The Parental Rights and Protection of Children in Early Modern Japan

我对这些主题进行了研究，并获得了以下结果。在明治初期，没有关于亲权的法律的概念。在这段时间里，父亲自然有很大的权力抚养他的孩子。户主、亲属和某些社区成员也关心如何抚养他们以维持封建家庭制度。1898年《明治民法典》是日本第一部明确规定父母权利和义务的法律的条文。该法认为这些权利是自然的，因为父母对子女有自然的爱。在明治时代的早期，根据旧习俗，男孩在15岁时达到成年年龄。1876年第41号《达约坎宣言》规定，法律的成年年龄为20岁。明治民法典限制了未成年人的能力，禁止父母保护未成年人的权利。在丈夫和妻子离婚的情况下，男孩属于他的父亲，女孩通常属于她的母亲，这是明治早期的习俗。《明治民法典》否认了这一习俗，并规定离婚后父亲对每个孩子行使亲权。与此同时，该法规定，如果丈夫同意她的提议，母亲有权照顾子女。在明治初期的家政学教科书中，第一次使用了“淑夫”一词。它的意思是那个时候命令仆人做家务的女主人。但到了明治二十年代，它的意思变成了管家或独自做家务的家庭主妇。因此，家庭主妇被认为是妇女的职业。

I studied on these themes and the following results were obtained.1. In the early Meiji era there was no legal concept of parental rights. In this time, father naturally has great power to bring up his children. The head of the household, relatives and certain member of community also had concerns with bringing up them to maintain the feudalistic family system. The Meiji Civil Code of 1898 was the first legal provision in Japan to specify the rights and duties of parents. The Code regard the rights as natural because parents had natural love to their children.2. In the early years of Meiji era a boy attains his majority at the age of fifteen based on the old custom. The forty-first proclamation of Dajokan (1876) provided that the age of legal adulthood was twenty years old. Then the Meiji Civil Code restricted the ability of minority and proscribed the right of parents to protect them.3. In the case husband and wife got divorced, boy belonged to his father and often girls belonged to her mother following the custom in the early Meiji era. The Meiji Civil Code denied this custom and provided that father exercised the parental right to every child after divorce. At the same time the Code provided the mother's right to take care of her children if her husband agreed to her proposal.4. The word, Shufu was used in the textbook of home economics for the first time in the early Meiji era. It meant mistress who ordered her servants to do housework at that time. But it changed the meaning in the twenties of Meiji to housekeeper or housewife who did the housework by herself. Therefore housewife came to be thought as a vocation of woman.