Divorce In Japan

A social, legal, and intellectual history of divorce in Japan over the last four centuries, during much of which Japan had one of the highest divorce rates in the world.

In many ways, divorce is a quintessentially personal decision—the choice to leave a marriage that causes harm or feels unfulfilling to the two people involved. But anyone who has gone through a divorce knows the additional public dimensions of breaking up, from intense shame and societal criticism to friends’ and relatives’ unsolicited advice. In Intimate Disconnections, Allison Alexy tells the fascinating story of the changing norms surrounding divorce in Japan in the early 2000s, when sudden demographic and social changes made it a newly visible and viable option. Not only will one of three Japanese marriages today end in divorce, but divorces are suddenly much more likely to be initiated by women who cite new standards for intimacy as their motivation. As people across Japan now consider divorcing their spouses, or work to avoid separation, they face complicated questions about the risks and possibilities marriage brings: How can couples be intimate without becoming suffocatingly close? How should they build loving relationships when older models are no longer feasible? What do you do, both legally and socially, when you just can’t take it anymore? Relating the intensely personal stories from people experiencing different stages of divorce, Alexy provides a rich ethnography of Japan while also speaking more broadly to contemporary visions of love and marriage during an era in which neoliberal values are prompting wide-ranging transformations in homes across the globe.

This book provides insightful sociological analyses of Japanese demography and families, paying attention not only to national average data, but also to regional variations and community level analyses. In analyzing Japanese family issues such as demographic changes, courtship and marriage, international marriage, divorce, late-life divorce, and the elderly living alone, this book emphasizes the significance of two theoretical frameworks: the dual structure and regional variations of the community network in Japan. By emphasizing the extensive cultural diversity from one region to another, this book represents a paradigm shift from former studies of Japanese families, which relied mostly on national average data. The method of analysis adopted in the study is qualitative, with a historical perspective. The book is thus an invitation to more in-depth, qualitative dialogue in the field of family sociology in Japan. This book will be of great interest not only to Asian scholars, but also to other specialists in comparative family studies around the world.

Focusing on three cultural/ethnic groups in terms of empirical data - women from the former Soviet Union countries, the Philippines, and Western countries - this book highlights the complex interplay between national, cultural, gender, and ethnicity boundary maintenance that constructs international marriages in Japan at multiple levels, providing a comprehensive account of international marriage in the contemporary Japanese context.

*Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography* *Winner of the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award* *Winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography* A “captivating” (The Washington Post) work of history that explores the life of an unconventional woman during the first half of the 19th century in Edo—the city that would become Tokyo—and a portrait of a city on the brink of a momentous encounter with the West. The daughter of a Buddhist priest, Tsuneno was born in a rural Japanese village and was expected to live a traditional life much like her mother’s. But after three divorces—and a temperament much too strong-willed for her family’s approval—she ran away to make a life for herself in one of the largest cities in the world: Edo, a bustling metropolis at its peak. With Tsuneno as our guide, we experience the drama and excitement of Edo just prior to the arrival of American Commodore Perry’s fleet, which transformed Japan. During this pivotal moment in Japanese history, Tsuneno bounces from tenement to tenement, marries a masterless samurai, and eventually enters the service of a famous city magistrate. Tsuneno’s life provides a window into 19th-century Japanese culture—and a rare view of an extraordinary woman who sacrificed her family and her reputation to make a new life for herself, in defiance of social conventions. “A compelling story, traced with meticulous detail and told with exquisite sympathy” (The Wall Street Journal), Stranger in the Shogun’s City is “a vivid, polyphonic portrait of life in 19th-century Japan [that] evokes the Shogun era with panache and insight” (National Review of Books).

Divorce and Remarriage brings together for the first time a unique collection of international studies focusing on many aspects of divorce particular to individual cultures. It looks at the implications of divorce on the personal level, as well as on the broader social level, in several different countries. On the personal level, it discusses smoking and alcohol use as stress factors in marriage and the effects of divorce on children, and, on the social level, it discusses a country’s level of development and urbanization and its impact on marriage patterns and divorce rates. With divorce rates soaring, it is more important than ever to understand why people worldwide are failing to adopt sounder mate selection and marriage timing practices. To give readers a glimpse of the divorce experience from a global perspective, the authors of Divorce and Remarriage contrast divorce processes and issues in their countries with other experiences worldwide. The book explores consensual partnering and its relation to patterns of marriage and divorce, the differences between fathers without custody and mothers with custody, and fathers’and children’s ethical and legal rights and the importance of their emotional and social relationships. It also discusses the importance of determining the connection between maternal attitudes and the development of children, as well as the relationship between parental separation/divorce and adolescent values. Other topics discussed at length in this important book are: the possible stress prevention role of social support in the post-separation period nontraditional stepfamily lifestyles and the well-being of adolescents in different cultures maternal stress and its impact on children widowhood and remarriage in different countries long-standing marital problems and their effect on each gender predictors of national marriage rates single parents’distress Divorce and Remarriage provides educators, researchers, mental health clinicians, and policymakers with information that can help alleviate the stress divorce causes for both individuals and society as a whole. The book’s model for evaluating the readiness of a couple for separation or divorce, its recommendations for mediation, and innovative ideas for providing single parents with better social networking and services are sure to improve the way divorces, parental rights, and children’s interests are handled around the world.

This book examines trends in divorce throughout the world, comparing previously inaccessible information on Asian and Arab countries and Eastern Europe, as well as data from Latin America, Western Europe, and the Anglo countries over the last four decades. It discusses are how divorce rates in different countries are affected by industrialisation, dictatorship, civic standards for nations, and easier divorce laws; the relations between divorce and such factors as age and class; the meaning of the worldwide rise in cohabitation; and why people are becoming less likely to remarry.

In Lovesick Japan, Mark D. West explores an official vision of love, sex, and marriage in contemporary Japan. A comprehensive body of evidence—2,700 court opinions—describes a society characterized by a presupposed absence of physical and emotional intimacy, affection, and personal connections. In compelling, poignant, and sometimes horrifying court cases, West finds that Japanese judges frequently opine on whether a person is in love, what other emotions a person is feeling, and whether those emotions are appropriate for the situation. Sometimes judges’ views about love, sex, and marriage emerge from their presentation of the facts of cases. Among the recurring elements are abortions forced by men, compensated dating, late-life divorces, termination fees to end affairs, sexless couples, Valentine’s Day heartbreak, "soapland" bath-brothels, and home-wrecking hostesses. Sometimes the judges’ analysis, decisions, and commentary are as revealing as the facts. Sex in the cases is a choice among private "normal" sex, which is male-dominated, conservative, dispassionate, or nonexistent; commercial sex, which caters to every fetish but is said to lead to rape, murder, and general social depravity; and a hybrid of the two, which commodifies private sexual relationships. Marriage is contractual; judges express the ideal of love in marriage and proclaim its importance, but virtually no one in the court cases achieves it. Love usually appears as a tragic, overwhelming emotion associated with jealousy, suffering, heartache, and death.