Reproduction in Japan

Abstract

This entry focuses on reproduction, the process by which human generations succeed each other, in Japan during the early modern period. This period is also known as the Tokugawa era that began in 1603 and ended in 1868. Reproduction concerns the number of surviving children, taking into account not only the number of children born to each woman or couple, known to demographers as fertility, but also infant and childhood mortality. In contrast to historical Europe in which births were in general recorded without omission in parish registers, annual local household registers called ninbetsu-aratame-cho or shumon-aratame-cho, which are the major data sources for demographic studies of Tokugawa Japan, only recorded infants who survived to the first enumeration after birth (Smith, 1977, pp. 59–64; Tsuya K Taeuber, 1958, pp. 29–30). Reproduction in preindustrial Japan is characterized by relatively early and universal marriage, especially among women, and tightly controlled reproduction within marriage. The mean age at first marriage among women in different parts of rural Japan in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is estimated to have ranged from around 15–16 in the northeast to around 25–26 in the southwest (Kurosu, Tsuya, & Hamano, 1999; Tsuya & Kurosu, 2010). Though varied widely by region and time period, the timing of female first marriage in eighteenthand nineteenth-century Japan was earlier than in preindustrial Western Europe where the mean age at first marriage typically ranged from women’s late 20s to 30 (Dupaquier, Helin, Laslett, Livi-Bacci, & Sogner, 1981; Flinn, 1981). Marriage was also universal in early modern Japan. The proportion of women who never married was below 5 % at age 50 (Tsuya, 2001; Tsuya & Kurosu, 2010), posing a clear contrast to historical Western Europe in which a considerable proportion (roughly 10–30 %) of women stayed unmarried until the end of their reproductive years. Clearly, a relatively early and universal female marriage pattern prevailed in preindustrial Japan. Marital reproduction was tightly controlled in early modern Japan although there were considerable regional and temporal variations (Hayami & Kurosu, 2001; Saito, 1998). Studies found that the