Determinants of inheritance patterns in an early modern Japanese village, Yukinobu

Title:

Determinants of inheritance patterns in an early modern Japanese village, Yukinobu

Creator:

Murayama, Satoshi

Identifier:

https://cdk.lib.cas.cz/client/handle/uuid:c35faa77-072e-446b-ad42-218622833f76
uuid:c35faa77-072e-446b-ad42-218622833f76
urnnbn:urn:nbn:cz:aba007-000e4w

Type:

model:internalpart and TEXT

Format:

print

Description:

There were two or more types of headship succession and inheritance practices in traditional, early modem, Japan, and also within any given village as exhibited in the village studied here. The population of a village, Yukinobu, was a heterogeneous one. In particular, there were clear differences between the dozoku and other families. Even within the dozoku families, the family strategies and inheritance practices varied. Population growth also played a decisive role in determining succession and inheritance practices. Because of this growth, the number of households could increase, and thus the opportunity to thrive would increase for individuals of both sexes insofar as local resources could sustain the population. Females would surely have more favourable survival chances than males if the number of households, and thus the number of opportunities to become housewives were balanced with the number of women in the population. Almost all of the family strategies concerning inheritance practices were shaped by demographic conditions and consequences, and also by economic and natural environmental conditions and changes to those conditions. Together, these sets of conditions promoted a distinctive inheritance system in each village. However, the rules of inheritance patterns were not entirely unique to the village, as they were characterised by the inheritance rules of each family. The existing inheritance rules were not the custom of the village, but were conventions sustained over generations in some families and that survived over time in the village. The inheritance patterns of the village were determined by the characteristics of the family strategies of these surviving families. Therefore, primogeniture as well as equal inheritance practices could exist within a single village.

Language:

Czech

Rights:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
policy:public

Coverage:

91-116 and 93-118

Source:

Historická demografie | 2007 Volume:31 | Number:2007

Harvested from:

CDK

Metadata only:

false