I do not know exactly about Japan, but I know that in traditional China a married woman was supposed to love and respect her parents-in-law much more than her own parents. That was also one of the reasons why people used to be disappointed about having a daughter. If they had a son, they knew that he and his wife were bound to support them in their old age and to take care of them. In contrast, having a daughter would not help the parents at all because, after marriage, she would have no choice but to spend all her time serving her parents-in-law. Nobody would tolerate her neglecting her duty towards them in order to support her own parents.
In Japan, the name of a daughter who married would be literally obliterated with black brush-strokes from the family´s
koseki (family register). I do not know if it is still done with a brush but, in principle, the fact remains. Married couples have to agree to have only one family name on the koseki. That is why a former member of parliament,
Hiroko Mizushima, and her husband divorced and remarried several times because they wanted both to keep their names. When they married, Mizushima and her husband, filmmaker Satoshi Hasegawa, officially chose Mizushima as a surname. But because they were determined to use their own names in everyday life, they had to get divorced whenever Hasegawa needed official documents, such as a passport, in his own name. (Bye the way, I find it quite interesting that Mizushima started by being a psychiatrist, working primarily with children and adolescent women suffering eating disorders. By this work and the experience she derived from it, she was inspired to join politics because she felt that the problems of her mentally ill patients went way beyond themselves. "The social system is creating their problems," she said at the time. “With fathers under severe stress at work and mothers resentful after abandoning careers, little wonder that children are unhappy and unable to communicate. She added, "Dealing with these youngsters, I could see no hope for the future of Japan.")
But, in traditional Japan, there has also been the possibility of a husband taking his wife´s name and becoming part of HER family. This could be done when a family had only daughters, to carry on the family line. (And here is the difference between commoners and imperial family in Japan because, as we know, the imperial family cannot do that.)
I have read a very intriguing novel about such a case, written by Japanese woman,
Hisako Matsubara. I am really fascinated by the fact that she came as an adult to Germany and managed to learn the language so well that she was able to write books in German. She has written several novels, most of them set in recent Japanese history, and I have learnt a lot from them. Two of them have been translated into English,
Cranes at Dusk and
Samurai, and I´d recommend both. The first deals with a Japanese family the father of which is a Shinto priest. Maybe he is a bit idealized but as the Western image of Shinto is much influenced by the fact that it has been (and, to some extent, still is) abused for political nationalist purposes, I was very glad to get to read something about the fascinating philosophical side of Shinto. The other book,
Samurai, is why I am even mentioning Matsubara here. It tells the story of a young man who marries into his wife´s family. His father-in-law, old and rich samurai Hayato, sends him to America, alone, to win back the family honour. The young man has no choice but to go because as an adoptive son, he has no possibility to oppose his adoptive father/father-in-law. But in America, nobody cares for his outstanding law degree... It is a shockingly tragic story, but I think that it brilliantly explores a certain aspect of Japan and the Japanese. (And, btw, it seems to me that I have even read somewhere that a similar story has indeed happened in Matsubara´s family, to her grandfather maybe.)
Someone, perhaps Al_bina, wrote on a forum that in Asian marriages, the bride is seen to become part of her new family to an extent that she's not expected to have much to do with her birth family anymore. So I think that the tradition there is stronger even than in Europe.
