13
Gender and family in the archaic
and classical ages
Iju ̄in Yo ̄ko, with Sachiko Kawai
The meaning of “family” in classical Japan was significantly different from the “family” that we
know today. The concept of “family” went through many organizational and functional changes
throughout history.
Because studies of family history developed along with the history of state formation, family
structure in classical Japan has been considered a matter of important historical concern. Until the
1970s, most historians of Japan claimed that by the time of the early state formation, a patrilineal
and patriarchal family system had already been established, and therefore women were under the
control of male family heads.
Not everybody assented to this mainstream view, however. In the 1930s, Takamure Itsue
proposed that classical Japanese society was not based on unilateral descent. Although her argu-
ment was largely ignored in Japan for several decades, Western scholars embraced it almost
immediately, incorporating Takamure’s views into their own work and thereby improving
understanding of marriage patterns in classical Japan.^1 William H. McCullough, for example,
contended that early and mid- Heian marriage was never virilocal but rather duolocal, uxorilocal,
or neolocal. In any of these three residential modes of marriage, wives and their parents were
expected to have been major financial supporters, although such expectations and real practices
differed according to the economic power of the wife’s family, the age of the married couple, and
other variables.^2
Scholarship on classical Japanese history and women’s history has made significant progress
since the late twentieth century, and has proven that during classical times Japanese women held
rights to own property and to participate in community rituals, just as did men. These studies
show that there were female leaders at different levels, from village to province, and that at the
level of the realm, women were enthroned and exercised ruling power. This new scholarship has
also discovered that women’s social status in classical Japan was different from their status in
ancient Greece and Rome, and in other Asian areas including India and China.^3 As a result of
these discoveries, scholarship starting in the 1980s proposed a new theory of classical Japanese
society based on a bilateral family principle, and further refined the understanding of its kinship
structure.^4