ABSTRACT
As Japan modernized in the late nineteenth century, officialdom needed to reconfigure kinship in order to accommodate new property regimes, industrialization, different working patterns, and changing gender relations. In order to make official and legalize the new kinship system, the koseki or family registration was introduced in the Meiji period as part of the 1898 Civil Code. Along with the reforms at the end of the war, the Civil Code was revised and the exchange circuitry for the family was reconfigured: equal inheritance by all children, equal rights for both sexes, and the right of children to freely select their spouses and careers. Some of the practical aspects of the family registration system have continued into the postwar period. Within the context of family life, gendered roles are taken seriously, and parent-child ties, as before the war, still seem to come before spousal relationships.
