In Japan, the law requires one person in a couple to adopt the other’s surname after marriage. In 96% of cases, it’s mostly women who change their surname. Recently, within the Japanese system, there has been an active movement to allow individuals to choose whether to change their own surname after marriage. In opinion polls, those in favor far outweigh those against, and young people in particular have shown their support. Although the issue of changing surnames after marriage has been discussed in the past, because many believe that it would lead to a loss of a sense of family unity, the system has not been changed. About 27% of one or both members of married couples are remarried. Then there’s the issue of same sex marriage. Changing children’s surnames for the convenience of one of the parents is also considered a sticking point. Reasons given against adopting different surnames include: “It’ll lead to the collapse of the family registration system,” “Maiden names are often kept for business, or other purposes,” and “It will open the door to allowing female members of the imperial family to become emperor.” Some say that while international couples – there are more and more of these in these times of globalization – can choose to have different surnames, there’s no option for Japanese couples and that’s unfair. It’s said that the reason why little progress has been made on this as a policy issue is that the members of parliament responsible for designing the new system are mostly male and as such have little understanding of the difficulties women encounter after changing their surnames.