DIVORCE IN JAPAN: Family, Gender and the State 1600-2000, by Harold Feuss.
Japan Times: Divorce was a tradition, the taboo an invention
In recent years there has been a cascade of media reports about the dysfunctional Japanese family...Harold Fuess writes about the "forgotten history" of Japanese divorce, reminding us that the recent surge is quite "traditional."...Elevated divorce rates are nothing new to Japan; indeed, 19th-century rates have been exceeded only by those in the post-1970s United States. As recently as the late 19th century, there was little stigma attached to divorce and multiple marriages were common. A civil code and new laws on family registration introduced in 1898, however, led to a sharp decline in divorce rates...After World War II, Japan gained an undeserved reputation for low divorce rates. The current "explosion," more than tripling since 1963, shows Japan "reverting to the high levels noted at the dawn of the twentieth century."...Fuess also asserts that Japan has been a pioneer in divorce law, noting that in "permitting no-fault divorce, the Western divorce codes adopted the nonmoralistic approach to divorce found in Japanese legislation since the nineteenth century."
