This paper will examine the debates surrounding the married couple and conjugal love which took place in the periodical Jogaku zasshi throughout the last third of the nineteenth century. Run by Iwamoto Yoshiharu (1863–1942), this magazine appears to have been the place of reflection on the specificities of Western love, the poor nature of the pre-modern types of love, and the need to transpose this particular kind of love—the only one befitting a civilized nation—to Japan. At stake here was the establishment of an ideal model for the modern couple. Iwamoto was not seeking a revolution. Yet in fighting for a new family model based on equality between husband and wife, he laid the groundwork for the changes that Japan would undergo throughout the twentieth century. His modernity competed with the modernity of the editors of the first Civil Code, over which it would triumph a century later.