| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺北教育大學 === 台灣文化研究所 === 101 === The concept of marriage in Taiwan changed with the introduction of Western laws and civilization during the early period of Japanese rule in Taiwan. Starting in 1989, The Book of Statistics of Governor-General of Taiwan began to record figures about marriage and divorce in Taiwan. During that time, Chinese Taiwan Daily News and Taiwan Daily News also constantly reported court verdicts in divorce cases and stories about people suffering in the marriage and seeking “divorce” application from the government agency. From Song Dynasty to Qing Dynasty, “divorce” or “repudiation” was something that people would avoid and manage to conceal. However, use of such “right” became common in Taiwan during the Japanese occupation period. Given the “right to divorce”, Taiwanese women could legally put an end to the torture of their marriage. Such behavior, which might infringe the right of the husband’s family, was allowed in a particular legal and social context, which is the primary focus of this study.
This study also explores the changes in Taiwanese people’s thinking about marriage from a limited number of newspapers and magazines issued during the Japanese occupation period, including Taiwan Daily News, Taiwan Laws Monthly, Patriotic Women’s News, Police Association Magazine, and The World of Mortals (Hong-Chen). After the laws regulating divorce were introduced, the concepts of “free marriage” and “free love” came into Taiwan’s society with Japan’s westernization. The new concept of marriage suggests that traditional marriage that contradicts human nature be eradicated. As purported by the Western civilization, people should be allowed to decide on their marriage, and their marriage should be based on love rather than simply a decision by parents. Of course, this argument triggered extensive debate in the traditional Taiwanese and Japanese societies. At last, a compromised view between the pros and cons was also considered. The discussion about “free love” and “free marriage” emerged in the 1900s, building a foundation for more extensive and mature debate on related issues in the 1920s. The coverage of new discourses on love in local newspapers, such as Taiwan Min Bao, helped popularize the concepts of “free love” and “free marriage” from Western civilization and fueled more discussion about women’s marriage issues in Taiwan.
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