The Issue of Women’s Property Inheritance Rights in the Legislative Process of Manchukuo’s Law of Kinship and Inheritance

After the founding of Manchukuo in 1932, all citizens, except Japanese nationals, were subject to civil law in the Republic of China. Dissatisfied with the law that recognized equal inheritance rights for men and women, local judicial officers conducted a nationwide survey of family customs to draft new statutes after 1937. This study aims to draw on the documents concerning the debates of the time on the status of women using historical documents such as the Records of the Deliberation on the Outline of the Law of Kinship and Inheritance. The Civil Code Investigative Committee drafted a unified set of statutes for Manchu, Han, Mongolian, and Muslim citizens and completed the Outline of the Manchukuo Law of Kinship and Inheritance in February 1942. The Japanese and a few Chinese members attempted to draft statutes based on the principle of gender equality; however, many Chinese members, citing Manchu and Han customs, refused to recognize women’s rights to inheritance. In the end, the latter faction’s opinion was incorporated into the law, legalizing patrilineal family organization and upholding the patrilineal inheritance of family headship (zongtiao 宗祧). What had been legitimized, however, was not a customary family system per se, but rather the reform of traditional family customs, resulting in the separation of the right to property inheritance from that of zongtiao inheritance; the former recognized wives’ and daughters’ right of inheritance in the absence of male offspring and wives’ claim to their own separate property. The social context in which this law was drafted was that the firm perception favoring women’s inheritance of property had already permeated public opinion in Manchukuo. Men valued consanguinity more than zongtiao inheritance and did not oppose women inheriting family wealth. Considering the above context of legislative decisions, the author concludes that Manchukuo society was characterized by the weakening of the traditional Chinese kinship system, which accompanied colonial modernization.