On Nov. 29, the Kobe District Court dismissed a suit against the state filed by a woman in her 60s who claimed that the law that allows only men to deny paternity of a child is unconstitutional, since it discriminates against women. She said the law meant she was unable to register her daughter as the child of her second partner, because the law presumed her estranged husband was the father. The judge explained his decision by saying the law in question "represents a compromise between the need to match biological and legal fathers, and ensuring stable paternal relations by determining them promptly."

In other words, it makes the government's job easier, and the government has the final say in deciding who the father of a child is. It also implies that women can't be trusted.

In an interview that appeared in the Nov. 15 Mainichi Shimbun, Masataka Endo, one of the leading experts on Japan's koseki (family register) system, which is what was at issue in the Kobe case, pointed out that the koseki's main function is "moralistic" in that it designates the Emperor's subjects, sets the parameters of an individual's family and defines who is Japanese. It has no practical purpose — it cannot be used for census-taking or identification — but rather positions a person in a "virtuous line of descent," thus unifying the nation. This concept of "pure blood" Japanese is a "legal fiction" that is "out of step with current realities," Endo says. And yet the koseki is deemed irreplaceable, and so by extension poses a serious problem for the minority of Japanese who don't have them.