Mama mo

1. MOTIVATION:
1. What do you know about Japanese society? 2.what
stereotypes exist when we talk about samurai?
3. What are your expectations when it comes to samurai
women? Why do you expect this?

2. BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE:
In ancient times, arranged marriages were
considered the norm in Japanese society. According
to Monica Bincsik (2015). "The social structure of the
Edo period (1615-1868) developed under the strict
control of the Tokugawa military regime. During this
period, the families of the shogunate and provincial
leaders (daimyo)arranged marriages based on
political interests, and the consent of the shogunate
was necessary for a daimyo wedding. The betrothed
always came from the same social
strata.BACKGROUND"

3. BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE:
This was done with the help of a go-between or a
matchmaker. According to the New World
Encyclopedia (2014). "Omiai (Japanese B&W)or miai
(the ois honorific) is a traditional Japanese custom
whereby unattached individuals are introduced to
each other to consider the possibility of marriage.
Parents may enlist the aid of professional
matchmakers, nakado (Japanese: #A) (intermediary
or go-between, literally "middle person'), who charge
a fee to provide pictures and resumes of potential
mates who are rich, cultured, and/or well-educated.
The word omial is used to describe both the entire
process as well as the first meeting between the
couple, with the matchmaker and the couple's
parents present."

4. In the excerpt you are about to
read, you will learn what samurai
women were like. This part follows
the samurai woman, Chie, and how
she was able to marry her husband,
Kan.

5. Lydia Minatoya

6. Biolography:
• Born: Born 1950, in Albany, NY;
Educator and Writer.
•Books: Talking to High Monks in the Snow: An
Asian-American Odyssey, Harper-Collins (New York,
NY), 1992.
•Award: , New York Pubic Library Books to
Remember Award,Pacific Northwest Bookseller
Award

7. •Education: Saint Lawrence University,
B.A., 1972, George Washington
University, M.Ed., 1976; University of
Maryland, Ph.D., 1981.
•Boston University, Boston, MA, member
of staff, 1981- 83; University of Maryland,
lecturer in Tokyo and Okinawa, Japan,
1983-85; North Seattle Community
College, Seattle, WA, faculty member.
Spent two years teaching psychology and
American culture in Japan and China.

8. The Strangeness of
Beauty
By Lydia Minatoya

9. In Which I Recount Fuji History The
Fujis are samurai: warriors belonging
to a category of elite shi families that
included nobles, members of the
imperial court, and priests. An ancient
proud people,samurai traced their
ancestry back eight hundred years,
ranked only one step below nobility,
and pledged to serve until death-the
honor of their family name and that of
their liege lord.

10. By the year 1500 Japan was divided
between 250 continually warring regional
warlords, each hoping to attain centralized
power. During those years of constant civil
wars, birth into a samurai family meant a
boy might see battle by the age of thirteen.
In preparation, a mother whispered war
strategies to the child that slept in her
womb. As a toddler, a son was taught
respect for elders, compassion for women,
and cooperation with other boys.

11. By age seven, he spent ten hours a day drilling
in mental discipline, moral integrity, archery,
lancing, and swordsmanship. He shot arrows
into racing rabbits as a means of preparing to
kill. Between the ages of thirteen and fifteen,
the boy took part in a genbuku ceremony, at
which he received an adult name, a haircut
shaved and styled into a topknot, and a suit of
armor. Whether he survived his first year in
battle boiled down to two factors: how well he
had learned his lessons, and random dumb luck.

12. During those days, many samurai daughters also
trained to do battle. In addition, they studied
philosophy, history, and literature-frequently
gaining distinction as poets, novelists, or
scholars. Although a samurai daughter's primary
duty was to provide her father with military and
political alliance through marriage, and following
that, to provide her husband with a male heir, in
1180 Tomoe Gozen fought by her husband's side
at the battle of Uji.

13. After bravely fighting off enemy forces-to
allow her besieged husband time to
commit a suicide that was more
honorable than conceding defeat-the
noble lady's life was spared and she
retired to a monastery, where she won
praise for her holy life. And there was
samurai Hosokawa Jako, who became
famous for climbing her castle's highest
rooftop, to spy on an enemy
encampment, and sketching a detailed
map with her lip rouge.

14. Yet despite this great heritage of courage
and honor, samurai have become
obsolete. The decline of the samurai
began in 1606, when warlord Tokugawa
leyasu reneged on a deathbed promise.
Having sworn to protect the six-year-old
heir of his old ally Toyotomi Hideyoshi-
who had succeeded in suppressing other
warlords and had seized control of
Japan-Tokugawa instead killed the boy.
Thus began fifteen generations (1606-
1869) of the Tokugawa shogunate.

15. Introducing the policy of "peace at
home, isolation from abroad," the
Tokugawa shoguns prevented the
reemergence of domestic military
competitors by developing a threefold
strategy. First they banished the
emperor and his court to figurehead
status. Then they demanded that
regional lords and their samurai leave
their wives and children at the shogun's
Edo (Tokyo) court.

16. Finally they forced these lesser lords and
samurai to spend half their time alone in their
home provinces, and half visiting their families
in Edo. They were to alternate every other year.
The shoguns' plan was a shrewd one. The
expense involved in maintaining double
residences neatly removed any money that
could be used for mounting insurrections. More
important, the policy made hostages of family
members living lavish yet closely surveyed court
lives. UNIT V: World History and Literature 103

17. As a result, during the two centuries of
Tokugawa power, the lives of the
samurai changed. Cut off from their
lands, they could not farm. Taught to
believe in a society where "no man
should be too rich or too poor," they
were suspicious of trade, in which they
were forbidden by law from engaging
and which they saw as benefiting some
and bankrupting others.

18. Thus samurai families grew accustomed
to living on government stipends,
embracing genteel poverty, and searching
for meaning in relative inactivity. Samurai
men trained for war-retaining constant
battle readiness in the event of foreign
assault-yet largely worked as government
functionaries for whom literacy and
numeracy were the most needed skills.

19. Ever so gradually, the samurai became more
the intellectual than the warrior class.
Educated by Buddhist priests and Confucian
scholars to be students of philosophy,
poetry, calligraphy, and tea, samurai turned
into literati, as apt to have studied Western
physical sciences as Eastern martial arts. And
over time, with so little of real importance to
do, a number grew both arrogant and
indolent.

20. Yet the Tokugawa shogunate finally
stumbled-after heavy-handed
restrictions had antagonized all classes of
people, after the fiery cannons of
American warships had proven the
shogun's swordsmen useless, after 1862,
when the court attendance rule was
relaxed and wives and children returned
to their homes and many samurai from
the southwest regions were quick to
employ their battle readiness. Chie's
father joined them.

21. He backed the emperor, and in 1869 two years of political
and military confrontation culminated with samurai from
the imperial armies marching through Tokugawa territories.
This conclusion to the Boshin Civil War ended 263 years.of
Tokugawa shogun rule. The victorious samurai went home
rejoicing. Chie was born later that year. However, with the
end of the shogunate came the end of the samurai. In the
new egalitarianism of a largely one-class society whose
motto was "one ruler, ten thousand subjects," there was no
need for an elite warrior class. Losing first their hereditary
income, then their right to wear swords, and finally all
perquisites of legal status and elevated form of address, the
samurai were systematically declawed.

22. Still, one thousand years of tradition do not easily
vanish. Some samurai were sent to Korea, where Japan
welcomed the continuing practice of their intimidating
ways. Even at home, where samurai were encouraged to
fade into the fabric of democracy, they retained their
social status. Throughout Japan, everyone knows who
comes from a great samurai family and who does not.
Yet receiving your community's respect for past glories is
not the same as maintaining a personal sense of vitality.
Without their swords, many men of Chie's father's
generation withered away. Chie's father was different.
An adopted son, he was used to accommodating fate.
He became a landowner farmer, selling or renting plots
of the vast Fuji estate.

23. Had he had sons, they would have trained at
universities as did other samurai sons for roles as
government cabinet members. But there are no
sons. The House of Fuji is female. Raised in a
tradition where women are born to serve
fathers, brothers, and husbands-the liege lords
of samurai woman-we are living without men.
Daughters, only daughters. The family curse
turned the fine Fuji name into a social
embarrassment. For in a class where the honor
of one's family name meant so much, who could
respect a family incapable of producing a boy?

24. Matchmaking was impossible. Other great houses offered
only their wastrel sons. Prosperous nonsamurai families,
affluent landowning farmers, subjected the Fujis to the
humiliation of financial investigations and doctors'
certificates of health. Yet the Fuji name of honor endured.
Although, for four generations, Fuji men had come only
through adoption from close relatives or through marriage,
they had distinguished themselves, nonetheless. They had
a reputation for being fair, even generous, for retaining
dignity without ostentation. Some samurai families-known
for behaviors dissolute, lazy, unkind-even though bursting
with sons, had a harder time with the marriage broker.

25. And as is customary in high families that lack a male
heir, Chie took a yoshi. As eldest daughter, she married
a second son who-having no obligation to continue his
family name was willing to change his surname to hers.
That man was Kan.
A Meeting with the Go-Between
One April afternoon in 1888, Chie and her parents
descended from a red rickshaw in front of Kobe's most
exclusive teahouses. It was a boisterous time. In the
thirty years since Admiral Perry's warships had blazed
their way to Japan-humiliating the shogun with their
superiority-Japan had been scrambling to modernize.

26. Now, the Kobe harbor was crammed with ships of
every nation. Members of the rising Japanese
merchant class, hot with imitative fever, were rushing
about in top hats and carefully trimmed chin
whiskers. They stopped their rushing when they saw
Chie. As she stepped down from the rickshaw, men
paused in admiration.
At nineteen, Chie looked like the essence of fresh
refinement. Though her parents were dressed in
dignified black silk subtly embossed with the
esteemed Fuji crest, Chie's kimono-light blue silk with
a pattern of pink peonies and one yellow canary
dipping delicately in flight-was worn slightly pulled
back to reveal the smooth nape of her neck.

27. A horse-drawn bus bumped past. Its
passengers-three nouveau riche women,
Cross and corseted in their endless tiers of
bustled skirts-twisted around to stare.
Though she lacked the allure of modesty
the shy step, the tentative glance- though
her elegant cheekbones were a little too
sharp to be considered a great beauty,
Chie's face displayed an intelligent
alertness that was arresting.