| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Harald Fuess. Divorce in Japan: Family, Gender, and the State, 1600–2000. (Studies of the East Asian Institute.) Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2004. Pp. xiv, 226. $45.00.

Harald Fuess's historical study of divorce in Japan undermines an image commonly held of Japanese society and promoted by the Japanese government: namely, that Japan has traditionally been a "low divorce" society. In fact, it was only in the forty odd years from the middle of the twentieth century that Japan's divorce rate was comparatively low. In the late nineteenth century, Japan's divorce rate was high, as observed with disapproval by many Westerners. In this first social history of divorce in Japan in English, Fuess brings that "forgotten history" to light, answering the questions of why divorce was initially high and why it became less frequent during the first half of the twentieth century. In doing so, he reveals that the divorce rate in itself "conveys no clear message about gender relations" (p. 8). In particular, contrary to most past interpretations, the high divorce rates of the seventeenth to late nineteenth centuries were not necessarily manifestations of the arbitrary power of husbands or mothers-in-law to expel a bride.

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