For almost 700 years between the 12th and 19th centuries, Japan was ruled by a shogun. This was the age of samurai and the formation of a modern nation of Japan. This period also sold the emergence of new ideas about love making and marriage. Today, we'll be looking at love, marriage, divorce, and sexual culture in shogun-era-japan. If you enjoy videos like this topic, please like and subscribe to the channel for more content like this. This video is brought to you by March of Empires. We're always looking for new ways to explore history, and March of Empires is an enjoyable way to do just that.
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It is sometimes being said that there was no such thing as a romance in pre-modern Japan. This isn't really true. Plenty of love stories exist from this period, but it is true that love was not an important part of marriage, or sex for most of the Shogun period. Marriage itself was an ill-defined institution in earlier Japanese history. In the early Shogunate, marriages were not ceremonial events or legal contracts, but merely social agreements between a couple. Even cohabitation for spouses was a relatively new aspect of marriage in the 12th and 13th centuries. Modern ideas of marriage were still forming, so it's no surprise that there were many different approaches to it across time and between different classes. Elites and commoners had very different ideas about it.
For the average Japanese person, there wasn't much hassle involved. Initially, a couple would decide to live together, call themselves married, and maybe have a small celebration. But that would be it. Later on in this period, as laws around inheritance and property tightened up, marriage became an economic question as well. Parents and families might be involved in deciding on a union, and later contracts started to be drawn up between families to talk through the exchange of property and wealth that came with a marriage. There were some specific limitations and requirements put in place too. For example, in many regions, it became illegal to marry someone from a different region. Although, given that the average person would never travel beyond their region, this restriction meant little to the average person. Another complication was Gia Kuenkong, the marriage of a widow to her dead husband's older brother. This practice was forbidden for samurai, but it was permitted for commoners, and in some cases, it was even required by law in order to keep the wife in the family.
For elites, the economic and political aspects of marriage were always important. Parents almost always took the lead in arranging marriages for their children. These marriages were political maneuvers that secured or advanced the family's position. When a couple married, the woman became a part of the man's family, so naturally, both sides of the arrangement wanted to be sure that their daughter was going to be taken care of, or that the new daughter-in-law would bring value to her new family. One exception to this was the practice of Yossi Angumi or adoptive marriages. In these scenarios, a man would marry into the wife's family. This was rare, but could happen if the family lacked the son of their own to inherit their titles and property. Interestingly, while the adoption and the marriage came together, the marriage could later be broken without losing the adoption.
In many of these marriages, a prenuptial agreement was drawn up. The promised a groom a portion of the family's assets if the marriage failed. It was up to the bride's father to decide whether to break the adoption agreement as well, so it was not unheard of for a man to divorce his wife and still end up with her family's wealth.
All potential marriages among the elites had to be approved by one's direct feudal lord. It was also prohibited for a family serving one regional lord, called a Daimyo, to marry someone whose family served a different Daimyo. Potential couples also had to be of a similar social status to avoid upsetting the delicate social order.
Arguably, the most important part of a new marriage among the elites was the dowry. This exchange of wealth from wife to husband was the most important part of a marriage negotiation, and a larger dowry made a match far more likely.
The most powerful Daimyo's paid for elaborate dowries for their daughters, and some dowries became so large that the groom had to designate a whole room in their house to contain all of the gifts. Bridal manuals from the period show some of the things one might expect in a dowry. Pottery, jewelry, folding screens, instruments, incense, clothes, books, painting and calligraphy items, or teasets to name just a few.
The array of gifts would have to be carried to the groom's house, and often the transfer of the dowry became an event in itself, as parades of servants carried precious gifts from one house to the other. Naturally, these massive dowries were beyond the means of the regular person. The average Japanese bride might not come with a dowry at all, or if they did, it was only a small amount and hardly enough to make or break the marriage.
Later in the Shogunat period, some truery laws were passed to restrict the displays of wealth allowed by commoners in their dowries, in order to emphasize the class differences of Japanese society.
在幕府时代的后期,一些欺骗法律被通过以限制平民在嫁妆中所允许的财富展示,以强调日本社会的阶级差异。
This period also saw the emergence of wedding ceremonies. These ceremonies were restricted mostly to the elites, as only they could afford the time and money for them. These ceremonies were social occasions, but not religious ones. The religious idea of a wedding would not emerge in Japan until the late 19th century, but they still had plenty of rituals and traditions to partake in.
Initially, Japanese weddings occurred at night, but by the 17th century they moved to the daytime. Many familiar elements of modern Japanese weddings first showed up around this time. Brides usually wore a white kimono and headdress, for example. Welfare brides might be carried to their husband's home on a palanquin, in a procession known as Koshiyada.
The wedding ceremony also featured the ritualistic drinking of sake, after which a bride would change into a new outfit gifted to her by the groom, symbolizing her new place in her husband's family. One coin tradition among the wealthiest families was called Kai-okai-watashi. This was the gifting of a box of decorated shells from the bride's family to the grooms. The shells would all be decorated with parts of an artwork, pattern, or poem, and then broken up in place inside the box. The broken shells represented the newlywed couple, who had to be put together in order to make the complete picture.
Married life was much as one would expect. Men held the power in the home, and children were a central part of a married couple's life. Monogamy was a strict requirement for women, but not for men, who might be expected to have concubines if they were rich, or perhaps to visit brothels if they were lower on the social scale.
Adultery by a woman was a serious crime with severe punishments. The standard punishment for adultery was death for the woman and the man who slept with her. In the 16th century, the Lord demanded that the offenders kill themselves. Failing that, the husband was required to kill them himself, although in the 18th century the requirement was dropped, and the husband was merely allowed to do so if he wished.
It was even legal for the family or village of the husband to kill an unfaithful wife and her lover on the husband's behalf if the husband was away when the scandal was uncovered. In 1742, Takogawa Yoshimune issued an extensive set of laws covering all sorts of adulterous scenarios. For example, a man who attempted to seduce another man's wife would receive the death penalty. A couple found to be planning to commit adultery would be banished. Meanwhile, a woman who killed her husband to cover up her affair would be publicly humiliated and then crucified.
The harshness of these laws reflected the idea that marriage was an essential part of social order. Adultery disrupted the balance of Japanese society and was an act of rebellion against the authority of the husband. The importance of social order and marriage law is also shown by the fact that punishments were more cruel when the adulterous couple came from different social classes.
Adultery was scandalous for people on every level of society, but commoners treated it differently to elites. The laws may have demanded execution, and this was broadly followed for the elites, but commoners usually prefer to negotiate through the affair without killing anyone. After all, if adultery was seen as a crime against the social order, killing two members of the village or community would be even more damaging.
Instead of execution, the offending couple would be shamed, maybe even banished, but killing them was usually a step too far. The inevitable outcome of these scandals for commoners was divorce. Divorce was relatively easy and didn't come with much social stigma. As a general rule, any children from the marriage remained with the husband, while the wife returned to her own family. We have no reliable records for the divorce rates among commoners, but records indicate that about 10% of die-mew marriages ended in divorce during the late Shogun period.
That obviously doesn't mean the other 90% of marriages were happy ones. No doubt many elites married purely for economic benefit, and simply shipped their wives off to an estate where they wouldn't have to see them again. In the Shogun era, there was a lot of legal freedom for divorce, but sometimes economic or social concerns could be a barrier. Firstly, the power of divorce was almost exclusively in the hands of men.
In theory, a man could divorce his wife at any moment by providing her with a Mikudari Han, or a so-called three and a half lines. This document, named for its brevity, was all a man needed to declare his intent to divorce, and there was nothing the woman could do to dispute it. However, divorce came with certain obligations. By the Edo period, the principle of the return of the dowry was respected by almost everyone in Japanese society.
This required that a husband must return a dowry to his wife if he divorced her. This could be more complicated than it appears. Many people would spend the dowry and so they had to find other ways to cover the cost. Some men would borrow money, or perhaps seek another wife with a greater dowry to make up the difference. For elites, these dowrys could be massively expensive. If a man could not afford to repay the dowry, he was effectively unable to divorce his wife.
Many sayings and poems from this period talk about people trapped in marriages purely because they can't afford to repay the dowry and escape. Even if there wasn't a dowry, it was expected for the husband to provide a small settlement to the wife as a sign of respect. This was especially true in so-called Fujitsu-ren, or bad faith divorces, where the man's actions had caused some scandal that forced the end of the marriage. There were situations where a woman could initiate a divorce.
One of these was the Sakewatashi Rienjo, roughly translating to advanced letters of divorce. These were similar to the Mikudari Han, in that they were documents demanding a divorce, but these were given by the husband to his wife as a sort of insurance policy. If the wife felt that the husband was acting wrongly, she could present the letter to him and get out of the union. Sometimes these letters were written up as part of the marriage negotiation, and given to the wife's family. If the husband failed to take care of her, her family could step in and present the letters to dissolve the marriage.
Divorce itself wasn't dishonorable, even if the reasons behind it might be. Generally, people could remarry without issue. According to our records, most Dimeo divorces were followed up by a remarriage to someone else. However, anyone who remarried without finalising the divorce could face punishment. A man who remarried without clearly divorcing another wife would be exiled, while a woman would have her head shaved as a sign of her crime, and sent back to live with her parents.
Beyond marriage, Shogun Irojapan was accepting of many types of sexuality. Homosexuality was acceptable for both men and women, with no punishments targeting it like there were in Europe in this period. This sexual openness is reflected in popular literature from the period. The 17th century poet Iharas Saikaku often wrote about romance and sexual culture.
His life of an amorous man describes a man who took thousands of lovers, including hundreds of men, and a similar tale in life of an amorous woman featured depictions of lesbian relationships. It should be noted however that homosexuality was almost exclusively a sexual dynamic, and occasionally a romantic one, but marriage was strictly between a man and a woman.
Homosexuality was strongly associated with the upper classes of society. In one 17th century story called the Boer's Tale, a group of men debate whether loving a woman or a young man is better. While they agree that a woman is ultimately the best, they also say that loving young men was a more suitable idea for the warrior aristocracy.
The most common manifestation of this elite homosexuality was the non-Shogun tradition, which paired older mentors with younger boy students. The older man treated the younger as a sort of apprentice, teaching them the ways of politics and war, and in most cases they would also involve a sexual element. It was believed that such a relationship deepened the connection between teacher and student and had an enobling effect on the young boy. Many Japanese elites were known to partake in these relationships. Famous warlords like Tokugawa Ieyasu and Oda Nobunaga were known to have had both male and female lovers throughout their lives.
As time went on, the practice of non-Shogun spread beyond the samurai classes, and began being taken up by upper middle classes, such as merchants. The long-term mentoring aspect was difficult to translate, but the sexual relations were much easier to copy. During the Tokugawa period, non-Shogun lovers became more common in brothels. The commercialization of the non-Shogun tradition was a major contributor to the expansion of prostitution across Japan, in the 18th and early 19th century.
Prostitution was legal in specially designated pleasure zones throughout the Shogun era. It became ever more common over time as cities grew and as Japan's middle class expanded. The average prostitute was called a Yuju, and they applied their trade in the pleasure districts of Japan's many cities and towns. prostitution was not a dishonorable practice, and some prostitutes could become very well regarded. The most famous prostitutes were called Aurean, and were a sort of local celebrity, able to command a higher price and they were favourites of local elites, often becoming their mistresses. People of many pursuits could partake in prostitution on the side. Kabuki dancers, most of whom were male, often worked as prostitutes in addition to their performances.
However, by far the most famous of these types of people were the Gashagos. Emerging in the mid 18th century, Gashagos were mainly entertainers who were talented in a range of artistic pursuits, including drama, poetry, music, and song. Strickly speaking, Gashagos would not prostitutes, and in many cases it was forbidden for them to offer sexual service. However, many did so anyway.
By the early 19th century, the Gashagos had become icons of fashion and femininity. They displaced traditional courtesans and came to be seen as the preferred source of sexual and non-sexual entertainment for many elites. Today, popular culture still associates the Gashagos with prostitution, but in reality, the modern Gashagos are a far cry from their origins in the pleasure districts of Shogun Japan.
This openness to sexuality would not last forever. With the end of the Shogunet and the rise of imperial Japan, the culture around love making and marriage change significantly. If you want to learn more about what happened next, check out our recent video on the topic. For now, we have to part ways. We won't ask for you to repay the dowry, but we would greatly appreciate it if you could like this video and subscribe to our channel to show your support. Also, don't forget to check out March of Empires on Mobile or PC today.