Patriotic Marriage: Eugenics, Colonial Intimacy and the Politics of the Marital Family in the Japanese Empire, 1931-1945.

Abstract

This dissertation examines the politics of the marital family in metropolitan Japan and its two major formal colonies, Taiwan and Korea, from 1931 to 1945. It brings together, for the first time, two political discourses that sought to reshape marriages in service to the empire, which I term patriotic marriage discourses: the first, in support of eugenic marriage, and the second in support of interethnic marriage. Drawing on archival research in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, the dissertation maps divergent and often contradictory attempts to influence the marital decisions of Japanese and their Korean and Taiwanese colonial subjects. In doing so, it reveals the differing ways social reformers imagined the future of the marital family, uncovering persistent tensions over how young women and men should choose a spouse and on what basis. What was at stake in this debate over spousal selection was not only - or even primarily - concerns about securing individual happiness and marital stability, but broader social concerns over public health, colonial relations, sexual morality and patriotic service to the empire. I argue that the existence of this sustained contestation cautions against the notion of a unitary vision of the ideal marital family in Japan during this era. Furthermore, I suggest that the persistent ambivalence over marriage ultimately indicates a deeper anxiety over the imagined future of the empire - and the model of the marital family that would best serve it. The findings of this dissertation have broader implications for how we conceptualise the nature of state power in Imperial Japan. They reveal significant and unresolved disagreements within official circles as well as the pivotal role played by nonstate actors in shaping educative campaigns in support of marital reform. Show more