|
A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org.What Is a Family? explores the histories of diverse households during the Tokugawa period in Japan (1603-1868). The households studied here differ in locale and in status-from samurai to outcaste, peasant to merchant-but what unites them is life within the social order of the Tokugawa shogunate. The circumstances and choices that made one household unlike another were framed, then as now, by prevailing laws, norms, and controls on resources. These factors led the majority to form stem families, which are a focus of this volume. The essays in this book draw on rich sources-population registers, legal documents, personal archives, and popular literature-to combine accounts of collective practices (such as the adoption of heirs) with intimate portraits of individual actors (such as a murderous wife). They highlight the variety and adaptability of households that, while shaped by a shared social order, do not conform to any stereotypical version of a Japanese family Frontmatter -- Contents -- Lists of Illustrations and Tables -- A Note to Readers -- Introduction / Berry, Mary Elizabeth / Yonemoto, Marcia -- PART ONE. NORMS: STEM STRUCTURES AND PRACTICES -- 1. The Language and Contours of Familial Obligation in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Japan / Spafford, David -- 2. Adoption and the Maintenance of the Early Modern Elite: Japan in the East Asian Context / Yonemoto, Marcia -- 3. Imagined Communities of the Living and the Dead: The Spread of the Ancestor-Venerating Stem Family in Tokugawa Japan / Drixler, Fabian -- 4. Name and Fame: Material Objects as Authority, Security, and Legacy / Pitelka, Morgan -- 5. Outcastes and Ie : The Case of Two Beggar Boss Associations / Ehlers, Maren -- PART TWO. CASE STUDIES: STEM ADAPTATIONS AND THREATS -- 6. Governing the Samurai Family in the Late Edo Period / Roberts, Luke -- 7. Fashioning the Family: A Temple, a Daughter, and a Wardrobe / Stanley, Amy -- 8. Social Norms versus Individual Desire: Conventions and Unconventionality in the History of Hirata Atsutane's Family / Walthall, Anne -- 9. Family Trouble: Views from the Stage and a Merchant Archive / Berry, Mary Elizabeth -- 10. Ideal Families in Crisis: Official and Fictional Archetypes at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century / Atherton, David -- Appendix Suggestions for Further Reading -- Contributors -- Index
|
