Household Structure and Demographic Factors Pre-industrial Japan

Abstract

Abstract Most scholars of Japanese family history will agree that the stem family household was common in premodern Japan, although that is not to say that Japanese households were necessarily identical to stem family households in Europe. However, in the average premodern Japanese household one adult child continued to live at home with his or her parents even after marriage thus meeting the definition of a stem family household in the three-category definition of household structure into joint, stem, and nuclear. In the population registers of the Tokugawa period (1603-1868) that recorded actual residence rather that just domicile residence, the standard or prevalent household structure in rural areas consisted of a married couple with children and the parent(s) of either husband or wife, while a nuclear family household with parents and children sometimes appeared in the course of the family life cycle.