Women's Status in Medieval Japan
Female Marriage and Labour in Japan's 14th-17th Centuries
Feb 25, 2007
In the ancient period of Japanese history (i.e. before the fourteenth century), husbands came to live in the houses of their new wives. In the pre-modern and modern period (from the seventeenth century until the Second World War), brides went to live with their husbands. In the period between the ancient and the modern, the system changed from one to the other. Why did this happen?
When men go to live in their wives’ homes, they add their labour and their goods to the female half of the marriage. This makes women more valuable and gives them more influence and control over their lives. When the reverse occurs, women take on much less importance and are much less valued as children – the value of boys increases concomitantly.
In their pre-married lives, girls are also more likely to be required to provide some labour. Depending on what social class they occupied, girls and, indeed, married women had different opportunities for income generation – and what they chose or were able to do had a big impact on their status.
Those women involved in the silk industry, for example, had a particularly high status. It is important to bear in mind that people belonged to a variety of different social classes and it was class membership that determined most powerfully what people were able to do.
One change that was important in the Medieval period was the increasing influence of the household (ie) compared to the clan (uji or ichimon). As the household became more important, the ranking and ordering of resources, including people, within the household increased. This was because the rule of law was enhanced across much of Japan, meaning people were subject to state-level laws rather than clan-based traditions and mores.
As laws become formalized and observed, then inevitably taxation of people and items become more widespread, since state governors wish both to maintain their position and households and also to promote the status and influence of their holdings by establishing religious institutions, transportation and military support.
In human terms, this means that people within the household had their value fixed officially and, as a result, the value of women, much of which of course happens in domestic or behind the scenes situations, the value of women declined compared to others. Wives and daughters, therefore, tended to be downgraded to the status of household servants.
A second change was that the legal wife had power which first increased and then decreased during the period under consideration. The strengthening of the household gave the legal wife more formal power over the various concubines and little wives that the male head of the household maintained; however, the responsibility for organizing household affairs was taken over by a set of servants and officials and the wife’s role diminished.
Generally, society became more complex as Japan became more and more of a hierarchy and roles became formalized – hence, only available to men. Women were not able to register assets in their own name, even when they were responsible for paying tax and providing corvée labour.
As in most societies, the rule of law spreads the tentacles of its influence increasingly through all parts of society. One implication of this is that certain activities are made more attractive to one set of people rather than another.
This often happens on gender-lines, with men becoming clustered in some activities (e.g. military, police, priesthood) and women in others (e.g. petty retail, tribal religions, domestic service); society as a whole then values the activities of one set of people above those of the others.
In modern societies too, the work that men tend to do is rewarded much better than the work that women tend to do. This did not happen by accident.
References and Further Reading
Kurushima, Noriko, “Marriage and Female Inheritance in Medieval Japan,” International Journal of Asian Studies, Vol.1, No.2 (2004), pp.223-45.
