The Stanford Japan Barometer (henceforth SJB), a public opinion survey on various topics including Japanese society, politics, and economy, is led by Stanford sociologist Kiyoteru Tsutsui, the deputy director of Shorenstein APARC and director of the Center’s Japan Program, and political scientist Charles Crabtree of Dartmouth College. SJB is one of the largest online surveys of its kind in Japan.

In fall 2024, SJB conducted a survey on gender and sexuality, including on the topic of optional separate surnames for married couples, as the LDP presidential election reignited the debate about this issue in Japanese society. SJB previously conducted a similar survey on the topic in 2022. Surname selection has also reemerged as a policy issue due to the growth of the opposition to the ruling LDP in the October 2024 subsequent general election for the Lower House of the National Diet (Japan's Parliament).

Below is an English translation of a recent GLOBE+ feature story on SJB's latest survey that sheds light on Japanese voters' views on this issue. This is the fifth installment in a series GLOBE+, an international news outlet run by the Asahi Shimbun, is publishing jointly with APARc’s Japan Program on SJB's work. You can read an English translation of parts 1-3 and part 4 in the series. The translation was initially generated via DeepL. The following translation was edited for accuracy and style.

Sign up for APARC's newsletters to receive our scholars' research updates >

Views on a Dual-Surname Option for Spouses

The issue came into renewed focus when former Environment Minister Shinjiro Koizumi, one of the candidates in the LDP presidential election held in September 2024, pledged to implement a selective married couple surname system. SJB therefore conducted another survey from September 25 to October 2, 2024, on the same themes as those used in the November 2022 survey on selective surname system, same-sex marriage, female Diet members, and outside directors. There were 9769 respondents, a little more than 1,000 more than in the previous survey.

The Japanese government has regularly been surveying this issue but as a result of changing the survey questions and the way they were asked between 2017 and 2021, support for the selective surname system dropped from a record high of 42.5% in the 2017 survey to record low of only 28.9% in 2021. For that reason, in SJB’s November 2022 survey and fall 2024 survey, respondents were randomly assigned to either of the two methods of asking questions from the government's 2017 and 2021 surveys.

The results showed that, among respondents assigned to the 2021 method, 26% preferred to “maintain the current system of married couples with the same family name,” 38% preferred to “maintain the current system of married couples with the same family name and establish a legal system for the use of the maiden name as a common name,” and 36% preferred to “introduce an optional system of married couples with different family names.”

On the other hand, among those assigned to the 2017 system, 21% said that “married couples should always take the same surname as long as they are married, and there is no need to change the current law,” 59% said that “if a married couple wishes to take the surname they had before their marriage, it would be acceptable if the law is changed to allow each couple to take the surname they had before their marriage,” and 20% and 20% said "Even if married couples wish to keep their maiden surnames, they should always have the same surname, but I don't mind changing the law to allow people who change their surnames due to marriage to use their maiden surnames as aliases.” In other words, 59% favored optional separate surnames for married couples.

Thus, the 2021 method of asking the question was more likely to result in fewer people supporting selective married couples. This is similar to Japan Barometer's previous 2022 survey, and it can be said that the government's 2021 survey showed less support for selective surnames because of the change in the framing of the survey questions.

As in the 2022 survey, SJB asked about optional separate surnames for married couples under certain assumptions, so as to reveal under what conditions public opinion would be swayed toward selective surnames. In SJB’s 2022 survey, respondents’ opposition was strongest when the precondition suggested separate surnames could weaken family ties or harm children and society. In the latest survey of fall 2024, however, no statistically significant causal relationship was observed, suggesting that public opinion on this issue has matured and no longer changes even when preconditions are added.

Furthermore, the 2024 survey introduced a new question about whether individuals would prefer to retain their maiden name if a dual-surname option for spouses was allowed. Among female respondents, 21.3% said they would “likely choose to do so,” 23.5% were “undecided,” and 55.2% said they “would not likely choose to do so.”

Commenting on these findings, Professor Tsutsui said: “Many older individuals and already-married women are accustomed to the current system, making it unlikely they would opt for separate surnames. The fact that only about 20% of the respondents would choose to change their surname could be a basis for some kind of legislation, since 20% of women feel inconvenienced. Furthermore, since the majority of women do not choose to have separate surnames, it is unlikely that the family system will collapse rapidly, as some conservatives worry. This may be a result that encourages the implementation of legal reform.”

Attitudes Toward Gender Equality

The survey also explored attitudes toward women’s advancement in society. As in the 2022 survey, respondents evaluated hypothetical political candidates for the Diet based on six attributes: age (from 32 to 82 in 10-year increments), gender, marital status, number of children, level of education, and professional background (10 types, including Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, and Ministry of Foreign Affairs bureaucrats, corporate executives, governors, and local assembly members).

Two “candidate images” were created by randomly combining six attributes, and the respondents were asked to choose one in a two-choice format. The same question was repeated 10 times with different choices, and the responses obtained from all survey targets were tabulated and analyzed. The reason for the complexity of the method is that, from a statistical point of view, this allows the researchers to get closer to the “true feelings” (public opinion) of the respondents.

The combination of attributes that received the most responses, i.e., the “ideal candidate image” in respondents' minds, was the same as in 2022: female gender, ages 32 and 42, and occupation as governor or corporate executive. This aligns with the findings from the 2022 survey, indicating strong expectations for female leaders in their 30s and 40s. Indeed, Japan’s October 2024 Diet election mirrored these results, with a record 15.7% of women elected.

Views on Same-Sex Marriage

In addition, support for same-sex marriage remained high overall, with 43.7% in favor, 38.9% neutral, and 17.3% opposed. Support for same-sex marriage increased most when the following preconditions were added: "From the standpoint of human rights and gender equality, it is unfair to not recognize same-sex marriage," and "For gay people, not having their marital relationship recognized causes various inconveniences, such as inconveniences and disadvantages in their professional and daily lives, and a sense of denial of their identity."

On the other hand, when members of Parliament and outside directors were asked about their preferred combination of attributes, the least supported of the attributes of marriage was “people in homosexual relationships.”

“Married” was the most popular, as were “never married” and “divorced,” with the least support for those in a homosexual relationship.

“While there is a growing understanding of same-sex marriage in the private sphere, there seems to be a tendency for people to choose those who are within the traditional family system for roles holding public responsibility,” said Tsutsui.

What policy options does the Japanese public prefer, and what might shift its attitudes? These are some questions the Stanford Japan Barometer (SJB) sets out to answer. SJB is a large-scale public opinion survey on political, economic, and social issues in Japan. Co-developed and led by Stanford sociologist Kiyoteru Tsutsui, the deputy director of APARC and director of the Center’s Japan Program, and Dartmouth College political scientist Charles Crabtree, a former visiting assistant professor with the Japan Program, SJB has so far published the results from its first two waves.

Wave 1 focused on issues related to gender and sexuality in Japanese politics, while Wave 2 focused on issues related to foreign policy and national defense. SJB findings fielded in these two waves indicate that most Japanese support recognizing same-sex unions, legalizing a dual-surname option for married couples, promoting women’s leadership in society, and that, in a Taiwan contingency, ​​Japanese people would be hesitant to fight China but would respond to a request from the U.S. military for logistical support.

Jointly with the Japan Program, GLOBE+, an international news outlet operated by the esteemed Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, is publishing a series highlighting SJB findings. Here, we provide an English translation of the first three pieces in this series. Additional articles in the series will be published sequentially.

PART I

How Question Framing Changes the Results of Public Opinion Polls: Japan Barometer's Attempt to Get at the "True Feelings” of Survey Respondents

View the original article at Asahi Shimbun GLOBE+ >

Asahi Shimbun GLOBE+ sat down with Tsutsui to learn more about the findings of SJB, its goals, and how it differs from other public opinion polls.

Asahi Shimbun GLOBE+: Why did you come up with the idea to start the Stanford Japan Barometer?

Area studies have been in decline within the social sciences. Although China research is developing, there has been a significant shift away from Japan studies. In 2019, the Asia Society of North America held a session titled “The Death of Japanese Studies.” It made me think that conducting large-scale research experiments with Japan as the theme could spark new developments in the field. The idea was that this effort would draw attention to Japanese studies and foster young researchers interested in Japan.

Asahi Shimbun GLOBE+: What makes SJB different from other public opinion polls?

First, we routinely administer the SJB to an extensive national sample comprising 8,000 Japanese residents. Another unique point is our focus on the type of questions asked to “sway” people's opinions. That is why we call it an experiment. Thus, one of the characteristics of SJB is that we create questions with different preconditions for a given problem and then compare the answers and see how these preconditions affect respondents’ attitudes.

For example, in the first wave of the survey, the theme was gender and sexuality in Japanese politics, and we asked respondents about the pros and cons of same-sex marriage, looking into what kind of influence the preconditions of the survey questions would have on the responses. We created eight types of such preconditions and randomly assigned them to respondents.

We presented some respondents with prompts about tradition and history, such as “In Japanese society, it is a tradition that marriage is between people of the opposite sex” and “Japanese society has tolerated romantic relationships between people of the same sex since the Middle Ages and the Warring States period.” We presented other respondents with preconditions about the fairness of same-sex marriages from the point of view of constitutional rights and human rights principles. We found that respondents tend to become more supportive of same-sex marriage when presented with an argument that not allowing same-sex marriage is unfair from the point of view of human rights and gender equality.

Asahi Shimbun GLOBE+: Generally, in public opinion polls, we take care to ask neutral questions, but you are intentionally doing the opposite.

That's right. By doing so, we can understand what kind of efforts are effective in moving people’s attitudes. As a sociologist, my research focuses on social movements, and I am very interested in the slow pace of change in Japanese society. Therefore, I want to understand why it hasn't changed much and how we can affect change.

In addition to opinions about same-sex marriage, we asked about respondents’ views of desirable attributes of a candidate for the House of Representatives in categories such as gender, age, and occupation. We also examined how the responses changed depending on a candidate’s political party and other factors.

By asking about desirable attributes of a candidate from multiple perspectives, you can elicit answers closer to the respondents’ true feelings. In the future, we plan to continue conducting experiments to see how the results change depending on these preconditions and the characteristics of the respondents.

Asahi Shimbun GLOBE+: What research themes do you have in mind for the future?

I want to research various fields and have already completed research on Japan’s defense spending tax increase and the Taiwan contingency situation. I also want to investigate topics like AI and immigration. In the future, I would like to open a public call for research themes to investigate with SJB.

Part 2
Do Japanese People Envision the Ideal Political Leaders as Females in Their 30s or 40s? Stanford Japan Barometer Finds Out

A recurring issue in Japanese public discussions on gender equality pertains to the underrepresentation of women in leadership roles, particularly in politics and business. To better understand the Japanese public attitudes toward this gender gap, SJB conducted conjoint experiments exploring the preferences of the Japanese public regarding candidates for a Diet seat. In this article, Tsutsui explains the method and results of this survey.

View the original article at Asahi Shimbun GLOBE+ >

This survey asked respondents about the following six attributes regarding candidates they would like to see in the next Diet:

• Age (from 32 years old to 82 years old in 10-year increments)
• Sex
• Marriage
• Number of children
• Academic background
• Occupation (11 options, including finance, business, foreign affairs bureaucrats, corporate managers and officers, governors, local legislators, homemakers, and others)

When asking the question, we created two “candidate images'' by randomly combining six attributes and asked respondents to choose them in a multiple-choice format. We then aggregated and analyzed the respondents’ answers. This complex method statistically allows us to get closer to the respondents’ “true feelings.”

As a result of the analysis, the combinations of attributes that received the most responses, or in other words, the “ideal candidate image'' that respondents thought of, were as follows:

Gender: Female
Age: 32 and 42 years old
Occupation: Governor and corporate manager/officer

These findings indicate that Japanese people wish to see more female leaders in their 30s and 40s become politicians. Additionally, 75% of respondents agreed that “there should be more efforts to increase the number of female members in Japan's Diet.'' Nearly all respondents, regardless of gender, age group, party support, or the strength of their support for the Kishida administration, favored having a female politician over a male one, and even among those who rated Japan as already diverse, many said they would prefer female candidates.

Based on these findings, we assert that a notable portion of the Japanese population sincerely backs women leaders. Furthermore, if a female candidate is nominated, she will likely get elected.

Conversely, the combinations of attributes with weak public support were as follows:
Gender: Male
Age: 72 and 82
Occupation: TV commentator, parliamentary secretary, financial bureaucrat

These results indicate that Japanese public opinion neither favors older male politicians nor desires people in occupations close to national politics.

The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has, in fact, actively supported women in elections in urban areas, including the Tokyo 8th Ward of the House of Representatives, which includes Suginami Ward. The reason is that "experience has shown that women are in demand," according to LDP officials. Interestingly, this sentiment coincides with the image of politicians desired by public opinion (women in their 30s and 40s, not older men), as highlighted by the Stanford Japan Barometer.

There may be an election for the Lower House of Representatives in 2024, and it will be interesting to see how many women will get elected after the supplementary and unified elections.

Part 3
The Liberal Democratic Party's Bold Strategy of Fielding Female Candidates: A "Survival Instinct" Consistent with Voters’ Desires

View the original article at Asahi Shimbun GLOBE+ >

The results of the first wave of the Stanford Japan Barometer match the LDP's policy of supporting women. The LDP, which has approved a string of candidates for the upcoming general election to dissolve the House of Representatives, has been fielding women mainly in urban areas. A typical example is Tokyo's 8th Ward (a large part of Suginami Ward). For a long time, the LDP's Nobuaki Ishihara dominated this seat. Yet he lost the 2021 Lower House election to Harumi Yoshida, a female newcomer to the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan. Ishihara was also unable to regain his seat proportionally.

In 2022, female newcomer Satoko Kishimoto won the Suginami Ward mayor election against the incumbent male candidate. Kishimoto supported mainly women in the 2023 Ward Assembly election, resulting in a female majority. The LDP responded by supporting a 42-year-old woman from the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry in Tokyo's 8th Ward.

In Tokyo's 18th Ward (Musashino, Fuchu, and Koganei), the home district of former Prime Minister Naoto Kan (Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan), who recently announced his retirement, the Tokyo Metropolitan Federation of Trade Unions also held an open recruitment campaign for women only. In addition, there has been a string of female candidates in Tokyo, including Tamayo Marukawa, who switched from the House of Councillors to the upper house of the Diet. That is because LDP officials have learned from experience that "women and young people, especially in urban areas, are the most likely to win now,” according to a senior LDP official.

In the supplementary elections for the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors, women won in the Chiba 5th district of the House of Representatives, the Wakayama 1st District of the House of Representatives, and the Oita Constituency of the House of Councillors. Men previously held all these positions, and the races were considered hotly contested.

Does the LDP have a philosophy that "diversity is important in politics, so let's increase the number of women"? No, not necessarily. When the LDP debated the Candidate Gender Equality Act (enacted in 2018), which calls for political parties to have an equal number of male and female candidates as much as possible, some LDP members protested, saying that forcing an increase in the number of women would lower the quality of politicians, that it was reverse discrimination against men, and that it would also not be a fair assessment of women.

LDP lawmakers were quick to say they were not against increasing the number of women, but it also seemed as if men were afraid of having their status threatened. The LDP's recent nomination of a string of women likely indicates a “survival strategy.”

If the voters prefer women, they will support women. Of course, the LDP is not basing its decision to field women on the results of the Stanford Japan Barometer. Still, the fact that the LDP is fielding candidates who closely match the preferred candidate image yielded in the SJB survey shows how strong the LDP's survival instinct is.

The LDP once even formed a coalition with the Socialist Party, which it continued to oppose as an opposition party. The LDP is tenacious and determined.

View a Japanese version of this announcement.

The Japanese public supports women’s advancement in society, finds the Stanford Japan Barometer, a survey platform launched by the Japan Program at Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC). This result is somewhat surprising, considering Japan’s poor showing in global gender equality rankings.

Led by Professor of Sociology Kiyoteru Tsutsui, the Henri H. and Tomoye Takahashi Professor and director of the Japan Program at APARC, and Charles Crabtree, an assistant professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College and a former visiting assistant professor with the Japan Program, the Stanford Japan Barometer (SJB) is a periodic public opinion survey on political, economic, and social issues concerning contemporary Japan with three main parts: (1) questions about respondents’ demographic background; (2) a stable set of questions about support for policy issues, political parties, public institutions, and international entities; and (3) a thematically focused set of questions and experimental studies on topics of great relevance at the time of the survey. The survey is conducted with a national, quota-based sample of 8,000 Japanese residents.

In the first installation of the survey, conducted in late November 2022, the SJB examined issues concerning gender and sexuality in Japan. It found, among other results, that most Japanese are in favor of recognizing same-sex unions and support a legal change to allow married couples to keep separate surnames. The SJB also examined questions related to women’s advancement in Japanese society, the focus of the following report.

One prominent gender equality issue that often recurs in Japanese public discourse is women’s under-representation in prominent positions, especially in politics and business. According to the latest Global Gender Gap Report released by the World Economic Forum, Japan ranks 116th out of 146 countries in terms of gender equality. Japan fares well in the categories of Education and Health, but in Politics and Economy, it ranks 139th and 121st respectively. In another ranking on women’s role and influence in the workforce, the Glass-Ceiling Index compiled by The Economist, Japan ranks second-worst among the 29 developed countries surveyed. Japan barely avoided the lowest ranking (a dubious distinction taken by South Korea), but indeed ranks lowest in terms of the proportion of women in national parliaments (single or Lower House) among OECD countries, with only 10% of Lower House members being female.

To better understand this striking gender disparity, Tsutsui and Crabtree had respondents complete conjoint experiments that examined what types of candidates the Japanese public is more likely to support for a Diet seat and an external corporate board member. The results show, perhaps surprisingly, that Japanese people prefer women for these positions (52% to 48% for the Diet and 51% to 49% for corporate board). Women support female candidates more than men, but men also prefer female candidates over male ones, averaging across all other candidate characteristics such as education and occupational background. These differences are fairly stable across different ages, educational and family backgrounds, and political party support. Contrary to what gender representation in politics and corporate leadership would indicate, the SJB results suggest that there is robust support for women’s representation in those powerful positions across different spectrums of the Japanese public.

Tsutsui and Crabtree also asked a series of questions about views on gender roles and women’s advancement in Japanese society. Respondents were particularly supportive of more men taking parental leave and helping with childcare, registering 6.3 on a scale of 0-10 (5 being neutral and a number larger than 5 indicating support for the statement). They were not supportive of the statements about traditional gender roles, such as “Men should work outside the home and women should stay home” (3.8), or “Boys should be raised to be manly and girls should be raised to be womanly” (4.3). Interestingly, for all these questions, there is a statistically significant difference between male and female respondents, with men showing greater support for traditional gender roles, although the general trend is a shift away from traditional gender roles even among men.

On questions concerning women’s advancement in Japanese society, the Japanese public demonstrated strong support for the argument that more efforts should be made to increase the number of female politicians (5.8), executives (5.9), and board members (5.8). There is no substantial difference between men and women for these questions, indicating that the support for women’s advancement in politics and business is broadly shared across genders.

When it comes to using a quota to ensure women’s seats in the national Diet, management positions, and board rooms, the opinions are divided across the gender line, with women being significantly more supportive (5.1, 5.2, 5.2) than men (4.8, 4.7, 4.7). This likely indicates that men are threatened by the idea of quota as it would reduce the likelihood of their advancement toward these powerful positions.

Men’s resistance to quotas notwithstanding, overall, the Japanese public supports women’s advancement in society, perhaps recognizing the need for Japan to change in light of the embarrassing showing in global rankings of women’s empowerment. These results suggest that the slow pace of change in women’s advancement in Japan might be attributable to the behavior of gatekeepers, who are mostly older men who come from different socioeconomic backgrounds than the SJB’s average survey respondent, rather than to a lack of public support.

For media inquiries about the survey, please reach out to:
Noa Ronkin
APARC Associate Director for Communications and External Relations
noa.ronkin@stanford.edu