The form of marriage described in Namura’s text, if less in elite details than in broad structure, was the culturally normative pattern celebrating the entrance of a bride into her groom’s household. Several terms for this marriage appropriately focus on the bride: yometori (taking a bride), yomeiri (the entrance of a bride), and yomemukae (welcoming a bride). This pattern likely began among some early warrior families during the Heian period, particularly provincial families living far from the practices of the royal capital, Kyoto.1 There, aristocrats practiced a complex system incorporating both matrilocal marriage and patrilineal descent of titles and ranks. A husband lived in his wife’s home but inherited his own family’s titles; a wife inherited her family’s holdings independent of her husband.2 This arrangement of co-residence and independent inheritance drew the female perspectival boundary of “daughter-wife” greatly toward the daughter’s identity in terms of inheritance and natal family investment.3 With the rise of the warrior class as the new elites in the medieval period, virilocal marriage slowly came to share center stage with—and eventually pushed to the margins—matrilocal marriage. Still, unlike the Tokugawa period, marriage at this time is difficult to describe
Outside of broad characterization. Patterns were in flux, likely variegated with locality and class, and, as several interpreters have noted, they defied clarification due to the vagaries of both marriage documents and the spousal relationship itself.4 What is clearer is that since marriage was more of an inheritance arrangement than an emotional arrangement, the gradual rise of virilocality also roughly charted the slow decline of female inheritance throughout the Kamakura (1185—1333) and Muromachi periods. Much of this decline was due to chronic political unrest over the centuries that drove warrior families to opt for single inheritance to a son rather than divided inheritance as a means to concentrate household wealth in unstable times.5 Whereas divided inheritance “nearly guaranteed property rights to daughters” and placed upon their shoulders the same responsibility of successful stewardship that their brothers carried, single inheritance made that earlier guarantee effectively null.6 A family that maintained full inheritance rights for its son while giving its daughter in marriage with limited or no inheritance acted on a common strategy of protecting the household through single inheritance to the son and creating allies with another household through marrying off one’s daughter. By following this common strategy a normative custom was born that redrew the female perspectival boundary toward a wife’s identity. Although single inheritance to the eldest son was not codified into warrior law until the second century of the Tokugawa hegemony, in 1727 single inheritance, even if not always to the first son, had long been a household practice among most samurai families.7 Further, codification of virilocal rites among Ise and Osagawara ritualists standardized yometori rites. With the emergence and gradual spread of the ie among the commoner population, options of single inheritance and virolocality also spread. It is this history that shaped much of Tokugawa marriage.
The form of Tokugawa marriage practices was multiple. The virilocal pattern of yometori shared in this multiplicity. People could perform the ceremony in a simple and economically frugal manner, or they might put on quite an elaborate show. Even the elite version of marriage described in Namura’s A Record of Treasures for Women includes simpler variations that required only the consumption of some plucked barracuda and the sharing of sake between the couple.8 In his book Barbershop (Ukiyodoko), Shikitei Sanba (1776—1822) presents, through one of his characters, a description of preparations for a lower-class commoner wedding where a simple repast of tofu, dried bonito, and miso accompanied by tea and sake is quickly set out shortly before the bride arrives.9
In this way the widespread virilocality of yometori embraced the high and low, the ritually complex and ritually simple, and thus its performance reflected both cultural centrality and class centrality.
Other marriage patterns existed. There is a wealth of research in Japan, both classic and contemporary, that delineates morphologically and charts historically these patterns in connection with the normative growth of the virilocal pattern.10 Although beyond the scope of this study, in broad portrayal such patterns were alternatives to the Toku-gawa yometori by way of either local custom or family strategy. They fall under the terms mukotori and mukoiri. Each term describes movement of the son-in-law (muko) into the bride’s residence for a period of time, which could range from temporary to permanent. There are two applications of mukotori that are important in understanding yometori marriage and some of the alternatives to it that operated prior to and during the Tokugawa: First, mukotori is a synonym for the marriage pattern called tsumadoi, which literally means to “call on a wife.” This duolocal pattern, defined by separate spousal residences and the husband’s visitation to the wife’s household, had been practiced in various forms throughout much of the country’s history, and it was still customary among particular groups in the Tokugawa.11 Second, mukotori also describes the entrance of a son-in-law into a household. He marries, is adopted as the eldest son, and receives the family inheritance. This pattern, unlike the ancient matrilocality of the Heian period, was used largely as a strategy to ensure the household’s continuity in the absence of a son or in the presence of a capable daughter whom the family did not want to lose as future manager.
Visitation marriage was based on the needs and customs of particular groups. One example is the need to maximize specialized female labor, such as that of women divers (ama). Coastal villages whose economies were tied to divers typically practiced forms of tsumadoi. Since these women divers generated income for the families with whom they resided, the departure of a strong diver upon marriage was customarily delayed so that her family could enjoy the maximum fruit of her labors. It was not unusual for spouses to live apart for several years while the wife continued diving for her family, though the man would visit frequently. However, it was only after a diver finally moved into her husband’s house that he could claim her labor and its income-generating potential.12
The second Tokugawa use of mukotori marriage describes a son-inlaw’s entrance into a woman’s natal home. Like the first use mentioned
Above, it, too, was linked to economic issues, particularly single inheritance to a male heir, and suggests the improvisational character of household inheritance. Local customs sometimes dictated other forms of inheritance and household headship, such as a pattern favoring the eldest daughter.13 However, this form of inheritance was typically meant to be temporary (as were most types of female inheritance), for the eldest daughter was also called to relinquish, at least nominally, her headship at some point to an entering groom.14 Outside of custom, commoner women filled headship positions in the interim to secure the maintenance of the household until a permanent male head was acquired.15 Contributing to the maintenance of her natal household and taking care of her parents could, if a woman and her parents so decided, trump any expectations to marry. The Tokugawa money economy allowed women to support their ie financially and avoid marriage—both yometori and mukotori patterns—altogether.16 Whether embedded in local custom or simply an extemporized measure, mukotori represents a type of matrilocal marriage pattern in operation during the Tokugawa. In particular, the mukotori pattern as a strategy for households with only daughters or without a capable son was the most culturally salient type of matrilocality among commoners against the normative backdrop of virilocal marriage. The entering male, destined to be both son-in-law and adopted son, was called, appropriately, mukoyoshi, which combines the characters for “son-in-law” and “adopted child.” The mukoyoshi shared certain similarities of discomfort with the incoming bride of the fertility model, such as being an outsider unfamiliar with the ways of the household. As an outsider, an adopted son-in-law could be pressured into writing out a writ of divorce for his wife and her family and leaving the household.17 Being an outsider, however, at least held the promise of headship for an entering son-in-law. In this important sense, mukotori, unlike yometori, which emphasized incorporation of the outsider, emphasized adoption of the outsider with the full legal rights of an inheriting son.18 As an adoption arrangement, it could bring to a family in search of a groom mixed feelings of awkwardness and relief. A sixteenth-century poem gives subtle expression to this in describing a bride’s family crossing a small, rickety bridge to greet her groom, who will enter its house as both stranger and future head: “It is dangerous/But also makes us joyful/The log bridge/We cross in the evening/To welcome the groom.”19
The yometori pattern also provided an incoming bride with a metaphorical bridge to cross, but hers was sturdy and strong, built as it was on a foundation of cultural assumptions that had firmed over time through
Ritual codification and then later through adaptation and dissemination by guides like A Record of Treasures for Women. This bridge also acted as a passage toward increased social status among commoners. Similar to the way money allowed merchants to purchase their own sense of status and worth in spite of their officially low social standing—often through participation in the materialistically driven culture of the quarters—the malleable complexity and cost of ritual ceremonialism allowed commoner families to participate vicariously in the elite lifestyle, ultimately making their own whatever parts they could afford and desired. Another indication of the cultural centrality of the yometori style is that the pleasure quarters broadly drew from its ritual pattern in creating rites of association between courtesans and clients. Because the ceremony was a mirror of social refinement, bordello owners avidly drew from it as well, adapting it to establish their own sense of elegance, decorum, and ceremony.
World History
