Ehebruch als Verbrechen: Der europäische Beitrag zur Frauendiskriminierung in Japan

Abstract

State and society in Japan have punished, sanctioned, or tolerated adultery in various  ways. One can argue that legal discrimination against wives at least somewhat lessened  after  the  opening  of  the  country  in  the  nineteenth  century  before  adultery  was  completely abolished as a crime about one hundred years later. It is natural to assume a  positive impact of Western ideas in shaping Japanese laws toward gender equality, and  the reforms of the American occupation period seem  to be the best example for such a  Whiggish interpretation of legal history. A closer look at adultery legislation, however,  reveals  a  more  differentiated  picture  of  European  influence,  not  only  because  of  the  survival of traditional Japanese customs and practices or lingering Chinese models but  also because the “West” was less homogenous and progressive than is often assumed.

The Tokugawa period (1600–1868) is generally known  for enforcing a hierarchical  status society based on Confucian principles subjugating wives to husbands. So it comes  as  no  surprise  that  adulterous  wives  faced  death  penalties  while  husbands  could  kill  adulterous wives with impunity. In different ways,  a double legal standard was maintained in the Meiji period (1868–1912) penal codes  of the years 1871, 1873, 1882 and  1908,  which  sentenced  only  adulterous  wives  to  penal  servitude.  Influential  foreign  advisors such as the French legal expert Boissonade advocated such a sex-differentiated  legislation  on  adultery  since  it  also  existed  in  the  Napoleonic  Code.  Japanese  lawmakers deliberately avoided the adoption of provisions on adultery found in European  codes that would have provided a greater degree of  legal gender equality. The ambivalence  of  the  West  toward  adultery,  however,  protected  Japan  from  international  criticism, so the government could safely ignore domestic calls for reform.

Since  the  Taishô  period  (1912–1926)  until 1945,  the penal  code  was  not  amended  again.  There  were  multiple  proposals  for  revisions, and  jurisdiction  and  public  discourse  questioned  more  frequently  the  need  to  maintain  a  sexual  double  standard  in  adultery. Europe was often invoked as a model of progress that backward Japan should  follow. The criminal code of 1908, which had been inspired by German penal reform  philosophy, enabled a wider range of terms of penal servitude as well as sentencing on  probation, and in the longer term this served to decriminalize adultery. Despite some  revival of conservative ideas in the prewar Shôwa period (1926–1945), no fundamental  reversal  in  the  trend  towards  progressive  jurisdiction  occurred.  Reforms  during  the  American  occupation  period  (1945–1952)  finally  abolished  all  adultery-related  discrimination between the spouses in criminal and civil legislation.