The importance of kin relations in Japan should already be clear from
the previous chapter, and though there has in practice been considerable
regional and occupational diversity, the family has historically been the
focus of considerable ideology. In the Meiji period, when Japanese intellectuals were reassessing the whole structure of Japanese life in preparation for the establishment of a new Civil Code, something they described as the
‘family system’ was a bone of much contention. Some saw a traditional
model as essential for the maintenance of orderly social life, others saw it as
a major hindrance to the progress they sought in their modern, internationalised world. The Civil Code of 1898 ended up as a compromise, but the debate continued at an intellectual level