The Evolution of Taiwan Family Property System fromthe Qing Dynasty to the Japanese Ruling Period-Investigation of a Legal History

• Main Authors: Hsieh, Meng-Yun, 謝孟芸
• Other Authors: Xu,Shi-Rong
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/58100996315811788002

碩士 === 國立臺中教育大學 === 區域與社會發展學系碩士班 === 100 === The thesis took “family property system” as the specific topic to explore family property system’s course of evolution from the Qing Dynasty to the Japanese Ruling Period in Taiwan. The concept of “family property” originated from the “family property system” in the Qing Dynasty. A “family” was the basic unit of national organization and social organization of the Han race. Internally, they took common living as the objective, and they lived together and shared property; externally, the eldest male in the family was taken as the representative to exercise the rights in public law and private law. At that time, there was no so-called property inheritance concept like the existing Civil Law now; therefore, in the family, each son was taken as the representative, and equal division of family property by each son was taken as the principle to allot the property to the families of new generation via “dividing up family property.” The Japanese started to rule Taiwan from 1895. Guided by the Japanese authorities, the process of adopting modern European Continental Law (a.k.a. Civilian Law, or Civil Law) had also begun. Although the traditional “family property” concept was kept in the non-governmental circles, and seeing from official statements, the family property system during the Japanese ruling period always took the old customs to stipulate in the rules, the meaning of the family property system had started to change, and the court of Governor-General Office that possessed the final explanation right for the old customs of family property utilized the old custom reformation mechanism to reform Taiwanese’ old customs of family either fast or slowly in different period. In the initial Japanese ruling period, basically, the individualism principle was taken to reform Taiwanese’s internal relationship of the family to transform it into the family property system of separation of living and property, for example, to recognize an individual as the right holder of the property right; hence, the family property belonged to the male householder personally. Through more than forty years of reformation, the so-called Taiwanese’s old customs of family not only followed Japanese Family Law system in concept and framework, but a lot of content of old customs were infiltrated by the elements of Japanese Civil Law and modern laws. In the later Japanese ruling period, Taiwanese’s old customs of family indeed had the apparent inclination of Japanization, for example, taking the household as the owner of family property—this was the regulation inclined to Japanese Civil Law in the later Japanese ruling period. However, this did not mean that the traditional concept of “dividing up family property” had gradually disappeared in Taiwan society. The concept of “dividing up family property” still existed in the life of common people at that time, just that besides the traditional concept of taking “family” as one’s belonging, the family property system in the Japanese ruling period was influenced by individualism principle and household registration regulation, and had partial qualitative change. The influence of political power intervention on the system is limited. The formation of civic culture needed the observation of medium term to see the variation.