Family Models, Family Dispute Resolution and Family Law in Japan
![handle is hein.journals/uclapblj14 and id is 11 raw text is: FAMILY MODELS, FAMILY DISPUTE
RESOLUTION AND FAMILY LAW
IN JAPAN
Taimie L. Bryantt
I. INTRODUCTION
Since the late 1800s one model of family has dominated
governmental policy in Japan.' In its barest structural form, that
model, the ie, is a patrilineal, patriarchal chain of authority ex-
tending between the eldest sons of successive generations.
Although prevalent among the samurai and some merchant fami-
lies before 1872, this pattern of social organization was not com-
mon in practice or intellectual conception among other
Japanese.2
t Professor of Law, University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law.
The author thanks John Haley and Pamela Pasti for their comments on this article.
1. This idea is generally accepted by Japanese and non-Japanese scholars of
Japan. For English language presentation of the historical origin and scope of this
policy, see C. GLUCK, JAPAN'S MODERN MYTHS: IDEOLOGY IN THE LATE MEIU
PERIOD (1985); Michiko Nakayama, Just Another Voluntary Association of Individu-
als? The Family in Japanese Constitutional Theory, RiKKYo HOGAKKU 246, 239
(1995). For an extensive Japanese language description and analysis, see E.
YAMANAKA, NIKON KINDAI KoKKA No KESEi To IE SEMO (1988).
2. Japanese and non-Japanese scholars from a variety of disciplines have noted
the more flexible and less hierarchical structure of classes other than the samurai.
See, e.g., Joy HENDRY, MARRIAGE IN CHANGING JAPAN 14-15 (1981); R. Ishii, The
Status of Women in Traditional Japanese Society, 29 JAPANESE ANNALS INT'L L. 10
(1986); Ramseyer, Thrift and Diligence: House Codes of Tokugawa Merchant Fami-
lies, 34 MONUMENTA NIPPONICA 209 (1979); N. Toshitani, Family Policy and Family
Law in Modem Japan I, 20 ANNALS OF THE INST. OF Soc. SCL (U. of Tokyo) 95, 99
(1979). See also OTAKE, IE TO JOSEI No REKISHi 233-34 (1977), who suggests that
the samurai pattern was also used by wealthy Japanese families during the same time
period. Further, the ie structure may have been an ideological ideal, since it was
associated with the wealthy and prestigious elite, but that among other sectors, e.g.,
agricultural and small merchant families, men and women worked together such that
strict maintenance of a hierarchical structure was not possible. Non-samurai Japa-
nese women felt the impact of samuraization most strongly in that [p]articularly
in marriage, they were very free, never restricted by the confining doctrines of later
years. In those years, no one criticized a woman's remarriage. Y. FUKUzAWA, On
Japanese Women, in FUKUZAWA YUKICHI ON JAPANESE WOMEN: SELECTED WORKS
25 (E. Kiyooka ed, 1988).](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/uclapblj14&div=8&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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