Having no surname in Japan

[Crescent Pulsar S]

Can someone help me with this? I've tried to find out what details I can about it, but I can't seem to find a single damn thing with a search engine. All I get are stuff related to masterless samurai and people trying to enter college/university. I could have sworn that I'd found information about this some years ago...

[Konsaki]

http://ask.metafilter.com/83832/How-does-disownership-of-a-child-work-in-Japan
Most informative post:

There's a lot of guessing going on in this this thread, so I did a little research using Japanese Google and the some Japanese abstracts on family law.

Children in Japan are required by law to be registered in the 戸籍謄本　(koseki tohon or family register) at birth. Not registering children would be considered a crime. Of course, as noted above, there are children who may not be registered. They would then become wards of the state if no adult were able to claim or prove parentage or guardianship.

If a child is abandoned (perhaps a more technical term for being 'disowned') and is not entered on a family register, s/he is ineligible for Japanese citizenship, cannot enter the national health insurance system and cannot married. In certain cases it is possible to create one's own koseki, which solves this problem.

Some prefectures, such as Kumamoto, have introduced a 'baby hatch' system to deal with unwanted children (akachan posuto). Parents or guardians are found for these children; adoptees enter the foster parents' koseki. Children in orphanages typically were registered in their parents' koseki at birth.

However, it is a crime to refrain from register the birth of a child. And it is pretty uncommon to 'disown' or abandon a child to boot (the children in the movie 'Nobody Knows' were registered on the mother's koseki tohon). It is also extremely difficult to remove one's child from one's family register or 'disown them.' One cannot just go down to the local city or ward office and do this sort of thing.

I don't think abandonment is an "Asian" thing, as the same problem can exist in Canada, the US or Europe.

Still, it must be said that Japan has long had the practice of 'water babies,' unwanted children drowned at birth by farming families with too many mouths to feed.

[Crescent Pulsar S]

Ah, thanks, that helps. It makes a lot of the examples I've seen in fan-fiction (especially with Ranma) unrealistic, though. I should probably go for the adoption and name change route, then.

[Konsaki]

Ah, thanks, that helps. It makes a lot of the examples I've seen in fan-fiction (especially with Ranma) unrealistic, though. I should probably go for the adoption and name change route, then.

I would point out that the Ranma-verse is still stuck in the 1980's and, with 30 years between that and now, customs and laws have changed.
Even with that, I would hazard a guess that, back then, all they would do was remove them from the family register that the family held onto, not the government's version, to hammer in the 'You are dead to me/I have no son' mentality. As stated in the last bit of the post I put up, there are people being disowned all over the world still today and that's the version I'd see Ranma suffering from if Nodoka didn't go through with the Seppuku contract.

[Crescent Pulsar S]

So getting disowned is kinda like having a name but being stripped of one's title?

The time period in Ranma 1/2 is fairly flexible, though. I mean, aside the seasons passing one after the other while the kiddies remain in the same grade, events in canon can be placed as late as the mid-nineties. Though I often don't hear of many major changes (of the nature being discussed) starting to take place until around the turn of the century, so...

[Maximara]

I would point out that the Ranma-verse is still stuck in the 1980's and, with 30 years between that and now, customs and laws have changed.
Even with that, I would hazard a guess that, back then, all they would do was remove them from the family register that the family held onto, not the government's version, to hammer in the 'You are dead to me/I have no son' mentality. As stated in the last bit of the post I put up, there are people being disowned all over the world still today and that's the version I'd see Ranma suffering from if Nodoka didn't go through with the Seppuku contract.

Actually in Chapter 333: アロハ漂流教室 (Aroha hyoryu kyoshitsu) in the manga Ranma finds a journal dated 1990 so we know that the events in the manga MUST take place after that year. This fits with the majority of the manga being written in the 1990s (1988-1996). So Ranma is at worst 23 years in the past and likely more recent.

[Konsaki]

Actually in Chapter 333: アロハ漂流教室 (Aroha hyoryu kyoshitsu) in the manga Ranma finds a journal dated 1990 so we know that the events in the manga MUST take place after that year. This fits with the majority of the manga being written in the 1990s (1988-1996). So Ranma is at worst 23 years in the past and likely more recent.

I stand corrected. Still quite a while to have things change.

[three headed dog]

Lots of stuff has changed here are a few that relate to Ranma

- the legal marrying age changing from 16 for guys/13 for girls (in 1995) to 18/16 with parental consent (20 without consent).
- Saturdays no longer have school (at least in the majority of schools some of the private schools kept it but not that many).
- May 18, 1999 law was implemented intended to ban child prostitution and child pornography prior to that the laws about that were extremely lax (basically there wasn't a law against the distribution or sale of child porn). (brought up because of Nabiki's picture sales and if porn mags were brought up since these were a couple of real ones around before the law passed: ``Lolita'' and ``After School Play Mates'' -- featuring pictures of girls who appear to range in age from 5 or 6 to women in their late teens).
- birth control pills were illegal until May 1999 in Japan (brought up for obvious reasons) - still not used widely though legal
- in 1993 used panty vending machines were declared to be illegal (in case Happosai decided to buy some rather than steal them for some reason)

Though a lot of things that show up in fan fics have more to do with Japanese views on honor/face (the seppuku contract, duels, fiancée situation in many ways) than law (and some are straight up illegal death contract and forced marriage both being illegal though both happen occasionally anyways) and Ranma's mom seems to be old fashioned.

[Cheb]

Beside all said above, I believe the "disowning" shown in many fics is extremely unrealistic. If some problem with honour arises that cannot be solved, then... they solve it with a family suicide. That's a real Japanese practice, shown in other works of Rumiko Takahashi as well.
If you play Nodoka by the canon, she is set on committing suicide right after she cuts Ranma's and Genma's heads, doing otherwise is unthinkable.
So that seppuku contract, if invoked, results in "rocks fall, everyone dies". No more Saotomes.

When faced with problems of this sort, they do not run. They stay and fight to the death. (well, except Genma, who employs trickery and misdirection on a frantic scale. But even him is shown as thinking that if he's caught, this is it).

[Spica75]

I would point out that the Ranma-verse is still stuck in the 1980's and, with 30 years between that and now, customs and laws have changed.
Even with that, I would hazard a guess that, back then, all they would do was remove them from the family register that the family held onto, not the government's version, to hammer in the 'You are dead to me/I have no son' mentality.

That is how i take it.

As stated in the last bit of the post I put up, there are people being disowned all over the world still today and that's the version I'd see Ranma suffering from if Nodoka didn't go through with the Seppuku contract.

Yeah, it´s just a bit more formal and "grand gesture" style... Like sending 2 lawyers and a public notary to inform their child that "you are just soooo out of the will"...

Meh, not coming up with a really good comparison but oh well...