Paper short abstract:

This report discusses how research on the history of marriage in the Empire of Japan provide a logic that justifies the centrality of the Empire of Japan and the peripherality of other areas (Taiwan, Ryukyu and the Pacific Islands) in terms of marriage customs.

Paper long abstract:

This report discusses how research on the history of marriage in the Empire of Japan understood and contextualized various marriage customs in East Asia and the Pacific Islands.

With measures such as the enactment of the 1898 Meiji Civil Code, the imperial constitutional government recognized only men as the heads of families, adhering to a principle of male primogeniture. With this, customary marriage through a local ceremony was no longer considered to be an official marriage. However, unofficial marriage customs also continued after the enactment of the Civil Code. Moreover, consistency between the local marriage customs in new colonies and the imperial Civil Code became a major issue.

For this reason, researchers of the history of marriage in the Empire of Japan investigated the various local marriage customs of villages, colonies, and elsewhere, making efforts to understand them. Santarō Okamatsu discovered the aboriginal marriage custom of "shōsei" (matrilocal marriage) in Taiwan. Kōei Sakima shed light on the uniqueness of the Ryukyu marriage custom of "nyonin seiji" (gynecocracy). Kunio Yanagita investigated numerous examples of the practice of "mukotori" (uxorilocal marriage) in villages across Japan. In Palau and Micronesia, Zennosuke Nakagawa produced commentaries on the judicial precedents that were fought among matrilineal and patrilineal relatives. In all these cases, they found customs that were irreconcilable with the imperial legal system.

To understand the diverse customs they found in different communities, the researchers consulted European theories of anthropology, history, and comparative law. These theories brought a view of history as a series of developmental stages that defined the marriage law of the Empire of Japan as advanced, and the various marriage customs that were incompatible with it as backward, barbarous, or the result of primitive customs. According to this view of history, which was based on Social Darwinist ideas, the local marriage customs would eventually be replaced by the advanced customs of the Empire.

In the end, the researchers used their investigations and theoriticization of diverse marriage customs to academically provide a logic that justifies the centrality of the Empire of Japan and the peripherality of other areas in terms of marriage customs.