Iju ̄in Y., with S. Kawai
Marriage during the ritsuryo ̄ era
Marriage in classical Japan was fundamentally a matter of the mutual intentions of a man and a
woman. Marriage ceremonies, as such, did not exist until the late Heian period.^33 Prior to that, a
marriage was deemed to begin when a man started visiting a woman (tsumadoi), and to have ended
when he stopped visiting her. Women also could terminate marital relationships by keeping the
doors to their home closed to their spouses.
Although some couples ultimately established their own new households, in many cases a man
lived in his wife’s residence. Even when a wife moved to her husband’s residence, neither his
parents nor the next generation (i.e., the couple’s son and his wife) lived there.^34 The Manyōshū
includes poems describing this marriage pattern—a man meets a woman, they confirm their
mutual affections, the man begins visiting the woman, and then he stops, thus ending their mar-
riage. Another poem from the same collection, written by a young woman for her boyfriend,
explains that she could finally marry him because she obtained permission from her mother. This
suggests that women’s mothers held significant influence over their daughters’ marriages.
Prior to the late Nara period, even the sovereign’s wives, including his queen consort, did not
live at his royal palace. Each of his wives had her own independent household (called “kisaki no
miya”) and lived separately, outside the royal palace.^35 The office of queen consort was established
during the reign of Kōnin (709–781, r. 770–781) in the late Nara period, and her residence was
constructed within the royal palace for the first time. During the era of Kanmu (737–806, r.
781–806), residences for other wives of the monarch also began to be constructed within the
royal palace.^36
In Tang China, marriage entailed a contract between the families of the husband and the wife,
established by a ceremony based on Confucian rituals. A sexual relationship outside these bound-
aries was considered to be “illicit” and became subject to punishment. Only by marrying and
joining her husband’s family member could a Tang woman attain status recognized under the
law.^37 Consequently, the legal terms designating women within a household differed according
to her marital status: unmarried women were referred to as nü (Japanese: nyo) while married
women were called fú (Japanese: fu). In Japan, however, marriage did not alter a woman’s legal
status. Thus we find a gloss to the Japanese ritsuryō code explaining that “nyo” refers not just to
unmarried women, but to females in general (as opposed to men).^38
The Taihō Code (701) specified the hierarchy among the monarch’s wives: a queen consort
(kōgō), a second- level wife (hi), a third- level wife (bunin), and a fourth- level wife (hin).^39 The codes
use the terms “wives” or “concubines” to define female spouse types, but such differentiation in
actual practice was only recognized for the wives of the monarch.
The Ko ryō also included seven conditions under which a husband could leave his wife; if she
met any one of them, such as “being jealous,” he could unilaterally divorce her. The degree to
which this clause reflected actual marriage practices is, however, open to question. For while
some clauses—such as the provision allowing children to be included in their mother’s household
register—were altered in the Japanese codes, to reflect differences between Japanese and Chinese
societies, many others were simply carried verbatim into the Japanese codes. Historians examin-
ing families in classical Japan must, therefore, be mindful of the possibility of discrepancies
between the law and actual practice. Important primary texts to study this topic are the two com-
mentaries on the Yōrō Code, Ryō no gige and Ryō no shūge, which were compiled during the early
Heian period.