Abstract
Fufu bessei refers to the retention of former surnames after marriage. This paper suggests some theoretical frameworks for understanding the issue. The desire for name retention need not be psychologized as the mere dernier cri of the married woman looking back at singlehood. It argues that the fufu bessei issue involves the wider structural transformations occuring in society over the last forty years throughout the industrialized world. Nor is the issue, pars pro toto, an issue of Japanese 'cultural specificity', nor even solely of the nature of woman as social being. To relegate the issue to either cultural particularity or feminism is to insert it into another master discourse which does no more than try to reverse the familiar powerful-powerless opposition but leaves the political and social hierarchy, the centre and the margins, undisturbed. The sharp point of the marriage-name problem appears to be gender discrimination but its true empennage is state coercion whose tried-and-tested vector is uniformity (doshi-shugi- 'like-mind-ism') - even at the level of the choice of one's name. A familiar tale of loss of personal liberty and choice, fufu bessei is a libertarian issue that invokes the proper devolution of power over life-decisions to men and women in society. Based on a review of the literature and interviews with working women and students in Tokyo, this paper describes the range of opinion and parameters of the current situation in Japan regarding married names. The impact of the koseki (family register) is significant in maintaining forced choice (fufu dosei) in the three countries in the world where the family register system operates: Japan, Korea and Taiwan. The koseki is a family identification system that contrasts with a personal identification system in other countries. Government and party-political opinion basically opposes fufu bessei. Government proposals seem to favour a dual track solution: "koseki wa dosei, nichijo wa kyusei". This means the maintenance of fufu dosei for the koseki and fufu bessei option for daily life and services (e.g. work, bank, insurance). Japanese companies display various attitudes and policies towards marriage name usage and there is no uniform adaptation to these policies by women workers.
