The Parental Rights and Protection of Children in Early Modern Japan

我对这些主题进行了研究，取得了以下成果。在明治时代早期，还没有亲权的法律概念。在这段时间里，父亲自然有很大的力量来抚养孩子。户主、亲戚和社区的某些成员也关心抚养他们以维护封建家庭制度。1898年的明治民法典是日本第一部规定父母权利和义务的法律条文。2.《法典》认为这些权利是自然的，因为父母对子女有着天然的爱。在明治时代的早期，根据古老的习俗，男孩在15岁时达到法定年龄。《大约坎宣言》(1876年)第四十一条规定法定成年年龄为二十岁。然后，明治民法典对少数民族的行为能力进行了限制，禁止了父母保护少数民族的权利。在夫妻离婚的案例中，男孩属于父亲，女孩通常属于母亲，这是明治早期的习俗。明治民法典否认了这一习俗，并规定父亲在离婚后对每一个孩子行使亲权。同时，《法典》规定，如果母亲的丈夫同意她的提议，母亲有权照顾她的孩子。在明治时代初期，书福这个词第一次被用在家政学教科书中。它的意思是当时命令仆人做家务的情妇。但在明治二十年代，它的意思改变为自己做家务的管家或家庭主妇。因此，家庭主妇被认为是女性的职业。

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.