Satomi Kurosu

Adoption as an Heirship Strategy under Demographic Constraints: a Case from Nineteenth-Century Japan

This article examines the adoption practices of South-Tama peasants in late nineteenth-century Japan on the basis of an 1870 household register (2,057 households). We find that the institution of adoption was the major heirship strategy for these households. The probability of adoption varied by the differential number of surviving siblings, and by economic status, thereby creating social mobility among them. Adoption was an important way to redistribute sons, benefitting households with and without sons and preventing household extinction.

New Sources for Comparative Social Science: Historical Population Panel Data From East Asia.

Comparison and comparability lie at the heart of any comparative social science. Still, precise comparison is virtually impossible without using similar methods and similar data. In recent decades, social demographers, historians, and economic historians have compiled and made available a large number of micro-level data sets of historical populations for North America and Europe. Studies using these data have already made important contributions to many academic disciplines. In a similar spirit, we introduce five new micro-level historical panel data sets from East Asia, including the China Multi-Generational Panel Dataset–Liaoning (CMGPD-LN) 1749–1909, the China Multi-Generational Panel Dataset–Shuangcheng (CMGPD-SC) 1866–1913, the Japanese Ninbetsu-Aratame-Cho Population Register Database–Shimomoriya and Niita (NAC-SN) 1716–1870, the Korea Multi-Generational Panel Dataset–Tansung (KMGPD-TS) 1678–1888, and the Colonial Taiwan Household Registration Database (CTHRD) 1906–1945. These data sets in total contain more than 3.7 million linked observations of 610,000 individuals and are the first such Asian data to be made available online or by application. We discuss the key features and historical institutions that originally collected these data; the subsequent processes by which the data were reconstructed into individual-level panels; their particular data limitations and strengths; and their potential for comparative social scientific research.

Similarity in difference : marriage in Europe and Asia, 1700-1900

A study of marriage in preindustrial Europe and Asia that goes beyond the Malthusian East-West dichotomy to find variation within regions and commonality across regions. Since Malthus, an East-West dichotomy has been used to characterize marriage behavior in Asia and Europe. Marriages in Asia were said to be early and universal, in Europe late and non-universal. In Europe, marriages were supposed to be the result of individual choices but, in Asia, decided by families and communities. This book challenges this binary taxonomy of marriage patterns and family systems. Drawing on richer and more nuanced data, the authors compare the interpretations based on aggregate demographic patterns with studies of individual actions in local populations. Doing so, they are able to analyze simultaneously the influence on marriage decisions of individual demographic features, socioeconomic status and composition of the household, and local conditions, and the interactions of these variables. They find differences between East and West but also variation within regions and commonality across regions. The book studies local populations in Sweden, Belgium, Italy, Japan, and China. Rather than a simple comparison of aggregate marriage patterns, it examines marriage outcomes and determinants of local populations in different countries using similar data and methods. The authors first present the results of comparative analyses of first marriage and remarriage and then offer chapters each of which is devoted to the results from a specific country. Similarity in Difference is the third in a prizewinning series on the demographic history of Eurasia, following Life under Pressure (2004) and Prudence and Pressure (2009), both published by the MIT Press.

Kin and birth order effects on male child mortality: three East Asian populations, 1716–1945

Human child survival depends on adult investment, typically from parents. However, in spite of recent research advances on kin influence and birth order effects on human infant and child mortality, studies that directly examine the interaction of kin context and birth order on sibling differences in child mortality are still rare. Our study supplements this literature with new findings from large-scale individual-level panel data for three East Asian historical populations from northeast China (1789–1909), northeast Japan (1716–1870), and north Taiwan (1906–1945), where preference for sons and first-borns is common. We examine and compare male child mortality risks by presence/absence of co-resident parents, grandparents, and other kin, as well as their interaction effects with birth order. We apply discrete-time event-history analysis on over 172,000 observations of 69,125 boys aged 1–9 years old. We find that in all three populations, while the presence of parents is important for child survival, it is more beneficial to first/early-borns than to later-borns. Effects of other co-resident kin are however null or inconsistent between populations. Our findings underscore the importance of birth order in understanding how differential parental investment may produce child survival differentials between siblings.

Remarriage in a stem family system in early modern Japan

Drawing data from the local population registers in two northeastern Japanese agricultural villages in the period 1716–1870, this study examines the patterns and covariates of remarriage in a rural community with strong adherence to a stem family organization. Event history analysis is applied separately for males and females, and for two types of previous marriage (uxorilocal and virilocal). Controlling for demographic and economic factors, coresiding parents and children had differential impacts on remarriage for these subgroups. Men and women were tightly bound to the fates of their natal and marital households within the larger context of local economic conditions.

Divorce in Early Modern Rural Japan: Household and Individual Life Course in Northeastern Villages, 1716-1870

Drawing data from the local population registers in two northeastern agricultural villages, this study examines the patterns and factors associated with divorce in preindustrial Japan. Divorce was easy and common during this period. More than two thirds of first marriages dissolved in divorce before individuals reached age fifty. Discrete-time event history analysis is applied to demonstrate how economic condition and household context influenced the likelihood of divorce for females. Risk of divorce was extremely high in the first three years and among uxorilocal marriages. Propensity of divorce increased upon economic stress in the community and among households of lower social status. Presence of parents, siblings, and children had strong bearings on marriage to continue.

Social class and migration in two northeastern Japanese villages, 1716–1870

This paper examines the effects of household social class called ‘mibun’ on the likelihood of migration among peasant men and women from their residing communities, focusing on two farming villages in preindustrial northeastern Japan. Using the local population registers called ‘ninbetsu-aratame-cho’ from 1716–1870, we analyze the relationship between social class of peasant household and different types of out-migration for individual men and women in agricultural communities. We found large differences in landholding between households of titled peasants (honbyakusho) who owned land and those of mizunomi peasants who were in principle landless, suggesting that social class indexed the amount of wealth that a household possessed although considerable economic differences existed among households of titled peasants. These differences in household social class influenced the likelihoods of different types of out-migration of residents in the two farming villages. Regardless of reasons, mizunomi peasants were more likely to migrate out of their village of residence than titled peasants for both sexes. Further, the higher likelihood of out-migration among the mizunomi class was especially notable for male labor migration at the time of local economic hardships.

Marriage relationships among households in the mid 19th century Tama, Japan

This paper studies the formation of marriage relationships between households in 19th century, Tama, Japan. Previous studies on marriage market or partner selection in the Japanese past tended to rely either on information from a single village in case of statistical analysis, or on collection of oral histories. By using the information from a household register that covers 35 villages, and applying a method of social network analysis, this paper goes beyond the limitation of previous studies. Our empirical results show that there was a tendency for socioeconomic homogamy and endogamy (within kinship and within village) among peasants in the mid 19th century Tama, Japan.

Household context and individual departure: The case of escape in three ‘unfree’ East Asian populations, 1700–1900

In the past, many people were ‘unfree’ in the sense that their movement was restricted, and migration without permission was regarded and recorded as ‘escape’. Even though such escape was common in the past, historical studies mostly neglect this form of migration. This article examines escape in historical East Asia, focusing on the influence of household context and individual characteristics on the chances of escape, taking advantage of large-scale individual panel datasets from three adjacent ‘unfree’ populations from northeast China, southeast Korea and northeast Japan in the 18th and 19th centuries. We identify similar temporal, spatial and age patterns of escape, and also similar patterns of associations between chances of escape and household context. In particular, the presence of dependent children and elderly in the household makes individuals less likely to escape. Other patterns of association also highlight the importance of gender and social class. Despite significant differences in political, social and community contexts across these three East Asian populations, the empirical comparisons suggest important commonalities in terms of motivation driven by shared understandings of obligation to others.

Reproduction in East Asian historical demography: Introduction

This special issue on reproduction in East Asian historical demography includes five articles in the fields of pre-industrial China, Japan, and Korea, which have originated from recent collaborations among researchers working with population history data of the respective countries. The focus is on reproduction and related behaviors. Five articles directly or indirectly deal with a paradox that lies at the base of inquiry in the issue of reproduction: Women in East Asia married early and universally; however, their fertility level was moderate. Although the level varied by geographical and socioeconomic groups, the fertility level has been always below that found in their Western counterparts. The Chinese and Japanese papers tackle the long-standing debate about deliberate fertility control as well as the association between wealth and reproductive success. They also examine in detail question about how and under what kinds of individual, household, and community contexts family control was practiced, using models of recent international collaboration that compare relationships between economic conditions, household organization, and reproduction (Tsuya, Wang, Alter, Lee et al., 2010). The Korean papers, facing data limitations for estimating fertility or reproduction, deal with age at first birth as an important estimate of differential behavior by socioeconomic status, as well as adoption practices. The topic of this issue is reproduction. First, due to the nature of birth information in the sources used here, household registers and genealogies, “births” examined in all studies are not actual births, but those who survived at least until first enumeration or registration.