Marriage market in early modern Kyoto, 1843–1868

Abstract

This study uses the population registers of 17 Kyoto neighborhoods to address marriage in Kyoto. Our analyses focus on the age differences between spouses and intermarriage between Kyoto natives and migrants from other provinces. Our previous analysis showed that the median age at marriage was tightly linked to life-cycle service in Kyoto with male and female ages at marriage corresponding to the end of the service period. Later analyses have shown that a third or more of the live-in employees listed as “servants” were migrants to Kyoto from other provinces, and males predominated in the migrants in the Kyoto population at ages after the service period ended. We find that migrants who remained in Kyoto married and all others left. We also find that those who remained were likely to marry Kyoto natives and the age differences between spouses was often relatively small.

Notes

1 Akira Hayami, “Population changes,” in Marius Jansen and Gilbert Rozman (eds), Japan in Transition: From Tokugawa to Meiji, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1986), pp. 280–307.

2 Osamu Saito, “The Third Pattern of Marriage and Remarriage: Japan in Eurasian Comparative Perspectives,” in T. Engelen and A. Wolf (eds), Marriage and the Family in Eurasia: Perspectives on the Hajnal Hypothesis, (Amsterdam: Askant 2005), pp. 165–194.

3 Miyuki Takahashi, Zai gō machi no rekishi jinkō gaku: Kinsei ni okeru chiiki to chihō toshi no hatten, [The historical demography of a rural town: the early modern development of a province and provincial town], (Kyoto: Mineruva Shobo 2005), pp. 89–95.

4 Mary Louise Nagata, “Migration and Enterprise in Early Modern Kyoto,” transl. French Manuela Martini (ed), Migration et Enterprise, forthcoming (2008?).

5 Michel Oris, “The Age at Marriage of Migrants During the Industrial Revolution in the Region of Liège,” History of the Family, An International Quarterly, Vol. 5 (2000), No. 4, pp. 391–413.

6 Mary Louise Nagata, “Headship and Succession in Early Modern Kyoto: the role of women,” Continuity and Change 19 (1), 2004, pp.1–32.

7 Mary Louise Nagata, “Migration and Enterprise in Early Modern Kyoto,” transl. French Manuela Martini (ed), Migration et Enterprise, forthcoming (2008?). Idem, “Adoption, Apprenticeship and Headship Succession: Childhood in Early Modern Kyoto,” presented at Society for the History of Children and Youth conference, Norrköping, Sweden, 2007 June 27–30.

8 This nickname is not related to the anthropological term “bride service” that refers to the groom working to earn a bride.

9 Mary Louise Nagata, Labor Contracts and Labor Relations in Early Modern Central Japan, 2005, p. 96.

10 Mary Louise Nagata, “Adoption, Apprenticeship and Headship Succession: Childhood in Early Modern Kyoto,” presented at Society for the History of Children and Youth conference, Norrköping, Sweden, 2007 June 27–30.

11 Mary Louise Nagata, “Mistress or Wife? Fukui Sakuzaemon vs. Iwa, 1819-1833,” Continuity and Change 18 (2), 2003, pp.1–23.

12 Mary Louise Nagata, “Images of the Family on Stage in Early Modern Japan.” in Japan Review No. 13 2001, pp.93–105.

13 Hayami Akira, Kinsei Nōbi Chihō no Jinkō, Keizai, Shakai, [Population, Economy and Society in Early Modern Japan: a study of the Nōbi Region], (Tokyo: Tōyō Keizai Shinposha 1992).

14 We adapted this methodology from Akira Hayami, Kinsei Nōbi Chihō no Jinko, Keizai, Shakai, [Population, Economy and Society in Early Modern Japan: A Study of the Nobi Region], (Tokyo: Sōbunsha Publishing Co., 1992), pp. 228–229.

15 Tamara K. Hareven, Families, History, and Social Change: Life Course and Cross-Cultural Perspectives, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press 2000), 13–14.

16 Osamu Saito, “The Third Pattern of Marriage and Remarriage: Japan in Eurasian Comparative Perspectives,” in T. Engelen and A. Wolf (eds), Marriage and the Family in Eurasia: Perspectives on the Hajnal Hypothesis, (Amsterdam: Askant 2005), p. 170.

17 G. William Skinner, “Conjugal power in Tokugawa Japanese families: a matter of life or death,” in Barbara Diane Miller (ed.), Sex and Gender Hierarchies, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press 1993), pp. 236–269.

18 Mary Louise Nagata, “Headship and Succession in Early Modern Kyoto: the role of women,” Continuity and Change 19 (1), 2004, pp.1–32.

19 Mary Louise Nagata, “One of the Family: Domestic Service in Early Modern Japan,” History of the Family, An International Quarterly, Vol. 10, (2005), No. 3, pp. 355–365.

20 G. William Skinner, “Conjugal power in Tokugawa Japanese families: a matter of life or death,” in Barbara Diane Miller (ed.), Sex and Gender Hierarchies, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press 1993), p. 239. Skinner's limited his analyses linking age seniority and dominance in marriage to virilocal unions.