state of Maine, lists and provides photographs of a litany of internal industry documents showing industry knowledge of the threat of climate change. That lawsuit also cites a 1977 memo from an Exxon employee to Exxon executives, which stated that “current scientific opinion overwhelmingly favors attributing atmospheric carbon dioxide increase to fossil fuel consumption,” and a 1979 internal Exxon memo about the buildup of carbon dioxide emissions, which warned that “(t)he potential problem is great and urgent.” These complaints also show organizations supported by fossil fuel companies published ads as far back as the 1990s, with titles such as “Apocalypse No” and “Who told you the earth was warming … Chicken Little?” Some of these ads – part of a broader campaign – were funded by a group called the Information Council for the Environment, supported by coal producers and electric utilities. Courts have dismissed some of these complaints, finding that federal laws overrule the principles those suits are based on. But many are still winding their way through the courts. In 2023 the Supreme Court of Hawaii found that federal laws do not prevent climate claims based on state common law. In January 2025 the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the case to continue.

Other approaches

Still other litigation approaches argue that governments inadequately reviewed the effects of greenhouse gas emissions, or even supported or subsidized those emissions caused by private industry. Those lawsuits – some of which were filed by children, with help from their parents or legal guardians – claim the governments’ actions violated people’s constitutional rights. For instance, children in the Juliana v. United States case, first filed in 2015, said 50 years of petroleum-supporting actions by presidents and various federal agencies had violated their fundamental “right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life.” The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that their claim was a “political question” – meant for Congress, not the courts. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to reconsider that ruling in March 2025. But children in Montana found more success. The Montana Constitution requires state officials and all residents to “maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment … for present and future generations.” In 2024 the Montana Supreme Court determined that this provision “includes a stable climate system that sustains human lives and liberties.” The Montana Supreme Court also reviewed a state law banning officials from considering greenhouse gas emissions of projects approved by the state. The court found that the ban violated the state constitution, too. Since then, the Montana Supreme Court has specifically required state officials to review the climate effects of a project for which permits were challenged. Concerned people and groups continue to file climate-related lawsuits across the country and around the world. They are seeing mixed results, but as the cases continue and more are filed, they are drawing attention to potential corporate and government wrongdoing, as well as the human costs of climate change. And they are inspiring shareholders and citizens to demand more accurate information and action from fossil fuel companies and electric utilities. Hannah Wiseman, Professor of Law, Penn State This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.