With Liberal Democratic Party president Sanae Takaichi poised to become Japan’s first female prime minister, her spouse, former LDP Lower House lawmaker Taku Yamamoto, is set to become the country’s first-ever first husband.
The couple has made a case study out of their surname choices after marriage — keeping them legally the same but publicly separate — to prove that the current system is not sexist. Currently, either spouse can take the surname of their partner, but they cannot choose to keep separate surnames.
Takaichi and Yamamoto first married in 2004. They divorced in 2017 due to differences in their political stances, then remarried in 2021.
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