Koseki
Marriages, divorces by mutual consent, acknowledgements of paternity of non-marital children and adoptions (among others) become legally effective only when such events are recorded in the koseki.
Births and deaths become legally effective as they happen, but such events must be filed by family members or other persons as allowed by law.
For example, information regarding birth, current marital status, and loss of foreign nationalities is transcribed without alteration.
Conversely, details concerning divorces or acquisition of Japanese nationality through naturalization are not included in the new koseki.
[5] During the course of the Japanese Empire, a number of reforms were carried out after 1910 to eliminate double standards in the koseki system.
Persons diagnosed with GID must seek an official diagnosis with letters of support from two independent psychiatrists to change their koseki gender.
The koseki system is different from the jūminhyō residency registration, which holds current address information of both Japanese and foreign nationals.
It serves as important supplementary information for various identification documents and contributes to the promotion of digitization in society.
The introduction of this system is driven by the challenges posed by uncertain pronunciation, such as the presence of multiple registered readings for the same person.
When the law is enforced, it is expected that extremely unconventional names will not be accepted when registering new births.
Information provided in koseki is detailed and sensitive and makes discrimination possible against such groups as burakumin or illegitimate children and unwed mothers, for example.
As the burakumin liberation movement gained strength in postwar Japan some changes were made to family registries.
In 1974 a notice that prohibited employers from asking prospective employees to show their family registry was released by the Ministry of Health and Welfare.
[5] On December 15, 2015, the Nikkei Asian Review reported that Japan's Supreme Court upheld a legal provision forcing married couples to use the same surname.
Plaintiffs had argued that the legal provision amounts to "de facto discrimination against women."
Some journalists claimed koseki is an antiquated system that enabled younger family members to receive the pensions of deceased elderly relatives.
[15][16] Koseki tends to be criticized by commentators or activists situated on the left wing of the Japanese political spectrum, because its rigid framework functions as a barrier against societal innovations, and because the history of any citizen is easily searchable.
On the contrary, other views praise the state-of-the-art reliability and traceability offered by this system for more than 150 years.
