Divorce in Japan: Family Gender, and the State, 1600-2000
Stanford University Press, 2004, 226 pages, ISBN 0-8047-4357-6
Review by Sean Curtin
For most Japanese, divorce is generally seen as something that was historically rare, mainly initiated by men, and today’s relatively high rates are considered to be an aberration that goes against “traditional Japanese values.” In reality, a hundred years ago Japan had one of the highest divorce rates on the planet and marital break-up was commonplace. Many Japanese are completely unaware of these facts and in some cases unwilling to accept a reality which contradicts an imagined golden past.
Harald Fuess’ impressive historical study of divorce in Japan offers a comprehensive and superbly researched guide to an important, but until recently much misunderstood, social phenomenon. Covering a four hundred year period up to 2000, Fuess meticulously charts divorce’s convoluted evolutionary trajectory. The reader is taken on a fascinating journey spanning the centuries, and concludes by offering some illuminating insights into the nation’s recent upsurge in marital dissolution which has seen Japanese divorce rates match European Union averages.
The invented tradition of a centuries-old low divorce culture is something the state promoted in the pre-war years and today’s conservative politicians perpetuate. This has deeply ingrained the concept in the national psyche, even if it is not actually true. Even though the country’s present divorce rate is very near the European average, many Japanese are convinced it remains low by international standards. While some of this can be attributed to the tendency to only compare Japan with the United States, which has an abnormally high divorce rate, the idealized version of the past is the primary culprit.
There exists such an enormous disconnect between historical reality and popular myth that misconceptions dominate, effectively distorting domestic and foreign coverage of the topic which impedes proper understanding not only of historical but also of contemporary divorce trends. By providing a coherent and comprehensive analysis, Fuess makes sense out of what at times seem like counterintuitive trends and along the way he masterfully debunks most of the myths surrounding divorce.
Why were historical divorce rates so high in comparison to Europe and North American? Why did official rates drop so sharply after 1898? Was the fall a result of the new Meiji Civil Code adopted in the same year? Why did divorce levels begin rising again in the 1960s and what do current rates tell us about contemporary Japanese society? The author convincingly explains the enigmas surrounding Japanese divorce, producing a must-read book.
For decades, social scientists have struggled to adequately explain Japan’s supposedly unique divorce trends. For example, it used to be believed that as a society industrialized, its marital dissolution rates would increase due to improvements in female economic status, better gender equality in education, greater social freedom, inter alia. This view conveniently explained divorce patterns observed in Europe and North America. However, in the 1960s scholars realized that Japanese divorce trends did not conform to this model. As industrialization gathered pace, Japan’s rates decreased and were in fact the complete opposite to what modernization theories had predicted. This is just one of the many conundrum Fuess’ comprehensive work helps to put in context.
By skillfully utilizing a broad spectrum of modern and classical Japanese and European language material, Fuess furnishes the reader with the most comprehensive English language guide ever assembled. Among his primary sources, much of it difficult-to-access material, are government documents, court archives, legal records, demographic studies, ethnographic commentaries, personal writings, diaries, memoirs and a wealth of survey data and statistical material. The author marshals this formidable arsenal to systematically demolish the myths and misconceptions that distort our understanding of Japanese divorce.
Fuess offers a detailed account of historical divorce related practices and customs such as divorce temples and trial marriages that have long been misrepresented in Japan, and even more so in European writings about the country. Utilizing a wealth of historical documents and surveys he explains the background before and after the introduction of the Meiji Civil Code, telling the story of how marriage was institutionalized. He deftly explains how depending on the particular sources used by historians, the interpretation of divorce rates can substantially vary.
A considerable volume of past English language research, with a number of notable exceptions, created the simplistic impression of historical divorce as purely a male persevere with wives being the victims of their husband’s whims or cold-hearted in-laws’ schemes. Fuess provides a far more rounded and multi-dimensional picture, illustrating how the process was highly complex and more balanced.
He demonstrates how the high divorce rates of the Tokugawa and early Meiji period functioned as a means to regulate the spouse selection process. He explains that wives and their natal families could, and often did, initiate marital dissolution. Indeed, before the promulgation of the Meiji Civil Code, the whole concept of marriage for ordinary people was quite different from what we understand today, and indeed remained so for a few decades afterwards.
Fuess also charts the post-Civil Code shifts in public attitudes towards divorce and examines how the idea of trial marriages gradually disappeared. He also investigates the impact that the legal barriers of the new Civil Code had on thinking about divorce, explaining why marriage began to take on the mantle of the more solemn social institution today’s Japanese are familiar with.
By painstakingly reconstructing the past, Fuess traces a clear line of continuity to the present. His aim is to show that in some respects contemporary Japanese women are not necessarily that much better off when it comes to divorce than their historical counterparts. Indeed, in some important aspects of modern divorce legislation, there remain serious gender inequalities.
One example of this is the current child maintenance system which is totally inadequate and effectively allows delinquent fathers to abandon all financial responsibility for their offspring with impunity. Another is the ridiculous six-month remarriage ban slapped on Japanese female divorcees which does not apply to men who can re-tie the knot the instant they dissolve a marital union. Despite recent legal battles and campaigns to amend this anachronistic law, it still remains in force.
It is hard to fault Fuess’ extensively researched and eloquently argued book. If I were forced to make any minor recommendations, it would be for the inclusion of a few more charts and graphs in the chapter on postwar divorce. Also, it might have been illuminating if Fuess had decided to include references to earlier English language works that have blatantly misrepresented historical practices like the divorces temples. While some would no doubt have enjoyed a little academic bloodletting, Fuess’ superb scholarship means most readers will not feel the need for a demolish job of earlier works.
Harlad Fuess has to be congratulated for producing the most comprehensive English language social history of Japanese divorce to date, making a significant contribution not only to Japanese studies but also to the field of family studies. His masterful use of such a wide and diverse range of material, as well as a commendable array of research techniques and skills, places this impressive work in a class of its own.