Divorce In Japan Research Articles

Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless: A Japanese American Diaspora in the Pacific by Michael R. Jin

In examining records from the U.S. Census Bureau and from the Japanese Consulates General in the United States, Jin estimates that 50,000 Nisei Japanese (citizens born in the United States) departed the United States for Japan or the territories of the Japanese Empire in the first half of the twentieth century—approximately one-fourth of the Nisei Japanese in the United States during this era. The scholarly and popular historical works about the Nisei Japanese, which are hardly numerous, generally discuss these people as an Asian American minority rooted within the United States. Jin’s use of sources from both sides of the Pacific, however, discovers that for the Nisei Japanese, transpacific migration was more “the norm rather than the exception.” The diversity of their experiences is the major theme throughout this well-researched study.Some of the Nisei Japanese went to Japan to join their families and others to study the Japanese language, to find work, or to find a spouse. Most were also driven from the United States by anti-Asian immigrant movements, especially in the American West. Asian-exclusion sentiment was often supported by state and national laws, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act, the 1924 Immigration Act, and various alien land laws. Executive Order 9066 was eventually to confine first-generation Japanese and Nisei Japanese to interment camps in the American West, following the Japanese military attack on Pearl Harbor.Although Jin often uses the concept of diaspora effectively as a framework to interpret the transpacific experiences of Nisei Japanese, the individual stories about various Nisei Japanese experiences in the first half of the twentieth century are particularly engaging. For example, Toshiko Inaba’s American citizenship was revoked after his marriage and divorce in Japan. David Akira Itami, who was held at the Manzanar internment camp after the attack on Pearl Harbor, joined the U.S. Army as a language specialist during the war and afterward at the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. Kanji Kuramoto and Kaz Tanaka Suyeishi somehow managed to survive the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Such are just a few of the book’s many stories that demonstrate the legal, social, and personal hardships faced by transpacific Nisei immigrants.Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless is an important contribution to the fields of immigration and Asian American history due in no small part to Jin’s polished writing skills. His combination of clear historical description, context, and analysis with just the right amount of sociological and interpretive language helps to make book both readable and informative. The endnotes and bibliography demonstrate his significant bilingual and transnational research of primary, secondary, and popular source material.Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless is not simply a study of a marginalized immigrant group “caught between two worlds.” It portrays a diverse people who had to exercise considerable initiative to navigate multiple social, legal, national, and geopolitical contexts. Although complex factors, such as racism in the American West and the deteriorating geopolitical relations between Japan and the United States, affected the Nisei immigrants as a group, Jin demonstrates that they were more than capable of making decisions on an individual basis whenever the opportunity arose. On a broader scale, the Nisei Japanese experience is directly related to the issues of racism, immigration, imperialism, and war that are fundamental in any discussion of twentieth-century history.

COVID-19, marriage, and divorce in Japan.

Using monthly panel dataset of prefectures in Japan, this study explored the effects of stay-at-home policies on the flows into and out of marriage. It was found that these policies significantly reduced both outcomes. According to our estimates, a nationwide state of emergency reduced the number of marriages per 1000 population by 10.4%, while that of divorces was reduced by 27.0%. Moreover, the prefectures designated as the special-precautions area suffered additional reductions with 6.1% and 8.9% for those of marriage and divorce, respectively.

A comparison amid tax treatment of property settlements upon divorce in Japan and the United States

A comparison amid tax treatment of property settlements upon divorce in Japan and the United States

Isharyō as a Way to Compensation for Moral Injury in Case of Divorce in Japan

AbstractThe purpose of this article is to present a compensation for moral injury connected with conjugal infidelity in Japanese Law (isharyō). The compensation for moral injury, which is sentenced because of a divorce could be divided into a compensation for mental disorder and a compensation for deprivation of the status in the society. To analyze this issue it is necessary to discuss context of Japanese culture and society. Furthermore, I present statistics which show factors that have influence on the amount of compensation. Finally, there are remarks on comparative law.

PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL LAW REPORT. RECOGNITION OF THE FOREIGN DECISION REGARDING THE DIVORCE. THE CONCEPT OF FOREIGN DECISION

The case we present concerns the recognition in Romania of the divorce decision pronounced between a Romanian citizen and a Japanese citizen by the court in Japan. We specify that the marriage document was concluded in Japan in accordance with the provisions of Japanese law. By the application filed with Neamţ County Court no. 1201 / C / 29.05.2006 the recognition of the foreign decision in Romania, pronounced in the matter of divorce in Japan, was requested, which declared the dissolution of the marriage between petitioner N. L and N.J. Japanese citizen. Neamt County Court dismisses the action as unfounded. Against this decision, N.L. filed an appeal to Bacau Court of Appeal admits the action brought by the appellant We will present the reasons for rejecting the action by Neamţ District Court and the admission of the action by Bacau Court of Appeal.

Educational Differences in Divorce in Japan

Contrary to standard theoretical predictions, there is some evidence of a negative educational gradient in divorce in Japan. In this paper, we used marital history data from a cross-sectional survey to confirm that educational attainment is inversely related to divorce and to show that, in contrast to previous findings, the negative relationship between women’s education and divorce has not become stronger in recent years. We also used fourteen years of panel survey data to evaluate four possible explanations for the observed negative educational gradient. With the exception of economic strain, we found little support for hypothesized explanations.

Divorce in Korea: Trends and Educational Differentials

The authors extend comparative research on educational differences in divorce by analyzing data from Korea. A primary motivation was to assess whether the theoretically unexpected negative educational gradient in divorce in Japan is also observed in Korea. Using vital statistics records, for marriages and divorces registered between 1991 and 2006, the authors calculated cumulative probabilities of divorce, by marriage cohort (N = 5,734,577) and educational attainment. The results indicated that the relationship between education and divorce was negative even in the earliest cohort and that this negative gradient has become more pronounced in more recent cohorts. Contrary to expectations, however, little evidence was found that the concentration of divorce at lower levels of education was exacerbated by the Asian economic crisis in the late 1990s. The authors discuss these findings in light of conventional emphases on the costs of divorce and highlight the importance of better understanding this distinctive east Asia pattern of divorce.

Social security and divorce in Japan

The purpose of this paper is to explain variations in the divorce rates across prefectures in Japan over the 20-year period between 1982 and 2002. This paper examines the various factors which may affect divorce rates including: the effects of the generosity of social welfare; the income of females relative to males; the female employment rate; the vacancy rate; a shift to no-fault divorce; and social stigma. There are three major findings of this paper. First, the generosity of a particular prefecture in approving the livelihood protection benefits (LPBs) has a statistically negative impact on the divorce rate. Moreover, social stigma has negative impacts both on the divorce rate and the generosity of social security benefits. Finally, political conservatism has a negative impact on the proportion of needy people who receive LPB. The findings of this paper imply that in order to become eligible for the social security benefits, married couples may be more likely to dissolve their marriage in those prefectures where the provision of the LPB is not so generous.

Divorce in Japan: Family, Gender, and the State, 1600-2000, by Harald Fuess

<i>Divorce in Japan: Family, Gender, and the State, 1600-2000</i>, by Harald Fuess

Divorce in Japan: Family, Gender, and the State 1600-2000, and: Gender and Human Rights Politics in Japan (review)

Reviewed by: Divorce in Japan: Family, Gender and the State 1600-2000, and: Gender and Human Rights Politics in Japan Kaye Broadbent (bio) Divorce in Japan: Family, Gender and the State 1600–2000 by Harald Fuess. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004, 226 pp., $45.00 hardcover. Gender and Human Rights Politics in Japan by Jennifer Chan-Tiberghien. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004, 220 pp., $45.00 hardcover. Gender and human rights, and in particular, how women have not had access to the same rights as men are broad themes consistent in both Harald Fuess's Divorce in Japan: Family, Gender and the State 1600–2000 and Jennifer Chan-Tiberghien's Gender and Human Rights Politics in Japan. Comments on Japan's divorce rate date back to 1639 with some regions in nineteenth-century Japan recording divorce rates similar to those of [End Page 244] the United States in the 1980s. Overall, divorce in Japan declined from the nineteenth century until the 1990s. Divorce in Japan: Family, Gender and the State 1600–2000 examines the social function and meaning of divorce in Japan asking the question, why was divorce initially high, and why did divorce subsequently become less frequent? The author, Harald Fuess, analyzes a range of source materials including legal procedures and laws, demographic and survey data, and social and ethnographic commentary. Chapters focus on issues such as early marriage and divorce practices and influences on Japanese divorce law. Fuess concludes that the high divorce rates in the Meiji period (1868–1912) and in the Japan of the 1990s support the argument that high divorce rates indicate progress towards greater gender equality. Yet the 1990s also differ in that it highlights "the image of the unsuspecting man as the surprised victim of divorce" (165). This book documents changes from 1600 until the present, but the main focus is 1868 when two hundred years of military rule was replaced by the Imperial system and the subsequent post-World War II period. Indications are that there have been changes in official attitudes towards divorce, but broad continuities exist in the gendering of access to and the material impact of divorce. Until 1868, the military attempted to impose codes of conduct drawn from the ideals and behaviors of the samurai (warrior elites) while they took a laissez faire attitude to divorce, as long as marital conflicts remained within the respective social classes. Marriage and divorce were not as important as containing social mobility. The restoration of the Emperor heading a civilian government that focused on modernization required a different form of social control. Fuess argues that until 1940, the Imperial state focused on strengthening marriage as a social institution by redefining marriage and divorce and by proposing new requirements for the registration of marriage and divorce. The new civil code (1898) required that all divorces pass through a court of law. The new legislation, which contributed to the decline in divorce in the period 1898–1940, disadvantaged women in major ways: it was silent on property division, alimony, and child custody, and it restricted women's right to divorce an adulterous husband while unconditionally permitting a woman's adultery as grounds for divorce (this inequity was removed in 1948). Further legislative change with an impact on divorce was created by the 1948 New Civil Code. Consensual divorce, which accounted for 90 percent of divorces remained, but a new set of grounds for divorce included "grave reasons preventing the continuation of marriage" and led to a 1952 Supreme Court ruling where "a spouse at fault could not obtain a divorce over the objections of the other spouse." Fuess argues that the ruling created a divorce system, which was overturned in 1987 that "essentially guaranteed lifetime marriage to any legally innocent spouse. This form [End Page 245] of marriage guarantee probably reinforced the pronounced sexual division of labor among Japan's new salaried urban middle class" (150). The discussion of trends and changes in the legal codes and legal practice in Fuess's book is informative. However, more analysis on how the ruling elites widened the range of social control and how the ideological development was associated with modernization would have added depth. With gender...

Divorce in Japan: Family, Gender, and the State 1600-2000 (review)

Divorce in Japan: Family, Gender, and the State 1600-2000 (review)

Divorce in Japan: Family, Gender and the State, 1600–2000

Divorce in Japan: Family, Gender and the State, 1600–2000

Divorce in Japan: Family, Gender, and the State, 1600-2000. By Harald Fuess (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. xiv plus 226 pp. $45.00)

Journal Article Divorce in Japan: Family, Gender, and the State, 1600–2000. By Harald Fuess (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. xiv plus 226 pp. $45.00) Get access Anne Walthall Anne Walthall University of California, Irvine Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Social History, Volume 38, Issue 4, Summer 2005, Pages 1136–1138, https://doi.org/10.1353/jsh.2005.0086 Published: 01 July 2005

Marital Dissolution in Japan

Very little is known about recent trends in divorce in Japan. In this paper, we use Japanese vital statistics and census data to describe trends in the experience of marital dissolution across the life course, and to examine change over time in educat

Reviews of Books:Divorce in Japan: Family, Gender, and the State, 1600-2000 Harald Fuess

Reviews of Books:Divorce in Japan: Family, Gender, and the State, 1600-2000 Harald Fuess

Housing Problems of Single Parent Families in Japan

Single parent families are increasing due to divorce in Japan, and they have several problems in metropolitan areas. Most single parent families are women-headed families, and many mothers have multiple responsibilities, for example, finding a job and working, housework, childcare, and nursing. In spite of the high rent, single parent families tend to migrate to urban areas, because it is easier to find jobs and they can be freer from prejudices in urban areas than in rural areas. This paper aims is to clarify the regional differences in the housing conditions of women-headed families in Japan. The paper also tries to consider the housing conditions in welfare facilities for single parent families and their residental lives in metropolitan areas and local cities. Single parent families usually face serious housing problems. When women-headed families cannot find a place to live in the private housing market or they must be sheltered from domestic violence, some families are permitted to live in welfare facilities for single parent families. However, those facilities are provided only for temporary users. According to questionnaire results from sampled facilities in Tokyo and suburbs, the Kanto region, the Osaka metropolitan area, and Ishikawa and Hiroshima Prefectures, it is clear that the reasons why single parent families enter welfare facilities differ by region. Most dwellers entered when they divorce. But in Tokyo, the rate of runaways from home is higher than in other areas. Many dwellers were victims of domestic violence and needed shelter urgently. Half of dwellers in the facilities are in their 30s, and became single parents due to divorce. In the Tokyo and Osaka metropolitan areas there are many unmarried young residents with infants. While many middle-aged dwellers use the facilites in suburbs and local cities. It is hard for single parent families to find jobs because they must take care of their children. Consequently, many dwellers in the facilities receive livelihood assistance. Their jobs are very unstable and low income, because most of them are part-timers. Some dwellers cannot find jobs because they are mentally disturbed as a result of domestic violence. It is difficult for most single parent families to move out of the welfare facilities because it is very costly for women-headed families to live in privately rented houses. It is difficult to get the permission to live in public housing, because the supply of public housing in Tokyo is extremely fewer than demands of single parent families.

Marriage and Divorce in Japan

This paper investigates the current nature of the institution of marriage and the practice of divorce in Japan with reference to historical trends and shows a special concern for legal and ethical issues affecting the status of the custodial parent and the serious matter of support. Attention is drawn to the generalized outcome of the divorce process in Japan and the need for reform.

"responsible" Husbands, "Recalcitrant" Wives, Retributive Judges: Judicial Management of Contested Divorce in Japan

"responsible" Husbands, "Recalcitrant" Wives, Retributive Judges: Judicial Management of Contested Divorce in Japan

Rate of incidence of divorce in birth cohorts classified by age difference between married couples.

We examined the situation concerning divorce in Japan from the view-point of age difference between married couples using vital statistics from the year 1952 to 1985. Annual and cumulative divorce rates were introduced as rate of incidence of divorce. We studied these indices by age difference between couples in birth cohorts of husbands. Our conclusions were as follows: 1) The cumulative divorce rate was lower in early birth cohorts than in late birth cohorts. 2) The cumulative divorce rate for young adult couples (aged 20-30) was higher than that for middle-aged couples (aged more than 30) in every cohort. 3) The cumulative divorce rate was lowest when husbands were 1 to 4 years older than wives. This tendency was quite similar in different ages and cohorts. 4) The same conclusions were reached when the annual divorce rate was substituted for the cumulative divorce rate.

Gender Differences in Remarriage after Divorce in Japan and the United States

The author examines sex differences in remarriage patterns in the United States and Japan. This note compares the sex ratio of the currently divorced with the sex ratio of the currently married to suggest that women are disproportionately disadvantaged by divorce in Japan relative to U.S. white women of the same age. (EXCERPT)