1989 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Family structure, life-cycle, and life-course in late feudal Japan: studies in rural and city census materials.
| Project/Area Number |
63510111
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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 |
社会学(含社会福祉関係)
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| Research Institution | Ritsumeikan University |
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Principal Investigator |
TAKAGI Masao Ritsumeikan University, Department of Social Sciences, Associate Professor, 産業社会学部, 助教授 (70118371)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1988 – 1989
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| Keywords | Historical demography / Population dynamics / Family composition / Family life-cycle / Life-course |
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| Research Abstract |
The present work considers several aspects of family structure, life-cycle, and life-course of the cohorts during the late feudal-early modern period of Japan.
1.Family, population, and landholding policy in the Sendai Domain. Governmental involvement in population control was demonstrated by a 1677 ordinance forbidding marriages by propertyless males younger than first sons, and again by the lifting of this ban in 1754. The mere existence of such legislation refutes the popular notion that feudal population control was limited to such unofficial methods as abortion and/or infanticide.
2.Joit families under the stem family system. A majority of joint households formed when stem families, composed of the vertically related conjugal units of the family head and heir, joined forces with youngest son's family unit in order to forestall impending crises in their developmental cycles.
3.Population dynamics in preindustrial Japanese neighborhood association. Nineteenth century population data for the city of Nara show the townspeople to have been quite mobile, with only about 30% maintaining residence in any particular neighborhood (a chonai unit comprising twenty to thirty households) for more than 15 years. Longer periods of residence were generally seen only in households with stable family occupation.
4.Urban families in premodern Japan: its composition, development, and life-cycle crises. The city of Nara during the 19th Century contained a wide variety of family types and sizes, with midsized nuclear families predominating. The formation of stem families appears to have been a difficult matter, with such households comprising only about 10% of the total. Family crises in urban families generally resulted from, for example, loss of a spouse, lack of family heir,or poor marriage prospects due to low paying employment.
Life-course analysis depending on 18-19th Century material is abandoned here because of several difficulties. We are intending to report it in the next year.
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