Abstract
This highly informative volume brings together recent scholarship that lies at “the intersection of family and social history and historical demography” (3). The articles focus on regional variations across key demographic regions, defined as “North-eastern,” “South-western,” and “Central” Japan. The primary sources, as is the case for the bulk of scholarship in the historical demography of early modern Japan, are the rich corpus of population registers variously known as shūmon aratame-chō (registers of religious affiliation, abbreviated as SAC), ninbetsu aratame-chō (population registers, or NAC), and shūmon ninbetsu aratame-chō (religious affiliation and population registers, or SNAC), which were maintained at the village level throughout Japan from the early seventeenth century through the end of the Tokugawa period (1603–1868). Although the nature of the sources compels a focus on the rural commoner class, two articles in the volume discuss “norms and life courses” within the samurai class. A central argument threaded throughout the volume is the idea that “Japanization,” in the form of the country-wide spread of the ie (the Japanese variation on the stem family) as a prevailing structure and norm, occurred among the commoner population well before the standardization of family law and family structure in the Meiji Period (1868–1912).
Readers who are even glancingly familiar with the social or economic history of early modern Japan are aware of the formidable body of scholarship amassed across many decades, most of it in Japanese and based on data from SAC and NAC, in the historical demography of rural commoner populations. Particularly influential on this volume is the pioneering work of the late Hayami Akira (1929–2019) and the EurAsia Project on Population and Family History that he founded in the late 1990s. One of Hayami's principal concerns, amplified in the present volume, is the importance of regional variation with regard to key demographic and social indicators such as population, marriage, fertility, migration, household formation, and family structure. Building on previous research, key findings of this volume include that according to SAC and NAC, the commoner population grew over time in southwestern Japan whereas it declined in central and northeastern Japan, rebounding in the latter after 1840. Early and universal marriage prevailed in the northeast while in central and southwestern Japan age at marriage was higher, and everywhere divorce and remarriage occurred at higher rates than in Europe. In the northeast, fertility was notably lower than in central and southwestern Japan, in great part due to economic constraints and active limitation of family size, primarily through infanticide. The stem family or ie became the majority family structure in all regions by the end of the Tokugawa period but its adoption and spread occurred at different rates, and ie structure was not uniform across regions. In terms of timing, in central-western Japan the ie was becoming dominant by the early eighteenth century whereas it did not become firmly entrenched in the northeast until the early nineteenth century. And even where ie were pervasive the household size varied, with households in central and southwestern Japan tending to be larger and more complex than those in the northeast. Further, in southwestern maritime communities, unusual marriage and childbearing practices such as neolocal or “visiting marriages” and a seemingly high proportion of out-of-wedlock births persisted throughout the Tokugawa period and may have represented the survival of marriage customs and group structures that disappeared elsewhere (45).
As to samurai, the birth rate within the warrior class was approximately the same as that of commoners, with an infant mortality rate comparable to that of urban commoner populations. However, the birth rate declined in the eighteenth century as many samurai began to face economic hardship, and preserving samurai lineages accordingly became more challenging. At the same time, male primogeniture became more rigorously observed among samurai as well as among surviving commoner ie by the later Tokugawa period. This leads the editors to emphasize that the spread of an “ie mentality,” sometimes referred to as a component of “samuraization” of the commoner classes happened well before the Meiji period (57).
The individual articles in the volume support the findings summarized above in distinct ways. Part I of the volume, consisting of the first four chapters, focuses on demographic and social transformations in the northeast. Hirai Shoko revisits the central question of when and how the ie became the norm in Japan. She challenges the notion of the “spread” of ie dominance from central Japan to the northeast over the course of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Adoption of the ie in the northeast coincided with a high rate of extinction of the lowest economic strata and a stratification of wealth, for only the wealthier or higher-status families were able to maintain themselves economically over time. This ability to survive and preserve assets correlated with adoption of ie characteristics. She finds that the defining aspects of ie—impartible inheritance, single heir, continuity over time—did not become entrenched in northeastern villages until at least 1810. In other words, in the northeast, the rise of the ie was a survival strategy, a response to population decline and economic hardship.
Mary Louise Nagata also assesses the spread of the ie in the northeast, but by comparing strategies of name-changing in Shimomoriya to those in Nishijō in Central Japan. These two communities differed substantially in terms of population trends and economic opportunity but in both Nagata sees name changing—that is, when a household head passed on either his own given name, a “front” or initial character in a name, or a suffix to his designated heir—as a means to “establish membership of an individual in a lineage and designate him as an heir candidate” (115). She finds that in Shimomoriya, where population was declining for most of the period under consideration and economic hardship was constant, heirship and names were frequently passed on to adopted sons and sons-in-law. In Nishijō, where economic opportunity was greater due to proximity to urban labor markets, widows were more likely to inherit on an interim basis and when adoption did occur, it was more likely to happen from within the village. In both cases, name changing allowed for some flexibility in heir choice on the part of both household heads and heir candidates, and it often served as a mechanism for assimilating chosen heirs into families and the larger communities of which they were a part.
Yamamoto Jun, Hiroko Constantini and Stephen Robertson assess the phenomenon of absolute primogeniture, or anekatoku (lit. “oldest sister succession”), which was practiced widely in the northern Kantō and Tōhoku regions throughout the Tokugawa period and persisted until the mid-Meiji period. It is important to specify that anekatoku did not mean succession by the oldest daughter herself, but by her husband, who upon marriage would be adopted and made household head or heir, the latter in the event the father/father-in-law/household head was still living and not yet retired. The practice was deemed to have occurred only if the oldest child was female, and only if there was a younger son who was bypassed as heir in favor of his older sister's husband (if there was no younger son it would simply be a case of succession by an adopted son-in-law, a common practice in the region and elsewhere). The authors examine the demographic conditions that may have given rise to this practice, and they find that as the population grew in the early nineteenth century, the number of households declined sharply and household size rose accordingly—this was due to the disappearance of small holders whose households went extinct. Whereas in the eighteenth century households may have utilized anekatoku as a “more dependable way of passing on the family estate,” in times of population decline they used it because it allowed succession to occur earlier, thus increasing the odds of lineage survival.
Ochiai Emiko assesses changing patterns of labor service in the northeast as compared to central Japan. In the latter, exemplified by communities in the Nōbi plain, unmarried men and women tended to go into service, whereas in the former married men and women were more likely to enter service until the early nineteenth century, when there was a rise in service by un- or never-married individuals. Ochiai finds that in the northeast the dominant pattern was for husbands to leave for service immediately after the birth of the first child and for wives to go into service after children were weaned. In some cases, however, women returned to their natal villages immediately after the birth of a child and went into service, leaving their children in the care of maternal grandparents. Periods of service by married couples contributed to low birth rates in the region, especially among households in the lower economic strata, which had higher rates of servitude and correspondingly lower rates of cohabitation with children. The demands of labor also contributed to high rates of extinction among households in the lower economic strata. Ochiai suggests that the nineteenth-century shift to service by the unmarried and the overall decline in total incidence of servitude may have been due to the growth of opportunities for by-employment (mainly sericulture), which benefitted women in particular.
Part II of the book shifts regional focus to examine maritime populations of southwestern Japan. Unlike the northeast, which has been scrutinized by generations of historical demographers, data from the Southwest is only recently being analyzed. Mizoguchi Tsunetoshi's article on “visiting marriage” on Yakushima Island is the first of three chapters in the volume to treat the distinctive demographic trends and household structures of this region, characterized by ultimogeniture (masshi or basshi sōzoku, inheritance by the youngest son), and by a “retirement system” wherein the household head and his wife ceded active management of the household to the heir and his spouse. Further, unlike predominantly agricultural villages in other parts of Japan, southwestern communities engaged in a wide range of non-agricultural activities centered on the sea, its products, and maritime trade. Mizoguchi shows that in Yakushima household structure was unusual, consisting of “consolidated families of a kind that were rare even in Japan—and almost non-existent in Europe…” (211) and that included multiple conjugal family units consisting of lineal and non-lineal family members, among them dependent laborers and fostered children. The latter were the result of a pattern of separate residence by spouses wherein children were raised in the father's household or communally and the wife/mother tended to be absent. As a result of this, multiple family system inheritance patterns were complicated, with residences and land passed on to many different individuals who were related to the household head differently (240).
Building on Mizoguchi's observations about the prevalence of fostered children in the region, Nakajima Mitsuhiro uses data from Nomo on the tip of the Nagasaki Peninsula, showing what seem to be relatively frequent extramarital births. Modifying Hayami's theory of a trend toward universal marriage in the mid-Tokugawa period, Nakajima argues that scholars should see marriage as a process rather than as a discrete event (261). In Nomo, a couple might not be listed in records as “married” until after the birth of their first child, which made the birth seem extramarital when in fact it was the result of a continuing union that was only institutionalized with the birth of a child. Such a pattern might better be seen as “childbirth-led” marriages that combined the southwestern tendency toward late marriage with “visiting” marriage customs distinctive to the region (270). These practices shifted over time, however, such that by the later Tokugawa period marriage tended to precede childbirth and distinctive regional practices began to converge toward countrywide “standard marriage” norms (271).
The last article to focus on the southwest, by Ochiai Emiko, differs from the rest of the collection in that it takes as its subject Hatenaka Kamegiku, a woman born in 1903 in far southern Kyushu, whom the author interviewed in 2004. Ochiai situates Hatenaka's life story in the context of demographical data on southwestern Japan as well as in relation to sociological and anthropological observations of southwestern marriage and sexual practices that posited frequent premarital sex, low value placed on female virginity, open discussion of women's sexuality, acknowledged marital infidelity by both sexes, and frequent divorce and remarriage. Hatenaka, who was herself a divorced woman who had a child out of wedlock, does confirm that these practices were common, and while her life shows that the relatively unrestricted intimate relations typical of the region did not create an idyllic situation for women, as Ochiai asserts, “women were not always victims” either (318). In Hatenaka's community there were social support services accessible to single mothers and children, and other caregivers—grandparents, relatives, step- and foster parents—stepped in to care for children in the temporary or permanent absence of biological parents. Ochiai concludes that “A joint family household structure was thus situational rather than normal as in the case of China. This pattern was something more akin to a ‘family circle’…that expanded and shrank as necessary….” (320).
Chapters 8 and 9 are the only chapters that engage historical demography and family structure within the samurai class; neither engages the issue of regional diversity due to the fact that daimyo often ruled over lands to which they had no longstanding connection. Tsubouchi Yoshihiro focuses on samurai of all ranks in Tokuyama domain in far western Honshu and finds that emphasis on male primogeniture increased over the course of this period, and succession by second sons decreased over time. Second, third, and younger sons were adopted out to other families at correspondingly greater rates over time, such that by the late eighteenth century, 61% of second sons and 74% of third and younger sons left their families as adoptees, usually to other samurai families without heirs, but sometimes to Buddhist temple families as well. Higher-ranking families tended to adhere to primogeniture more strictly than their lower-ranking counterparts as measured by rates of succession and adopting out of eldest, second, and third and younger sons. Daughters also played significant roles in succession among Tokuyama samurai families, with around 15% of them taking an in-marrying husband (muko-tori), who often became heir; such marriages were slightly more common among samurai families of lower rank. Daughters were also adopted out to other families at increasingly higher rates over time, mostly to commoner or temple families.
The increasing importance of primogeniture also features in Yamamoto Jun, Hiroko Constantini and Stephen Robertson's examination of the unusual case of Kazeya, a village in Totsukawa-gō, Yamato Province, whose entire population was converted from peasant to samurai in 1786, ostensibly because local people served the Tokugawa side “with distinction” in the Battle of Osaka over a century prior (361). This exceptional elevation in status allows the authors to assess how demographic changes might be linked to status change. They observe that as the population moved from peasant to samurai, divorce became rarer, the age at marriage rose (especially for women), the marriage rate for men and women increased, the number of persons per household increased, succession upon retirement of the household head became more prevalent, the number of female heads of household decreased, and the household extinction rate plummeted (from 18.4% to 1.8%). The authors propose that “…once the residents of Kazeya were officially recognized as samurai, they began to develop the strong senses of affiliation to the ie characteristic of samurai families…” (370).
The last two chapters of the book are each outliers of a sort. Hirai Shoko's fascinating article on the “notional view of the family” as expressed in population registers is an outlier in terms of its conceptual approach, in that it utilizes SAC and NAC not primarily to assess demographic change but as indicators of a conceptual shift in perceptions of family structure. Hirai argues that the heterogeneous nature of the records, previously viewed negatively by scholars because of their lack of standardization, can actually be beneficial in that they were “likely to express the prevailing ‘common sense’ of the day, that is, the sense of what a family should be” (380, emphasis in original) rather than a uniform view imposed by authorities. Hirai draws on records from 138 towns and villages throughout the country in order to discern how family members were listed in relation to one another, how the records might have characterized actual family relations, and how the listings and therefore the family relations changed over time. She finds that the “baseline relationship” reflected in the records shifts over the course of the late Tokugawa period from an earlier emphasis on two individuals (husband and wife) to a later focus on each individual's relationship to the household head (389). She argues that the latter format signals the emergence of the “ie-style household,” and does not appear in population records anywhere before the mid-eighteenth century. Hirai also finds that similarities across regions outweighs differences, and that discrepancies in format among NAC and SAC in various regions diminishes over time. She argues that this “nationwide transformation” leading to an “ie-style conception of the family” emerged organically from within the commoner class itself, and was codified by commoner administrators in the population records, not by authorities (396).
The last article, by Morimoto Kazuhiko, is a topical outlier in that it focuses on changes in gender and family relations as reflected in Buddhist temple affiliations recorded in SAC. In the early Tokugawa period households all over Japan had “split” temple affiliations (handanka), created when an in-marrying spouses were affiliated with different temples than the members of their new households, and maintained a separate affiliation after marriage. Morimoto examines population records from communities in central and northeastern Japan and finds that handanka all but disappear by the mid-nineteenth century, as families come to adopt a single temple affiliation, uniformly that of the male household head. This shift was due in part to the spread of the ie, but it was also supported by village and temple authorities who found handanka confusing and difficult to track. Morimoto argues that the shift away from handanka had implications for gender relations because, as patrilocal marriages became increasingly common, women gave up not only their independent temple affiliation but the real assets, including land, that came from their natal households and were linked to the performance of ancestral rites for natal family members. Because women were “not granted any independent inheritance rights in their new households…their relative position would likely have fallen” (433). So, while in the early Tokugawa period women were treated as outsiders to their marital households and marked by their maintenance of a different temple affiliation, they also maintained beneficial ties to their natal families, ties that were severed in the later Tokugawa period with the rise of the ie.
A relatively short review does not do justice to the wealth of information contained in this volume, much of it detailed demographic data presented in tabular and chart form. The larger arguments presented in these articles about demographic and social changes and continuities across regions will be familiar to scholars specializing in historical demography and family history, though new details are illuminating. Of particular interest is the emphasis on increasing economic stratification in the northeast and how families implemented strategies for household and lineage management characteristic of the ie system in the context of resource scarcity and population decline. At the same time, families in the lowest economic strata did not or could not follow the ie pattern and their lineages went extinct, showing that the ie was a survival strategy that was feasible only for families with adequate assets to pass on. The question remains, though, of whether the adoption of the ie system was itself a cause or a symptom of economic stratification in the northeast. By contrast, in the southwest, population growth and economic diversity led to more complex family structures in which pooling of communal resources both economic and social was essential for the survival of families and households. The volume successfully shows that in northeast and southwest, the ie functioned to consolidate resources, but the distinct ways and forms in which the ie manifested itself reflected local demographic and economic trends.
A few issues might be further investigated: the authors and editors frequently refer to models of regional variation in family and household structure based on European historical demography research (e.g., theories by Hajnal and Laslett), and given the prominence of the Anglo-European scholarship on family history, this is to be expected. However, several authors also refer to meaningful similarities between demographic trends and social/familial structures in early modern Japan and Southeast Asia, but they do not expand on the larger meanings of those similarities or pursue any in-depth analysis of them. Further and more detailed exploration would be thought-provoking and potentially productive. Finally, editors and authors emphasize throughout the volume that “Japanization” of the family system via the spread of the ie happened throughout the country by the end of the Tokugawa period, and that this was a process largely executed by the commoner class. While the evidence for “Japanization” by and for the common people is fairly convincing, what are its larger implications? Is it meant to counter the notion of “feudal” decentralization? To emphasize that standardization of social practices was an early modern/Japanese phenomenon rather than a modern/Western one? In other words, how might the argument for “Japanizing” Japanese families make us rethink the early modern/modern transition, and/or the nature of early modernity itself? These questions notwithstanding, readers will be grateful for the ways the present volume incorporates and expands upon the legacy of scholarship on historical demography and family history in early modern Japan.