Gender and the Koseki in Contemporary Japan ― Surname, Power and Privilege

The Japanese koseki system is the legal and social structure keeping record of all Japanese citizens. Determined by the Civil Code and the Koseki Law, for activists challenging it, the koseki is also an ideological structure, which has produced patriarchal control through single surname households.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Tokyo, this book engages with issues of gender hierarchy and structural inequality in Japanese society. Studying several decades of feminist activism and critique of the koseki system, it analyses the strategies of activists who have creatively circumvented koseki rules in order to maintain their natal names in marriage. It examines the case studies of members of the fufubessei (separate surname movement) and the movement to end discrimination against children born out of wedlock, and in so doing this book illuminates the contradictions in current family law and koseki practice that have animated a generation of feminists in Japan.

Demonstrating the effect of the koeski on family, gender and national identity, this book will be useful for students and scholars of Cultural Anthropology, Gender Studies and Japanese Studies in general.

Linda White is Assistant Professor in Japanese Studies at Middlebury College, USA. She teaches courses that address contemporary issues in Japanese society, including globalization, gender, and current social problems. Her research focuses on Japanese feminist activism, intersections between gender and family law, and attitudes about the body.