1995 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
A Corroborative Study of Parent-Child Contracts in the Edo Period, With Special Emphasis on the Child's Support of Aged Parents
| Project/Area Number |
06620011
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for General Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Research Field |
Fundamental law
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| Research Institution | Kanto Junior College |
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Principal Investigator |
TAKAGI Tadashi Kanto Junior College, Department of Economics and Commerce, Professor, 商経科, 教授 (40099198)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1994 – 1995
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| Keywords | parent-child contracts / children's support of aged parents / adopting a man as a son-in-law / in-family contract for retirement / farmland withheld after retirement / last will and testament |
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| Research Abstract |
It is my great pleasure that this research has given me, a scholar of law history, a chance to contribute in some way to the ongoing sift of current legal practice. In this respect, this study was immensely helpful for confirming my belief that history studies could virtually provide us the wisdom for handling the present matters. History of laws, as a subject of treating the past, has proved to be in this domain for its practicality.
In the year of 1996, the pension law for farmers was modified so as to include the wives of farm successors as its recipients. As a prerequisite to this revision, the necessity of concluding a 'family business agreement' should be taken into consideration. This agreement could be called the modern-day 'parent-child contract' which used to be prevalent in the Edo period. The ministry of Agriculture and Fishery and the National Council of Agriculture, both of which have a role of promoting the agreement in Japan, have so far showed preference for the German
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and French legal frameworks. From the first, the principles of foreign laws were found not to work properly in the domestic situations. The Naitonal Council of Agriculture, recognizing such a discrepancy and a merit of parent-child contracts in the Edo period, kindly invited me to the talks at the lectures and symposiums which were held in Tokyo, Fukushima, and Gunma. On such occasions, my research could make contributions to giving a new perspective into the law formation in progress, in a practical sense.
The primary significance of this research was to collect as many original documents about parent-child-contracts, especially about the support of the aged parents, as possible from rural districts. However, I found it extremely difficult to come across such documents, in part because not too many researchers were involved in this field. The documents which came into hand are few and I compiled them.
In regard to the contract drawn up in adopting a man as a son-in-law into the family or 'Muko-yooshi Engumi' in Japanese, some documents were available in the Gunma district which was a main study area for my study. These are largely photographic data and so I published them in the Journal of Gunma History Studies. I also wrote some articles on this issue in some magazines. Less
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Research Products
(6 results)
