Just saw “The Hidden Blade,” a Japanese movie in which an unmarried samurai, c. 1860 or so, rescues his childhood sweetheart from her abusive and slave-driving husband. The woman lives with the samurai as his maid and assistant for at several months, maybe even a year or so, but there’s no sex and they don’t hold themselves out as husband and wife. There was some reference to her being of a different caste, but no explanation of that. When asked by her sister if she’ll marry again, the woman says no, that she’s learned from her mistake. Later, she and the samurai (after he’s resigned as a samurai and renounced that social station) decide to marry. No mention of any kind of divorce proceedings, either informally or through a court or some public official’s action.
Was divorce an option in Japan at that time? Was it available for women of some social classes but not others? Could the equivalent of a divorce be secured simply by living apart from your spouse? If you got a divorce, would that in and of itself result in a loss of face or social status?
I don’t know about the 19th century, but in modern Japan getting a divorce can be as simple as filling out a form at the registry office.
Interesting reading about The Meiji Civil Code, which tells you a lot. Check out the SITE , which says the following (and more):
In “The Evolution of the Feminine Ideal,” Joy Paulson discusses the policies of the Meiji Civil Code of 1898 in regards to women. Concerning marriage, the wedding was to be arranged by both families, and women under the age of 25 needed the consent of the family head to marry. The family of the husband was responsible for registering the marriage, and until this was done, the contract was not legally binding. In the case of adultery, a woman was severely penalized while a man received no punishment. The Meiji Civil Code of 1989 gave women the right to divorce their husbands “on grounds of cruelty, desertion, or serious misconduct, but not for infidelity” (Paulson 15). Because the husband always kept the children, and a woman who divorced her husband was often looked down upon in society, divorces initiated by women were fairly uncommon. In addition, women were given property rights, along with the right to serve as heads of their households and legal guardians of their children. Even so, these provisions contained many qualifications; for example, a woman could own land, but once she married she needed her husband’s consent for all buying and selling contracts (Paulson 15). Clearly, despite the added rights which the Meiji Civil Code granted them, women during this period continued to be marginalized and prevented from holding public roles in society.
Probably an obvious point, but just to avoid confusion, that should read 1898 (the typo is on the original website).
Here’s some selected paragraphs from Recreating Japanese Women, 1600-1945 (Gail Bernstein, ed.) that discuss divorce in Tokugawa Japan.
The question of divorce highlights further differences between samurai morals and customs on the one hand and diverse peasant practices on the other. According to samurai teachings, widows and divorcees were not expected to remarry… Only a man, furthermore, could initiate divorce, either by copying a prescribed three and one-half lines telling his wife to leave, or simply by sending her baggage back to her natal home. A woman could do nothing to prevent the divorce or to protect her access to her children.
Peasant practices, in contrast, often ignored the norms of the military aristocracy. For one thing, the divorce rate, according to one study of village ledgers near Osaka, was at least 15 percent (possibly even higher, since these documents include only cases where the marriages had lasted over a year). In addition, peasant women as well as men initiated divorce… In 1857, a woman named Nobu, claiming ‘disharmony in the household,’ appealed to the local government office for a seperation from her husband. He was a heavy drinker, and her father paid [her husband] one ryo to agree to a divorce.
One way for a woman to get a divorce was to go to an ‘enkiridera,’ a temple for severing marital connections. In the last half of the Tokugawa period, some two thousand women apparently sought the services of such a temple, Tokeiji, in Kamakura. According to custom, if a married woman entered this temple and performed its rites for three years, the bond between her and her husband was broken. For women in a hurry, Buddhist temple officials served as divorce brokers. They summoned the husband and forced him to agree to an amicable divorce. In most cases, just the news that the temple officials were coming was enough to produce a letter of seperation…
For poor women, divorce was simply a matter of leaving the husband’s home. Where children were concerned, however, it was more complicated. Wealthy [male] peasants usually kept all the children… While it was relatively easy for a poor woman to leave her husband, opportunities for a good remarriage, not to mention financial security for her children, were considerably more limited than those for a wealthier woman.
Huh. I assumed that samurai women were free to divorce if they chose. That’s what I get for reading Clavell, I guess!
