In the Arena of the Courts: Law and Gender in Japan, 1871-1912

FAIN: FEL-268275-20

Susan L. Burns
University of Chicago (Chicago, IL 60637-5418)

Research and writing leading to a book on how the modernization of Japan's legal system in the 19th century reshaped gender roles.  

Beginning in 1871, the newly formed government of Japan began to work to create a modern legal system. My project focuses on the place of gender in this process and the role of new laws and the new courts in shaping and policing gendered social roles.The project centers on the adjudication of four kinds of cases: 1)criminal cases involving abortion and infanticide 2)criminal cases involving “sex crimes” 3)civil cases involving marriage, divorce, and issues of paternity and child custody 4)civil cases involving disputes over inheritance and succession to the family headship. Through the examination of court records, texts related to “legal literacy,” and debates over the statutes themselves, I argue that the courts in this period became a potent space in which representatives of the state and ordinary citizens clashed over new ideas about gender, bodily autonomy, social roles, and individual rights and civic responsibilities.

Associated Products

Sexual Assault and the Evidential Body: Forensic Medicine and Law in Modern Japan (Article)
Title: Sexual Assault and the Evidential Body: Forensic Medicine and Law in Modern Japan
Author: Susan L. Burns
Abstract: This article explores the formation of what Christopher Hamlin has called a “forensic culture” in late nineteenth-century Japan, and its impact on the prosecution of crimes of sexual violence. Before the 1870s, acts of rape often went unpunished or were resolved through private monetary settlements between the victim and her family and the rapist. However, after the formation of the modern Japanese state in 1868, legal reform, an important aspect of the state-building process, created a new opportunity for victims to seek legal redress. Over the course of a decade, an unprecedented number of rapes were prosecuted, with most resulting in convictions and long prison terms for the perpetrators. That situation, however, changed as forensic medicine came to be institutionalized as a specific medical discipline and as part of the criminal justice system. Viewed by the police and jurists as modern, scientific, and rational, forensic medicine created a new standard for what counted as evidence, with the result that the testimony of the victim and others was devalued in favor of traces of blood, semen, and bodily injury—evidence that, as some contemporaries noted, ignored the reality of rape.
Year: 2021
Primary URL: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/osiris/current
Access Model: Subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Osiris
Publisher: University of Chicago Press for the History of Science Society

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