Preliminary Programme

Wed 24 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.15

Thu 25 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.15

Fri 26 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.15

Sat 27 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.00

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Thursday 25 March 2021 16.00 - 17.15
U-8 FAM08 East Asian Family History
U
Network: Family and Demography Chair: Tim Riswick
Organizer: Tim Riswick Discussant: Jan Kok
Luc Bulten : The Colonial Register Inside Out: Indigenous Family Composition and Identity Formation in Eighteenth Century Dutch Colonial Sri Lank
Rough estimations suggests there were around two million people living in the coastal areas of Sri Lanka in second half of the eighteenth century. Most of those lands were under the control of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), which had conquered these lands from the Portuguese empire some hundred ... (Show more)
Rough estimations suggests there were around two million people living in the coastal areas of Sri Lanka in second half of the eighteenth century. Most of those lands were under the control of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), which had conquered these lands from the Portuguese empire some hundred years before, with the exception of some small stretches leading to the central highlands where the indigenous kingdom of Kandy ruled. Around the same time extensive socio-economic changes were impacting the make-up of this colonial society, which foreshadowed the development of the Sri Lankan economy from an agricultural society – mainly based on subsistence farming – to a plantation economy. In relation to these changes, the VOC attempted to increase their control beyond the coastal cities and into the rural hinterlands of their territory, in particular from the 1740s onwards. They mainly did this by reforming the existing political system of indirect rule, through a hefty process of bureaucratisation which was characterised by the large-scale registration of people and property. A result of this development are the thombos, colonial registers containing roughly 250.000 people and 85.000 plots of land in the Colombo area alone. These thombos, named after the preceding Portuguese census and cadastral records, (uniquely) consisted almost exclusively of local inhabitants and their property.
It is currently debated whether the VOC had these thombos produced for the sole purpose of extracting land revenues, taxation, and labour services, or whether a legal reasoning regarding property and inheritance was the decisive factor. In any case, these thombos became increasingly institutionalised within the colonial society of Dutch Sri Lanka and by the end of the eighteenth century they were utilised by both the Company and the local population for both legal purposed and taxation. In my doctoral research I focus on the historical process behind the creation, and the subsequent workings of, these registers in the second half of the eighteenth century. In this paper I will focus on the question if and how the categorisation and organisation of the thombos may have influenced and shaped (new) allegiances, local family structures, and (group) identities. Specifically I will compare the areas directly surrounding the colonial centres of power around the coastal cities of Negombo and Colombo, to the more rural areas in the hinterlands of the Colombo district, and I will focus on the prevalence of both local (Sinhalese/Buddhist) and colonial (Dutch/Reformed) socio-cultural structures and categories regarding family relations, societal norms, and class or status. By doing this I aim to highlight the reach of the Dutch colonial government and their influence on the local society, and the mechanisms behind the registration and categorisation of people and property in the colonial context. (Show less)

Sangwoo Han, Kijung Kwon & Donggue Lee : Comparison of Elite Families in the Capital, Urban, and Rural in the 17th Century Korea
Pre-modern Korean government kept the hierarchy system until 1894. Due to the higher class was engaged in the bureaucracy system, the residence and family structure had been affected by their bureaucratic level. Most of the high-ranking bureaucrats need to reside in the capital city as central government officials. At the ... (Show more)
Pre-modern Korean government kept the hierarchy system until 1894. Due to the higher class was engaged in the bureaucracy system, the residence and family structure had been affected by their bureaucratic level. Most of the high-ranking bureaucrats need to reside in the capital city as central government officials. At the provincial capital, there are plenty of middle-ranking bureaucrats, such as local headmen and functionaries. However, the elite those who do not have an official position in the hierarchy system kept staying in the rural area with their lands. In this context, we will compare the size of household, family structure, and marriage patterns by bureaucratic level and living district. For instance, we can find some unique families in Seoul, the capital city, such as families of royal clansmen, and eunuchs. For comparison, we will use three kinds of computerized household register data; Seoul, Daegu (a provincial capital, urban), and Tans?ng (a rural county). Unfortunately the only reserved and computerized household register of Seoul is in 1663, so the analysis period limited in the late 17th century. (Show less)

Emiko Higami : The Eugenic Protection Law and a Method of Contraception: Why Japanese could not avoid Mass Abortions?
This paper attempts to answer the question: Why could not Japanese avoid the mass abortions? The annually annual published number of abortions in Japan was more than one million each year between 1953 and 1961.
Recently, the methods of long-lasting reversible contraception are spreading, and the International Planned Parenthood Federation ... (Show more)
This paper attempts to answer the question: Why could not Japanese avoid the mass abortions? The annually annual published number of abortions in Japan was more than one million each year between 1953 and 1961.
Recently, the methods of long-lasting reversible contraception are spreading, and the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) recommends an Intra Uterine System as the first contraceptive method. In 1932, Tenrei Ota devised a reliable contraceptive method known as the Ota ring. Though German Ernst Grafenberg had announced the ring at 4 years before Ota’s attempt. Ota belonged to the Japan Socialist Party, and proposed the Japanese Diet to enact the Eugenic Protection Bill in 1947. Method of using the Ota ring was incorporated into the contraception article, in spite of it, this Bill was not passed. Because F. Crawford Sams, who was Chief of Public Health and Welfare (PHW) Section of Supreme Command for the Allied Powers (SCAP) in Japan and carried considerable weight with enacting the Eugenic Protection Bill, did not approve of Ota’s proposition positively. In 1948, a conservative politician Yasaburo Taniguchi, who argued for abortion based on the Eugenic of adverse selection, proposed the Diet to delete the contraception article from the Eugenic Protection Bill, and the Diet enacted it. (Show less)

Sijie Hu : The Darwinian and the Beckerian Trade-offs of Children in Chinese Families, 1400-1900
The paper studies the survival of Chinese families in the long run and the impacts of family size on the educational attainment of the children. I use genealogical records of six Chinese lineages to examine the existence of two different types of trade-off in Ming and Qing China, the Darwinian ... (Show more)
The paper studies the survival of Chinese families in the long run and the impacts of family size on the educational attainment of the children. I use genealogical records of six Chinese lineages to examine the existence of two different types of trade-off in Ming and Qing China, the Darwinian trade-off, the trade-off between parental fertility and next-generation fertility, and also the Beckerian trade-off, the child quantity-quality trade-off. The empirical results suggest that the two trade-offs did not exist in the six lineages over the 500 years. Chinese families were not making conscious choices about their family sizes. More children in a family could directly translate into more grandchildren and also more educated children. Educated males in imperial China could afford to produce more children than uneducated males and nurture more educated children without deliberately shrinking their family sizes. (Show less)

Hiroshi Kawaguchi : Arranged Marriage and Female Labor in the 19th Century, North-eastern Japan
In this paper, I will discuss the long distance marriages as of the 18th century to the 19th century in Minamiyama-Okurairi-Ryou in north-eastern Japan. It has been long believed that, before the industrial revolution in the end of the 19th century, most peasants chose their spouses from nearby villages where ... (Show more)
In this paper, I will discuss the long distance marriages as of the 18th century to the 19th century in Minamiyama-Okurairi-Ryou in north-eastern Japan. It has been long believed that, before the industrial revolution in the end of the 19th century, most peasants chose their spouses from nearby villages where they could go and return in one day. Local lord governments prohibited the peasants from migrating beyond their domains in order to insure an annual tribute or a land tax. Especially the mountainous regions including the study area, were inconveniently situated before railroads or roadways were constructed, people living in such areas were probably isolated from surrounding Provinces.
I could find that it was not so rare for peasants living in the mountainous regions to choose their spouses from distant villages. I will also discuss the reasons why they chose their spouses from distant places. It is possible to assume two cases; someone arranged the long distance marriage; brides or bridegrooms found their spouses when they went to work as live-in employees or migrant workers to some distant places. In both cases, it is necessary for long distance marriages to revitalize of interaction among long distant places. Therefore I will discuss the change in population, production activities, demand of female labor, consumption, and distribution.
I would like to emphasize the following points.
1. It was not rare for peasants to accept their spouses from distant villages over 25 miles away from their home villages. Long distance marriages were beyond the administrative boundaries and geographical barriers.
2. The sex ratio in Minamiyama-Okurairi-Ryou was greatly unbalanced because of the sex selective infanticide. It caused a shortage of brides. During the period when the shortage of brides was most serious in the 1810s-1830s, some brides were married to men in the Village of Tounosu, Aizu County, the Province of Mutsu from distant places.
3. Those who arranged long distance marriages were not local lord governments or Buddhist priests, but matchmakers. The major role of the matchmaker was to be a go-between for the spouses and to arrange the amount of the congratulatory money. Some merchants who engaged in exporting hemp and hemp cloth from Minamiyama-Okurairi-Ryou and importing miscellaneous goods to the area, probably have arranged long distance marriages as a matchmakers.
4. As the demand of female labor to produce hemp cloth increased rapidly as of the beginning of the 19th century, women who could weave at the loom got married to men in Minamiyama-Okurairi-Ryou from distant places in return for large amounts of congratulatory money.
5. Because of the long distance marriages, the population in the Village of Tounosu started to increase. (Show less)

Mary Nagata : Marriage Practice in the Historical and Contemporary Japanese Family
The Meiji Restoration introduced a "sea change" in Japanese family practice. The Meiji government passed laws explicitly to govern and shape Japanese family practice to fit Western ideals of gender, marriage, inheritance and other aspects of family practice, while members of the Meiji elite also fiercely questioned the changes fearing ... (Show more)
The Meiji Restoration introduced a "sea change" in Japanese family practice. The Meiji government passed laws explicitly to govern and shape Japanese family practice to fit Western ideals of gender, marriage, inheritance and other aspects of family practice, while members of the Meiji elite also fiercely questioned the changes fearing a loss of Japanese identity. Yet, what changed, how and why? For contemporary Japanese today the Meiji era ideas of appropriate family practice have come to represent a Japanese tradition that is hard to abandon. Does anything remain of Meiji family practice as preached and enforced until World War 2? Does anything remain of the pre-Meiji family practice despite every effort of the Meiji state to change it? For that matter, how traditional was Tokugawa family practice? (Show less)



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