Since the publication of the seminal book of essays Household and family in past time in 1972, much research on the history of the family has concentrated on the situation in western and eastern Europe, and relied almost exclusively on census-type documents. It is, for example, established that whereas mean household size was small, the mean age at first marriage fairly high and neo-localism (the formation of an independent household on marriage) dominant in western Europe, almost the opposite applied in eastern Europe. Yet these findings do not preclude the possibility of discovering regions where in statistical terms the mean household size was not large and the proportion of complex households not particularly high, but where the neo-local mode of household formation was not the norm. Such a region could have a preference for joint families (two or more married sons co-residing with their father) with a low-fertility demographic regime, or stem families (one co-residing married son) with that of intermediate to low fertility.

Traditional Japan is an example of just such a stem-family society. There the household, not the individual, was perceived as the basic social and legal unit of society. This unit was called ie and its headship, authority and property were expected to be handed down from the father to a particular son, enabling the household to follow alternating stages of ‘simple’, ‘multiple’ and ‘extended’ forms over the developmental cycle, more or less in accordance with the predictions of Lutz Berkner. As articles in the section of Laslett and Wall's Household and family on Japan have already shown, the mean household size in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Japan was not higher than that in England, but the mean age at marriage was lower than in the English population. Moreover, household formation and succession rules under the Japanese ie system were not compatible with the simple family mode.

John Hajnal's classic essay published in 1965 on European marriage patterns contrasted western with eastern Europe in terms of age at marriage and proportion never-married. In a more recent article, ‘Two kinds of pre-industrial household formation system’, which is indeed a development from his 1965 essay, the life-cycle is taken into explicit consideration by use of the concept of household formation. In addition, he makes some geographical alterations to his previous argument: the ‘West’ is narrowly defined to cover ‘north-west’ European countries, whereas the ‘East’ now extends beyond the eastern European boundaries to Asian countries such as China and India.

To this formulation there can be two kinds of response from scholars specializing in the Far East, especially traditional Japan. One is concerned with the lack of full discussion of a stem family system in Hajnal's article. He suggests that while some versions of this system are ‘compatible with the general north-west European household formation rules’ and some others are not, ‘[n]o kind of stem family system can be classified as a joint household system’; but unfortunately, no detailed stem family household formation rules are specified, nor is there any discussion of Japan's family system, which has been regarded as a typical example of the stem type.

This article examines, on the basis of landholding patterns, the relationship between the peasant family economy and its family life cycle in the latter half of the Tokugawa era (1603–1867). The analysis is focused on the life-cycle patterns of the stem family. In such a system, the continuation of the family and its assets assumed prime importance while hired labour did not provide a substantial proportion of the workforce on the farm. In fact, the stem family was officially recognized as the lawful family form by the Meiji government, but even in earlier periods the stem family system provided the dominant form. Among the samurai it was always the required form. Among the peasantry, by the early eighteenth century the stem family was the predominant family system.

The family system observed here differs in structure from that found in western-European family systems. Even when developmental aspects of European households are discussed, it is the relationship between the simple, nuclear family forms and their economic and social correlates – especially poverty, inheritance and landholdings – that is analysed. How Japanese stem family households operated with respect to landholding and other variables is the main theme of this article. The data come from an agrarian and considerably backward area of north-east Japan where harvest failures were not infrequent even in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Well before the onset of industrialization, Edo was one of the biggest cities in the world, with a population of one million or more by the beginning of the eighteenth century. For next 150 years, until just before Edo changed its name to Tokyo in 1868, it is believed that Edo maintained this population level of one million, with about a half of the population being samurai and their families. In 1872, having seen a massive exodus of ex-shogunal retainers and their families, triggered by the collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate and the social and political uncertainties that followed, Tokyo's population stood at just 580,000, close to half the previous size. In addition, it is believed, the city's administrative functions were rapidly deteriorating. The population began to recover from about 1880 and exceeded the one-million mark in the 1890s. In other words, as many as half a million people migrated to Tokyo during this twenty-year period. In 1908 when a population survey was taken, the total population was then 1,626,000, and the number of people, particularly males, in each of the age groups 15–19, 20–24 and 25–29 was greater than the number in the 5–9 or the 10–14 group. There is a marked contrast with the situation in the late 1860s when the 20–24 group was smaller than the 10–14 or the 15–19 group. This survey suggests that many of the migrants who arrived at Tokyo in the period of growth were male, young and, probably, unmarried.

Before the Second World War, Osaka was called the Manchester of the East, because its industries, such as cotton spinning and metal work, played such an important role in the national economy. Osaka had also been a primary commercial centre of the country since the seventeenth century. It is, therefore, no exaggeration to say that Osaka was the centre of Japanese capitalism, and it was during the Taisho era, 1912–1926, that Osaka was most prosperous. In those days there was unceasing immigration to Osaka, particularly into the urban area, in order to find employment. The migrants came primarily from rural areas, plus an increasing number from Korea. Under such circumstances, acute social problems emerged, in particular slums, unemployment and poverty.

During the Taisho period, the Osaka authorities were not unaware of the problem of poverty. First, the local authorities began to recognize the necessity of a municipal social policy and so they reorganized the administration in order to attack poverty. With this reorganization, a new department was formed to deal with all aspects of the social welfare of the inhabitants. Secondly, they actively carried out and published social surveys of urban poverty. From the information thus obtained, a relief system was established, consisting, for example, of social work and public assistance. Thirdly, urban officials accepted the responsibility of coping with urban poverty and actually made efforts to tackle it. They tried to define the meaning of poverty and the attitude of the local authorities towards poverty changed completely from that which had obtained in any previous period. It was in this era that the actual living and working conditions of the urban poor became apparent to the authorities and practical measures were taken to ameliorate poverty. For these reasons, Osaka provides us with an interesting case study.

The focus of this article is on the relationship between poverty and family formation in Osaka, including not only the circumstances of the urban poor but also the factors influencing the attitudes of the local authorities, who recognized the importance of the relationship between urban poverty and family formation, and the nature of the relief system they organized. Before going into detail concerning Osaka's poverty problems between 1912 and 1926, however, it is necessary to examine the set of circumstances which, one might argue, were critical in prompting Osaka to launch a social work programme.

What explains the gender division of labour in preindustrial economies? Although men and women frequently do different types of labour in any given society, men's and women's tasks vary considerably across different societies. In some societies, women engaged in trade and agriculture (in parts of Africa, for example); though these were men's duties in others (in parts of Europe, for example). At the same time, European historians discovered that women often engaged in tasks, such as agricultural labour and commerce, that were often assumed to be the domain of men, again suggesting a wide variation in the gender division of labour. Understanding the division of labour in preindustrial economies is important, because these historical cases often serve as implicit or explicit referents for understanding how much – or how little – has changed in contemporary societies.

A number of excellent works, such as those by Barbara Hanawalt and Martha Howell, have explored women's roles in the economy. However, often missing from treatments that focus on women's history is an analysis of the gender division of labour, that is, an explicit comparison of men's and women's activities. Undoubtedly, such a comparison is hampered by the difficulties of finding documentary sources that provide the appropriate type of evidence.

This article takes up this task in a particular way, by examining single-person households, composed of either males or females in fifteenth-century rural Tuscany. This empirical evidence is useful for several reasons. First, from an analytical perspective, it makes it possible to compare explicitly the activities of men and women who are in an identical position, that is, living alone. Second, as I discuss below, the documentary record from this period makes it possible to provide the evidence for this comparison. Third, this evidence provides historical information on a relatively under-researched group, rural widows and widowers. For example, there is generally more information available for Florentine women than for female rural inhabitants. Furthermore, little research explicitly compares men's and women's tasks to examine the gender division of labour. Although Piccinni and Mazzi and Raveggi provide much information about women's duties and activities in rural Tuscany, their work does not directly address the gender division of labour. While the archival evidence presented below cannot explain the division of labour at all points in individuals' life courses, it does provide explicitly comparative information about men and women.

Until late in the nineteenth century a considerable proportion of Dutch children had lost one or both parents by the time they reached adulthood. This was a consequence of low life expectancy, the high age at which reproduction started (partly due to late marriage) and high fertility within marriage. For the Netherlands in the period 1850 to 1900, the proportion of persons aged 20 or less who had lost one of their parents is estimated between 8 and 11 per cent; another 1 to 2 per cent had lost both parents. Despite the fact that orphanhood was a very common phenomenon in earlier centuries, little is known about how orphans in the past fared materially and psychologically, and our knowledge about the consequences of orphanhood, in particular full orphanhood, for the child is restricted. Only a general impression from diaries, letters, autobiographers and similar sources can be obtained. It is very difficult to acquire information on orphans – especially those outside institutions – from the customary demographic sources. Information on the effects of institutional care for orphans and their ‘institutional careers’ is also very limited, mainly as a result of the lack of good, individual-level data indicating the age, occupation or family background of inmates at the time of their admission or exit.