Abstract
Most of voluminous bibliographies relating to the family law issues and the marriage system in particular have failed, according to the author, to make fact analysis of statistical materials, with their deplorable tendency to discuss over literal interpretation of law, legal policy, unanalysed report of facts, or ideological doctrine. The author made two kinds of statistical survey of the date of marriage registration to meet such a failure.
Assumptions of these surveys are that this problem has some connections with that of unregistered marriage, the statistical survey of which is also few, and that the problem is considerably influenced by status quo of the family system.
The first survey was made with a view to ascertaining the interval between the date of birth of the first child of each couple and the date of their marriage registration. The complete sampling method has been taken of the children born in 1935-1958 of the first marriage couples, the registered heads of which have been domiciled at and resident in any of the most typical wards of residence, commerce and industry, commerce only, and industry only. (The materials regarding the last ward are not utilized here because they were lost by a typhoon.) The total samples of 10066 show the following results. 1. The cases were unexpectedly many, both before and after World War II, where the wife was registered into the husband's family register not soon after the marriage celebration but at the time of wife's pregnancy or child's birth, in other words, the marriage was transformed from de facto to de jure at that moment. 2. The cases, where the marriage registration was given within 14 days after the birth of the first child, amounted to a considerable number and were not rare in latest years. (The 14 days is the period, within which the notification of birth is legally required to be made.) 3. Only in recent years, the trend has been observable that the first children are born 9 or 10 months after the marriage registration of their parents.
The second survey had its aim to clarify the interval between the date of the wedding ceremony stated in the marriage registration form and the date of birth of the first child. 4409 samples selected among couples registered in the family register in any of the above-mentioned wards revealed the following results. 1. The number of the wedding ceremony reaches the peak in October throughout this period. This would have given the author good reason to claim that the wedding ceremony is controlled by one of customary rules. 2. The number of the cases, where the marriage registration is completed within a month after the date of the wedding ceremony, is greatest in every ward and period.
It is also concluded that these two kinds of statistical survey demonstrate the existence of some customary marriage rules in every ward, without any statistical significant difference.
