100歳女性のライフヒストリー : 九州海村の恋と生活(寳月誠教授退官記念号)
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概要
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This essay is an attempt to make use of an oral life history to understand the background of peculiar patterns of historical demography in seaside villages in Kyushu. These villages have unique characteristics from a demographic point of view. A large village size, rapid population growth, large and complex households with a considerable proportion of joint family households, high fertility, frequent births out of wedlock, and frequent movement of individuals between households are among them. In short, these areas have a custom of sexual freedom outside marriage and flexible organization of domestic groups different from the ordinary ie in other areas in Japan. Our key question is whether the sexual freedom was mostly restricted to the young unmarried people in the process of mate selection or was widespread among those married and unmarried. Another question is whether women also enjoyed sexual freedom or they just suffered from it. The major part of this essay is a transcript of the oral life history of an old woman who was born in 1903 in Sata on the tip of the Osumi peninsula in Kagoshima prefecture and lived in Nejime, the neighboring village. She married twice and gave birth to a baby out of wedlock between two marriages. She also spoke of the custom of yobanashi (or yobai, free sex), sexual harassments, extramarital love affairs of her second husband, and the story of a widow who became the concubine of two wealthy men. We conclude that the people of this area, both men and women, enjoyed and sometimes suffered from love and sexual freedom not necessarily restricted to those unmarried. Children outside wedlock sometimes became victims of domestic violence but many of them found their niches in other households.
- 2004-12-25