A few years later, when you walk the streets of Japan, all the title stores you can see are "Sato's stores"; Walking through an open-air basketball court, passionate athletes are gathering to high-five and cheer for their team, and when they disperse, the name embroidered on the back of everyone's jersey is "Sato", and only the number distinguishes the players; Walking into the subway station, in the midst of the surging crowd, you try to call "Sato", only to have everyone around you stand still and look at you......
Don't rush to pinch yourself, and don't be sure that this is just a bizarre dream. In April 2024, Hiroshi Yoshida, a professor at the Center for Aging, Economic and Social Research at Tohoku University in Japan, presented a research report titled "The 2531 Sato Problem". In this report, Yoshida and his team used models to calculate that if Japan continued to implement the existing and legally strict system of having the same surname for husband and wife, all Japanese people would have the surname "Sato" by about 2531, 500 years from now.
Shouting "Sato", the nightmare scene where everyone turns back will move from absurd imagination to cruel reality.
Sato, romanized pinyin for SATO, in a 3v3 basketball game, the name embroidered on the back of everyone's jersey is "Sato"
Big fish eat small fish
According to the research of Hiroshi Yoshida's team, "Sato" is already the number one surname in Japan, and currently accounts for 1.529% of the total population. After adding variables such as marriage, divorce, birth, and death, the number of people with the surname "Sato" increased by 0.83% from 2022 to 2023. Hiroshi Yoshida used this as a reference for growth rate, estimating that under the current "husband and wife with the same surname" and medical level, "Sato" will increase by about 0.83% per year, and by 2446, half of the Japanese will have the surname "Sato", and by 2531, all Japanese will have the surname Sato.
Japan is not a country with few surnames. In the Meiji era, when commoners were just beginning to have family names, there were as many as 130,000 castes in Japan. Even now, with the practice of "husband and wife having the same surname" for a long time, 50,000 castes are on the verge of extinction – and more than 80,000 surnames remain.
500 years later, why is there such a dilemma as "all Sato"?
According to the research results of Hiroshi Yoshida's team, by 2531, all Japanese people will have the surname Sato
The main culprit is the system of "husband and wife with the same surname" that Professor Hiroshi Yoshida keeps mentioning. In most countries in the world, after the husband and wife enter into a marriage relationship, all kinds of life may gradually be bound together, but the surname that means their "origin" is generally not changed at will due to marriage.
Japan is a different story. Article 750 of the Civil Code of Japan stipulates that when a husband and wife marry, they must use the surname of one of the husbands or the wife as the joint surname after marriage. Article 74 of Japan's Family Registration Law stipulates that the marriage application must be filled in with the "surname jointly used by the husband and wife". In addition to the right to choose the "husband and wife's surname" when marrying a foreigner, "husband and wife have the same surname" is a mandatory requirement in black and white in Japan, and it is a necessary condition for entering into marriage.
As a result, the system of husband and wife with the same surname has a collective effect on the "life and death" of the surname, and as long as a new person gets married, the surname will be "eaten". Until the rest are big surnames, the minority surnames disappear, and in the end, only one surname "wins".
More and more people have the surname "Sato", and even the whole of Japan has the surname "Sato", what's wrong?
Streets of Japan
In addition to the gradual annihilation of the historical and cultural connotations of the surname itself, more and more "Sato" will also bring a lot of inconvenience to life. Unlike our daily habit of removing surnames and first names to express affection, Japan is more accustomed to addressing people by their surnames, which leads to a strange scene at the beginning of the article: a call for Sato, 10,000 people answer, and the meaning of names as distinguishing symbols is completely lost.
"It may be that in court, the plaintiff's surname is Sato, the defendant's surname is Sato, the judge's surname is Sato, and the lawyer's surname is Sato."
Why "Sato"?
Why "big waves wash the sand", leaving "Sato"?
In fact, the surname "Sato" is also a product of the Japanese people's response to the reflection on "too many people with the same surname and many inconveniences" in the past.
In early Japan, where family and family lineage were highly valued, surnames were first named after the place of birth or place, making it simple and straightforward to show one's status to others. In the Asuka era, the "Fujiwara clan" family was prominent and prosperous, so that more and more people with the surname Fujiwara were formed, and within a certain area, a dilemma of calling "Fujiwara" was almost formed, and everyone looked back. In order to distinguish between "Fujiwara" and "Sa", a position in the imperial court, people formed a new surname "Sato", which was used to distinguish it from the excessive "Fujiwara". Since then, the "Sato" of the Heian period has gradually become a thriving clan.
Stills from "Mio's Cooking Post".
By the Meiji period, common people in Japan were also allowed to have surnames. If the common people do not have a prominent background or a dazzling official position, how can they choose a surname for themselves? "Sato" and "Suzuki", which became common and inconspicuous due to the large number of users, became the first choice of ordinary people. After all, in Japanese culture, it is one of the most important national characteristics not to be too peculiar, and the number of people with the surname "Sato" has risen again.
Now, "husband and wife with the same surname" have pushed "Sato" to the forefront.
"If everyone has the surname Sato, they have to add a number, like Sato 1, Sato 2, and Sato 3, which can only be distinguished by number, which is not a wonderful world." In the street survey on the "Sato" issue, the Japanese people all believe that "Sato" should not be allowed to continue to spread.
To stop the infinite "reproduction" of "Sato", it is not even necessary to try to divide another surname as it did with "Fujiwara" a hundred years ago, but it is only necessary to amend the law and implement the system of "choosing a different surname for husband and wife".
"You can choose another surname for your husband and wife", which is different from the iron law of "husband and wife have the same surname" currently in force, and provides freedom of choice for men and women entering into marriage: whether or not to "take your surname and take my name" is completely voluntary.
Stills from "Remembering a Little".
In fact, this "choice" is also a kind of long-awaitedness. In 2022, the Japan Federation of Labor Unions conducted a survey of 1,000 Japanese nationals on whether they would like to choose the same surname after marriage, and only 39.3% of them believed that they should follow the rules. And the remaining more than half of the respondents believe that in this day and age, "optional" would be better.
Based on this ratio, Professor Hiroshi Yoshida also made an estimate. If the "choice of husband and wife surnames" is implemented from now on, more people will choose to continue their original surnames, and the rate of "reproduction" of "Sato" will decrease, and by 2531, the number of people with the surname "Sato" will account for 7.96% of the total population, and the horror of all "Sato" will be postponed until 3310.
Who am I?
In response to Hiroshi Yoshida's research results, the Japanese media also interviewed some people on the streets. A man surnamed "Sato" said that even though there is still a long time before 2531, but in his daily life now, he will often encounter embarrassing scenes of people shouting "Sato" in public and several people turning back at the same time, although the wide range of "Sato" also has some benefits - just like the iPhone always has more mobile phone accessories to choose from, "Sato" is easier to buy good-looking surname engravings and name tags, but these are not enough for him to stop envy those rare surnames.
The man who traveled with this "Sato" had the surname "Sukeko", which is a rare surname. He was very proud of this and firmly stated that he would not change his surname at any time, especially to an ordinary surname like "Sato".
Takeru Sato / Stills from "Asian".
Men with the surname "Zhu Ji" are able to refuse to have their surname changed, but women with the surname "Zhu Ji" are unable to protect their surname.
Although Japan's "husband and wife have the same surname" system does not strictly stipulate that the husband's surname must be followed, the "husband and wife have the same surname" was born out of the "single surname system" in Japan's traditional patriarchal family system, which places men at the top of the family hierarchy and treats women as "outsiders" who enter the male family through marriage. The conservative Shiro Odamura once arrogantly described it in "The Atmosphere of Japan": "Marriage is a major event in life, and it is normal for a wife to feel troubled by changing her surname, but it is precisely because of this that she can personally feel the seriousness of marriage." After marriage, husband and wife have the same surname, so that they can better feel the spiritual fit with each other and establish a good family relationship. Therefore, in Japan, 95% of the time the "husband and wife have the same surname" is the woman's surname.
Changing the surname brings real trouble to married life. It takes a lot of time for a newlywed woman to change the bank account, credit card, passport and other documents that were opened in her last name before marriage. When you go overseas, you may not be able to change your ID in time to get into trouble such as staying at a hotel or attending an event. Even, those academic papers written with their own surnames, patents obtained and other achievements, after marrying the surname of the husband, are not counted.
"The same surname is not only inconvenient, it also undermines personal dignity." Professor Hiroshi Yoshida said. In 2019, a survey data from Japan's Central Research Agency also supported his view: 80% of Japanese married women feel that they have lost their self-worth because of their husband's surname.
Professor Hiroshi Yoshida
Cumbersome marriage system, troublesome surname change, lost self-...... In the confusion of "who am I", more Japanese people simply choose not to get married, some of them choose to live together in a de facto marriage, and some directly remain single. For women who are suppressed by patriarchal culture, the issue of surnames is just a concrete representation of the survival situation, and the more complex gender structure behind it has undoubtedly exacerbated the "declining birthrate" that has caused headaches for the Japanese government.
However, the Japanese government apparently does not care about the death of the little "surname". They offer a solution: the iron rule that husband and wife must have the same surname cannot be changed, but in everyday life, if you wish, you can continue to call the old surname.
In the face of irreparable troubles such as Japan's declining birthrate and aging population, it is really difficult to say whether all employees will be "Sato" or "annihilated" in 500 years - after all, the risk of national extinction caused by the birth crisis has sounded the alarm in South Korea.
The pictures in the article are partly from Visual China and partly from the Internet
This article was first published in Issue 10 of World Watch magazine
Author | Tao Kai
Edit | Jiang Wen
Editor-in-Chief on Duty | Zhao Jinghan
Typography | Toru Kazama