| 要約(英文) |
Sociological studies of modern families in Japan focus on new middle-class women as a group who held modern views of marriage in the Taisho Period, but do not provide substantial analysis. This paper examines who accepted the concepts of modern marriage in this period by quantitatively analyzing the correlation of the attributes of contributors to the “personal-advice column” in the Yomiuri Shimbun. Careful scrutiny of the aforementioned sociological studies points the two crucial elements in the concept of modern marriage: free will in choosing his/her spouse and emotional ties between them. With these two elements as criteria, the contributions which revealed the concepts of modern marriage were selected. Then, by reading the selected contributions intensively with regards to the four categories of gender, residential area, educational background, and occupations of the contributor, they were quantitatively analyzed. On the basis of the analysis, this paper brought forward the following findings about the acceptance of the concepts of modern marriage: 1. no correlation with residential areas and educational background, 2. tendency of men > women, 3. high ratio of students, white collar workers, and independent entrepreneurs, 4. high ratio of students among men and of white collars among women. The examination of the contributions concerning free will and emotional ties indicate that people with a high level of education, and students revealed a strong tendency to emphasize ‘emotional ties’ and ‘emotional ties as well as free will’. With these, it could be maintained, concerning the acceptance of the concepts of modern marriage, firstly that the findings do not necessarily support the view that mainly focuses upon the new middle class women, and secondly, that the school culture played an important role. |
