Drawing data from the local population registers in two northeastern agricultural villages, this study examines the patterns and factors associated with divorce in preindustrial Japan. Divorce was easy and common during this period. More than two thirds of first marriages dissolved in divorce before individuals reached age fifty. Discrete-time event history analysis is applied to demonstrate how economic condition and household context influenced the likelihood of divorce for females. Risk of divorce was extremely high in the first three years and among uxorilocal marriages. Propensity of divorce increased upon economic stress in the community and among households of lower social status. Presence of parents, siblings, and children had strong bearings on marriage to continue.
Fumie Kumagai , ‘‘Changing Divorce in Japan,’’Journal of Family History, Spring (1983 ), 85-108.
2.
William J. Goode, World Revolution and Family Patterns (New York, NY: The Free Press, 1963); William J. Goode, World Change in Divorce Patterns (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993).
3.
Gavin W. Jones , ‘‘Malay Marriage and Divorce in Peninsular Malaysia: Three Decades of Change,’’Population and Development Review7 ( 1981), 255-78; Goode, World Change.
4.
Charles Hirschman , and Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan, ‘‘Cultural and Socioeconomic Influences on Divorce During Modernization: Southeast Asia, 1940s to 1960s,’’Population and Development Review29 (2003), 215-53.
5.
For example, Yoshihiro Tsubouchi, and Reiko Tsubouchi, Rikon: Hikaku Shakaigakuteki Kenkyu [Divorce: through comparative sociological perspectives] (Tokyo: Sobunsha, 1970); Harald Fuess, Divorce in Japan: Family, Gender and the State 1600-2000 (California: Stanford University Press, 2004).
6.
Laurel L. Cornell , ‘‘Peasant Women and Divorce in Pre-Industrial Japan,’’Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society15 (1990 ), 710-32; Satomi Kurosu, ‘‘Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage in a Stem Family System: Women in Two Northeastern Villages, 1716-1870,’’ in The Stem Family in Eurasian Perspective: Revisiting House Societies, 17th-20th Centuries, edited by Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux , and Emiko Ochiai ( Bern: Peter Lang, 2009), 327-44; Satomi Kurosu, Noriko O. Tsuya, and Kiyoshi Hamano, ‘‘Regional Differentials in the Patterns of First Marriage in the Latter Half of Tokugawa Japan,’’Keio Economic Studies36 (1999), 13-38.
7.
Roderick Phillips , Putting Asunder: A History of Divorce in Western Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Frans Van Poppel, ‘‘Family Breakdown in Nineteenth-Century Netherlands: Divorcing Couples in the Hague,’’The History of the Family: An International Quarterly2 (1997), 49-72; Koen Matthijs, Anneleen Baerts, and Bart Van de Putte, ‘‘Determinants of Divorce in Nineteenth-Century Flanders,’’Journal of Family History33 (2008 ), 239-61.
8.
Thomas C. Smith, Nakahara: Family Farming and Population in a Japanese Village, 1717-1830 ( Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1977); Noriko O. Tsuya, and Satomi Kurosu, ‘‘Economic and Household Covariates of First Marriage in Early Modern Japan: Evidence From Two Northeastern Villages, 1716-1870,’’ in Family Structure, Demography and Population: A Comparison of Societies in Asia and Europe, edited by Catharine Caplone, and Muriel Neven ( Liege: Laboratoire de Demographie de l’Universite de Liege, 2000), 131-57.
9.
Fuess, Divorce in Japan, 91-6.
10.
Kurosu, ‘‘Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage.’’
11.
Noriko O. Tsuya , and Satomi Kurosu, ‘‘Mortality and Household in Two Ou Villages, 1716-1870,’’ in Life Under Pressure: Mortality and Living Standard in Europe and Asia, 1700-1900 , Tommy Bengtsson, Cameron Campbell, James Lee, et al. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004), 253-92.
12.
Ryosuke Ishii , Edo no Rikon: Mikudari-han to Engiri-dera [Divorce in Edo Period: Three-and-a-Half Lines and Divorce Temples] ( Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Shinbunsha, 1965); Hideo Otake, ‘‘Ie’’ to Josei no Rekshi [A History of ‘‘Ie’’ and Women] ( Tokyo: Kobundo, 1977); Tadashi Takagi, Mikudarihan: Edo no Rikon to Joseitachi [Three-Lines-and-a-Half: Divorce and Women in Edo] (Tokyo : Heibonsha , 1987); Diana E. Wright, ‘‘Severing the Karmic Ties That Bind. The ‘Divorce Temple’ Mantokuji,’’Monumenta Nipponica52 ( 1997), 357-80.
13.
Another possibility open to women was to run into temples (or sometimes Samurai residences or an official’s home) as asylum where they were legally protected and their divorce being granted after a few years of service. But this practice was more common in the early part of Tokugawa.
14.
Takagi, Mikudarihan, points that sometimes misbehaviors of husbands, including adultery and husband bringing the wife’s dowry to pawn without her consent, were documented in the written exchanges (negotiations) between the partners (or their kin or village officers).
15.
Takeyoshi Kawashima, and Kurt Steiner, ‘‘Modernization and Divorce Rate Trends in Japan,’’ Economic Development and Cultural Change9 (1960), 213-39.
16.
Otake, ‘‘Ie’’ to Josei no Rekshi, 151.
17.
Takagi, Mikudarihan, 16.
18.
Tsubouchi, and Tsubouchi, Rikon, 186; Otake, ‘‘Ie’’ to Josei no Rekshi, 129-32.
19.
Fuess, Divorce in Japan , 73-74, 98.
20.
Martin Dribe , and Christer Lundh, ‘‘Finding the Right Partner: Rural Homogamy in Nineteenth-Century Sweden,’’ International Review of Social History50 ( 2005), 149-77.
21.
For example, Scott J. South, and Glenna Spitze, ‘‘Determinants of Divorce Over the Marital Life Course,’’American Sociological Review51 (1986), 583-90.
22.
Gary S.Becker, ElisabethM. Landes, and Robert T.Michael, ‘‘An Economic Analysis of Marital Instability , ’’ The Journal of Political Economy85 (1977), 1141-87.
23.
Julie Brines , and Kara Joyner, ‘‘The Ties That Bind: Principles of Cohesion in Cohabitation and Marriage, ’’ American Sociological Review64 (1999), 333-55.
24.
Satomi Kurosu , ‘‘Long Way toHeadship, Short Way to Retirement: Adopted Sons in a Northeastern Village in Pre-Industrial Japan ,’’ The History of the Family: An International Quarterly3 (1998), 393-410.
25.
Laurence Stone, Road to Divorce. England 1530-1987 (New York/ Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 15.
26.
Van Poppel , ‘‘Family Breakdown in Nineteenth-Century Netherlands.’’
27.
For example, Patrick R. Galloway, ‘‘Basic Patterns in Annual Variations in Fertility, Nuptiality, Mortality, and Prices in Pre-Industrial Europe,’’Population Studies42 (1988), 275-303; Susan B. Hanley, and Kozo Yamamura, Economic and Demographic Change in Preindustrial Japan 1600-1868 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977).
28.
Tommy Bengtsson , Cameron Campbell, James Lee , et al. Life Under Pressure: Mortality and Living Standard in Europe and Asia, 1700-1900 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004). Noriko O. Tsuya, Wang Feng, George Alter, James Lee , et al. Prudence and Pressure: Reproduction and Human Agency in Europe and Asia, 1700-1900 ( Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009).
29.
Tsuya, and Kurosu, ‘‘Economic and Household Covariates of First Marriage.’’
30.
Osamu Saito , ‘‘Two Kinds of Stem Family System? Traditional Japan and Europe Compared,’’ Continuity and Change13 (1998), 167-86.
31.
Tsuya, and Kurosu, ‘‘Mortality and Household’’; Tsuya, and Kurosu, ‘‘Economic and Household Covariates of First Marriage’’; Kurosu, ‘‘Remarriage in a Stem Family System.’’
32.
Tsuya, and Kurosu, ‘‘Economic and Household Covariates of First Marriage.’’
33.
This can be considered in the light of ‘‘marital preparation’’ in South and Spitze, ‘‘Determinants of Divorce.’’
34.
In Sweden, Dribe, and Lundh found that landholding peasants were the most homogamous and that choosing a right partner was a crucial process especially for landowners (‘‘Finding the right partner’’).
35.
Laurel L. Cornell, ‘‘Hajnal and the Household in Asia: A Comparativist History of the Family in Preindustrial Japan, 1600-1870,’’Journal of Family History12 (1987), 143-62.
36.
Noriko O. Tsuya, and Satomi Kurosu, ‘‘Family, Household, and Reproduction in Northeastern Japan, 1716-1870,’’Prudence and Pressure, 249-285; Satomi Kurosu, and Emiko Ochiai, ‘‘Adoption as an Heirship Strategy Under Demographic Constraints: A Case From 19th Century Japan,’’Journal of Family History20 (1995), 261-87; Smith, Nakahara, Satomi Kurosu, ‘‘Who Leaves Home and Why? Daughters and Sons in Two Northeastern Villages, 1716-1870,’’ In The Road to Independence: Leaving Home in Western and Eastern Societies, 16th-20th Centuries, edited by Frans van Poppel, Michel Oris, and James Lee (Bern: Peter Lang, 2004), 243-71.
37.
Tsuya, and Kurosu, ‘‘Mortality and Household.’’
38.
Osamu Saito , ‘‘Marriage, Family Labour and the Stem Family Household: Traditional Japan in a Comparative Perspective . ’’ Continuity and Change15 ( 2000), 17-45.
39.
Harald Fuess, Divorce in Japan; Goode, World Changes in Divorce Patterns, 220-40.
40.
Tsuya, and Kurosu, ‘‘Economic and Household Covariates of First Marriage.’’
41.
Becker, Landes, Michael, ‘‘An Economic Analysis of Marital Instability.’’
42.
Lynn K.White, ‘‘Determinants of Divorce: A Review of Research in the Eighties,’’ Journal of Marriage and Family52, 904-12.
43.
Becker, Landes, Michael, ‘‘An Economic Analysis of Marital Instability.’’
44.
Lee A. Lillard , and Linda J. Waite, ‘‘A Joint Model of Marital Childbearing and Marital Disruption,’’Demography30 ( 1993), 653-81.
45.
This is a famous proverb from the book written for women in Tokugawa Japan by Kaibara Ikken.
46.
Tsuya, and Kurosu, ‘‘Mortality and Household.’’
47.
Tsuya, and Kurosu, ‘‘Mortality and Household,’’ for details.
48.
Customary law of this region held that if a husband absconded without returning for ten months, his wife was legally allowed to remarry (Nihonmatsu-han Shi, History of Nihonmatsu domain, Tokyo: Nihonmatsuhanshi kankokai, republished by Rekishi Toshosha, 1973, 572). Although it can be seen as a form of divorce, absconding is not included in this study.
49.
It should be noted that although the marriage was the first observed for the group of women defined above, it was not necessarily so for their spouses.
50.
This follows the definition of ‘‘first marriage’’ used in recent studies on marriage (Tsuya and Kurosu, ‘‘Economic and Household Covariates of First Marriage,’’ Kurosu, Tsuya, and Hamano, ‘‘Regional Differentials’’).
51.
The ‘‘age’’ refers to the age measured in terms of the timing of NAC registration rather than chronological age. That is, rather than on birthday, one ages when one goes through the NAC registration (March in this region).
52.
Kurosu, Tsuya, and Hamano, ‘‘Regional Differentials in the Patterns of First Marriage.’’
53.
Kurosu, ‘‘Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage.’’
54.
Hans-Peter Blossfeld , Alfred Hamerle, and Karl Ulrich Mayer, Event History Analysis: Statistical Theory and Application in the Social Sciences ( Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbraum , 1989), 122.
55.
For the specifics of the model, see Tsuya, and Kurosu, ‘‘Mortality and Household.’’
56.
Paul D. Allison, Event History Analysis: Regression for Longitudinal Event Data, Series: Quantitative applications in the social sciences46 ( Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1984).
57.
Tsuya, and Kurosu, ‘‘Reproduction and Family Building Strategies.’’
58.
Hirschman, and Teerawichitchainan, ‘‘Cultural and Socioeconomic Influences on Divorce.’’
59.
Tsuya, and Kurosu, ‘‘Mortality and Household.’’
60.
There are a few cases of female headship among uxorilocal marriage. They are likely to be a transitional stage before their husbands assumed the headship.
61.
Becker, Landes, and Michael, ‘‘An Economic Analysis of Marital Instability’’ ; Andrew J. Cherlin, ‘‘Remarriage as an Incomplete Institution,’’American Journal of Sociology84 ( 1978), 634-50. This positive relationship was also found in the nineteenth century Netherlands, Van Poppel, ‘‘Family Breakdown in Nineteenth-Century Netherlands.’’
62.
Cherlin, ‘‘Remarriage as an Incomplete Institution.’’
63.
Benjamin R. Karney, and Tomas N. Bradbury, ‘‘The Longitudinal Course of Marital Quality and Stability: A Review of Theory, Method, and Research,’’Psychological Bulletin118 (1995), 3-34.
64.
Tsuya, and Kurosu, ‘‘Economic and Household Covariates of First Marriage.’’
65.
Tsuya, and Kurosu, ‘‘Mortality and Household.’’
66.
Kurosu, ‘‘Who Leaves Home and Why?’’
67.
In contemporary divorce, women’s labor is considered a ‘‘divorce insurance’’ (William H. Greene, and Aline O. Quester, ‘‘Divorce Risk and Wives’ Labor Supply Behavior,’’ Social Science Quarterly 63, 16-27; South and Spitze, ‘‘Determinants of Divorce’’).
68.
James Z. Lee, and Wang Feng, One Quarter of Humanity: Malthusian Mythology and Chinese Realities, 1700-2000 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 98-9.
