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When Suzuki met Suzuki: why a Tokyo dating agency is matching couples with the same name | Japan
At the very least, the three men and three women calming their nerves on a Friday evening at a venue in Tokyo know they have one thing in common.
Spaced out across booths, they will soon be placed in pairs and given 15 minutes to get to know one another.
“Let’s start with a nice ‘hello’ and a big smile,” the emcee says.
When they meet they will only need to use their first names – because they all share the same surname.
The event is the first in a series that – novelty value aside – aims to skirt Japan’s controversial ban on married couples having separate surnames by getting people with the same surname together.
After the participants have confirmed their IDs on an app, the chatter begins and the beer begins to flow. Round one over, the men are asked to move to the next table. Laughter is heard from one of the tables – surely a good sign. At another, the couple get to their feet and help themselves to cakes and biscuits provided by sponsor companies that share their common surname: Suzuki.
Similar events have been planned for other people with the same surnames: Ito, Tanaka and Sato, Japan’s most popular family name.
“To be honest, I’m not too fussed about keeping my maiden name, but I thought it would be fun to meet another Suzuki,” says *Hana Suzuki, a 34-year-old nurse.
What’s in a name?
Japan’s civil code specifies that a husband and wife must have the same family name. Couples are free to choose which surname to take when they marry, but in just under 95% of cases, it is the woman who has to adapt – a reflection, critics, say of Japan’s male-dominated society.
In practice, many women continue to use their birth name at work and their legal, married surname in official documents. Although the government allows birth names to appear alongside married ones on passports, driving licences and other documents, Japan remains the only country in the world that requires spouses to use the same name.
The UN committee on the elimination of discrimination against women has also called on Japan’s government to revise the laws and introduce a selective dual-surname system.
Businesses are among those urging change, saying the rule is proving an obstacle to Japanese firms that do business overseas if female employees use work ID that doesn’t match their surname.
The powerful business lobby Keidanren has collected testimony from women who say the rule has negatively affected their careers, including academics whose work written under their birth name struggles to gain recognition, and managerial-level women whose “business name” has been rejected when signing contracts.
According to an internal Keidanren survey, 82% of female executives said they supported allowing married couples to use separate surnames.
“We launched the project to highlight a growing issue in Japan, as many people hesitate to marry because of the requirement to change their surname,” said Yuka Maruyama, a creative planner and project initiator at Asuniwa.
“We wanted to present a simple and slightly humorous idea – matching people who already share the same surname – in order to make this issue more visible and easier to understand,” she said.
Successive Liberal Democratic governments have refused to consider changing the law. Conservative members have led the resistance, arguing that amending the civil code, which was adopted in the late 1800s, would “undermine” the traditional family unit and cause confusion among children.
‘A safe option’
“Keeping my maiden name isn’t a deal breaker, but I can see why taking my husband’s name could be inconvenient in, say, the workplace,” says Hana, one of the participants in the matchmaking event. “I’m fine with the idea of separate surnames, but I think it could cause problems when you have children … which name would they take?”
A recent survey of 2,500 people in their 20s and 30s who use the dating app Pairs found that 36.6% of women and 46.6% of men felt reluctant about changing their surname, while a smaller proportion of both sexes had misgiving about their partner changing their name. Just over 7% said they would break up if neither partner wanted to change their surname.
Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, has shown little interest in changing the law. Instead, she supports a bill that would expand legal recognition of birth names in official documents – a compromise critics say would do little to end the confusion for women who have to use one of two names depending on the circumstances.
Takaichi took her husband’s surname, Yamamoto, during their first marriage, which ended in 2017. When they remarried in 2021, he officially took the name Takaichi.
The conservative leader told MPs this month she opposed the introduction of selective separate surnames, preferring, as she had done, to use birth names in certain situations. It was important, she said, for “spouses and their children to share the same surname on the family register”.
The matchmaking party’s organisers do not follow up with couples for privacy reasons, but some of this evening’s participants appear to have few regrets.
“I’ve been to matchmaking parties before, but I thought this one would be more interesting,” says *Taisho Suzuki, a 33-year-old company employee. “I hadn’t given much thought to the idea of marrying another Suzuki, but I can see now why it’s a safe option. I don’t want to give up my surname when I marry, and I know a lot of women feel the same about their names.”
He and his female counterpart have used their shared family name as an icebreaker, laughing as they recounted the times their name was called in government offices and waiting rooms – prompting responses from multiple people – before numbered tickets became the norm.
“Now that I’m in my 30s my priorities have changed and I want to marry and have children,” he says. “If I met a woman with an unusual surname, I’d understand why she would want to keep it. I guess we’d have to sit down and work something out.”
* First names have been changed at the interviewees’ request
Metropolitan Police detectives are appealing for information as part of a murder investigation.
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US and Iran agree to provisional ceasefire as Tehran says it will reopen strait of Hormuz | US-Israel war on Iran
The US and Iran agreed to a two-week conditional ceasefire on Tuesday evening, which included a temporary reopening of the strait of Hormuz, after a last-minute diplomatic intervention led by Pakistan, canceling an ultimatum from Donald Trump for Iran to surrender or face widespread destruction.
Trump’s announcement of the ceasefire agreement came less than two hours before the US president’s self-imposed 8pm Eastern time deadline to bomb Iran’s power plants and bridges in a move that legal scholars, as well as officials from numerous countries and the pope, had warned could constitute war crimes.
Just hours earlier, Trump had written on Truth Social: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.” American B-52 bombers were reported to be en route to Iran before the ceasefire agreement was announced.
But by Tuesday evening, Trump announced that a ceasefire agreement had been mediated through Pakistan, whose prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, had requested the two-week peace in order to “allow diplomacy to run its course”.
Trump wrote in a post that “subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz, I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks”.
In a separate post later, the US president called Tuesday “a big day for world peace” on a social media post, claiming that Iran had “had enough”. He said the US would be “helping with the traffic buildup” in the strait of Hormuz and that “big money will be made” as Iran begins reconstruction.
For several hours afterwards, Israel’s position or agreement with the deal was unclear. But just before midnight ET, the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said Israel backed the US ceasefire with Iran but that the deal did not cover fighting against Hezbollah in Lebanon. His office said Israel also supported US efforts to ensure Iran no longer posed a nuclear or missile threat.
Pakistan’s prime minister had previously said that the agreed ceasefire covered “everywhere including Lebanon”.
The ceasefire process was clouded in uncertainty after Iran released two different versions of the 10-point plan intended to be the basis for negotiations, and which Trump said was a “workable basis on which to negotiate”.
In the version released in Farsi, Iran included the phrase “acceptance of enrichment” for its nuclear program. But for reasons that remain unclear, that phrase was missing in English versions shared by Iranian diplomats to journalists.
Pakistan has invited the US and Iran to talks in Islamabad on Friday. Tehran said it would attend, but Washington has yet to publicly accept the invitation.
In a telephone call with Agence France-Presse, Trump said he believed China had persuaded Iran to negotiate, and said Tehran’s enriched uranium would be “perfectly taken care of”, without providing more detail.
In the two-week ceasefire, Trump said, he believed the US and Iran could negotiate over the 10-point proposal that would allow an armistice to be “finalized and consummated”.
“This will be a double sided CEASEFIRE!” he continued. “The reason for doing so is that we have already met and exceeded all Military objectives, and are very far along with a definitive Agreement concerning Longterm PEACE with Iran, and PEACE in the Middle East.”
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, issued a statement shortly after Trump’s announcement saying Iran had agreed to the ceasefire. “For a period of two weeks, safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz will be possible via coordinating with Iran’s Armed Forces,” he wrote.
Oil prices dived, stocks surged and the dollar was knocked back on Wednesday as a two-week Middle East ceasefire sparked a relief rally, fuelled by hopes that oil and gas flows through the strait of Hormuz could resume.
Despite the provisional ceasefire, attacks continued across the region in the hours after Trump’s announcement. Before the deadline, airstrikes hit two bridges and a train station in Iran, and the US hit military infrastructure on Kharg Island, a key hub for Iranian oil production.
The sudden about-face will allow Trump to step back as the US war in Iran has dragged on for five weeks with little sign that Tehran is ready to surrender or release its hold on the strait, a conduit for a fifth of the global energy supply, where traffic has slowed to a trickle.
Trump had earlier rejected the 10-point plan as “not good enough” but the president has set deadlines before and allowed them to pass over the five weeks of the conflict. Yet he insisted on Tuesday the ensuing hours would be “one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World” unless “something revolutionarily wonderful” happened, with “less radicalized minds” in Iran’s leadership.
News of the provisional ceasefire deal was welcomed but with a note of caution elsewhere.
Iraq’s foreign ministry called for “serious and sustainable dialogue” between the US and Iran “to address the root causes of the disputes”, while the German foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, said the deal “must be the crucial first step towards lasting peace, for the consequences of the war continuing would be incalculable”.
In Australia, the government warned that the latest developments would not necessarily mean the fuel crisis is over. Oil prices fell as traders bet that the reopening of the strait of Hormuz would help fuel supply resume, but the energy minister, Chris Bowen, told reporters Australians should “not get ahead of ourselves”.
He said: “People shouldn’t take today’s progress and expect prices to fall. We welcome progress, but I don’t think we can say the [strait of Hormuz is] now open.”
A spokesperson for New Zealand’s foreign minister, Winston Peters, welcomed the “encouraging news” but noted “there remains significant important work to be done to secure a lasting ceasefire”.
Japan said it expected the move to result in a “final agreement” after Washington and Tehran begin talks on Friday. Describing the ceasefire as a “positive move”, the chief cabinet secretary, Minoru Kihara, said Tokyo wanted to see a de-escalation on the ground in the region, adding that the prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, was seeking talks with the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian.
A temporary end to hostilities will come as a relief to Japan, which depends on the Middle East for about 90% of its crude oil imports, most of which is transported through the strait of Hormuz.
South Korea’s ministry of foreign affairs said it hoped “negotiations between the two sides will be successfully concluded and that peace and stability in the Middle East will be restored at an early date”, as well as wishes for “free and safe navigation of all vessels through the strait of Hormuz”.
Craig Lewis-Williams needs specialist care for the rest of his life following the November 2021 attack.
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