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Introduction

2. Roberts concludes that in this period “ all children could play a key role in the continuance of the family” (Roberts, 56), How do
you think the gendered aspects of childrearing shaped these roles?

This text focuses on the childhood of the heredity ruling class of Japan in the Edo Period the samurai.

Given the heredity nature, families placed great significance on the manitence and raising of male heirs intended to ensure the continuance
of the household.

“ the family goal was to make sons capable family heads, good retainers of their lords, and men respected by peers and others.” – pg 42

🡪 How did families define this goal and how did they achieve it.

Through Exploring this goal, Roberts highlights the socially constructed nature of the samurai childhood as the fulfillment of these goals
was maintaining the families institutionally defined heredity status and economic class.

Roberts does this though focusing on the childrearing commentary of Samurai boys in the Yamauchi clan of Tosa. Through focusing on
emotional narratives derived from memoirs of the period of both individuals own experiences and there writings of others.

Marking Stages of Childhood Growth and Entry into Adulthood

- Childhood marked by different socially based ceremonies

Baby
- Week after birth = naming ceremony
For both Sons and daughters
- Gender had little to do with the first ceremony of life (46)

Toddler
- Head shaved at age 3 to allow to grow back

This is where gender began to diverge

Girls day vs Boys day

Youth
- A son would receive a new set of pleated pants (hakama) and became a youth around age ten to twelve when he gained a
hairstyle and clothing transitioning towards that of an adult

Adulthood
- Boy 🡪 Genpuku, public ceremony with new haircut age 16/17
- Girl 🡪 Sodedome – long sleeves of kimono shortneed , usually after her marrige

Ceremonial end point 🡪 actual age not that important more important = social sense of passing through each stage

Passing through these stages fostered a strong sense of identity as a male samurai and inoculated masculinity in constradiction to
femininity.

--🡪 focus of this paper is the socialization of samurai boys, it will also explore their relationships with samurai girls and with servants to
highlight the development of status and gender distinctions.

Economic change end of Tokugawa period -🡪 became more important to mark smuri sttus earlier on -🡪 anxiety about children reaching
adulthood

1. Staying Alive
- Too many children for the household -> infancide and abortion common not for poverty but for family stratergy
a) No children after 2 sons ) heir and a spare.

Infacide diary of Mori Hirosada 1772 , already had adopted heir and own son
- Birth, “but there was no child” 🡪

Not uniofrom custom -🡪 some raised many children

Choose whether to register child with domqin – mother doesn’t matter as long as samurai father acknowledges the child
Mortality

- Frequently siblings died hoever own documented the emotions of the parents

Samurai Children moor susceptible to diesese due to the diet associated with their class

Lead Poisoning 🡪 due to family strategies of status differentiation

Breast covered in white-skin cosmetic made of lead as a sign of respect to the status of the infant.

Result of lead poisioning and and beriberi ( from diet of polished rice) had long term imp0liations for personal development as well as
effected children being put up as heirs

Family Response to illness = calling on help od realtives, doctrs, gods and buddahs

2. Learning Desirable Personal Qaulties

🡪 Common scenario – Children pressuting their parents to lay down with them when they got to sleep – parent raining
children in self-restraint and cooperation

Teaching denial of self-intrest and personal desire in order to be able to perform ones duty was typical edo-period
education for samurai children (49)
Yoshiki -🡪 Raised children to express emotions in a way he thought proper
(--🡪 encourage emotional restraint to fit the ideal of a contolled but assertive masculinity (49)

Sasaki Tadayuki memories of his father 🡪 praised for behavior that showed self-control, confidence and resolve (50)

--🡪 rooting an endemic anxiety over the continuity of the house

- Tadayuki as an adopted son was more conscious of this especially given his adopted father health issues ( suicidal of the loss os
his brother, attempted suicide and was then locked in a cage for a year by his family before bing expected to resume his
household activities) – he repsented the contintuity of the household
-
Context: Raised in time of peace
Educated as members of a warrior class in a time frame of extended peace 🡪
Expected to balance a “willingness to use violence to defend ones honor while nevertheless showing restraint” (51)
🡪 Samurai who were not ready to be violent were seen as somehow not proper samurai

SHIFT IN SAMURAI IN THIS PERIOD 🡪 Youth were more likely to exercise restraint and cvillity in dealing out punishments whereas
those before were likely to resort to violence as a warrior

CONFLICTION OF YOSHIKI -🡪 fear that parental affection would result in his son being undisciplines and unwilling to face hardship
– qualities which were important to being a manly samurai

2. Finding ones place amongst other Youth

🡪 How were samurai boys socialized to interact with superiors peers and inferiors as well as friends and rivals?

STATUS DIVISION AMONGST PEERS AT SCHOOL

Diaries and Memoirs focus heavily on accounts of children’s interactions with one another

Male children participated in classes and informal practices of military skills 🡪 made them aware of status distinctions
- Children from more elite households were treated better. 🡪 indicating that even amongst the samurai who were the elite
class – there was fractionzalization based on status
-
Takayuki -> “it was so interesting to my childs heart. I eagerly hoped that war would occur” (52)

GANGS
-🡪 “ formed lifelong friendships and learned about modes of aggression, competitive manliness, obedience to heirachies”

Yonger smaurais ordered by those closer to adulthood ---- compete with eachother – often this was done rowdily and with
violence whih would not have been tolerated if done by adults but these forms of aggressive masculinity and team building
were seen as preparation for the more restrained behavior expecte4d in adulthood
Relationships - MALE MALE VS FEMALE MALE

Effect of Youth on Kin relaationships

- -🡪 Personal honour was bound up in these youthful love relationships -🡪 serial monogomy
Commonly Youths from early to late teens exchanged oaths testi-fying to devotion between senior
and younger youths who developed romantic and sexual relationships were quite common
These relationbshios were approved and involved parents -🡪 serial monogamy and due to the honour at stake fights could
erupt between competing love intrents, so monogomy and family involvement was high and encouraged to prevent fighting
between domains

Whule these were made in familiar and social context they were temporary , usually ending when the younger partner
grew into adulthood.

intimate friend-ship, infatuation, and love (chiin, shūshin, nengoro) – Used commonly in referral to male youth
relationships --- not used in relation to the female

While these male-male relationships were displayed public ally they were seen as forms of
honour and were frequently referred to in diaries through the usage of terms such as intimate
friend-ship, infatuation, and love (chiin, shūshin, nengoro), the diaries show that this was
absent in regards to relationships with women who were charterized by greater shows of
public restraint given the societal context that it was degrading to display affection for a
woman too publicly, given their inferior status within the gender hierarchy, would be seen as
womanly, whereas to do so for males was seen as manly.

So its important to note that this doesn’t necessarily mean there were very feelings of
attachment to women, but rather that there is not so much written about this in diaries as it
was seen as “unseemly to express such feelings” which is due to the male samurais being
raised to develop. Strong sense of masculinity in contradiction to feminity. So expressing this
intrest publically towards women of samurai status would have been dangerous to honour
given the homo-social ordering of the society at the time.

There is also a strong difference in the role that the youth played in instigating these
relationships, linking once more to the youth expressing their masculine samurai identity.
In male- male relationships while the family was involved, Roberts shows through the nikki
extracts that the youths themselves were often the driving factor behind their insitigation and
took part actively in the negotiations. Whereas in the establishment of male-female
relationships the bachelor did not play a role in instigating it but rather families would contact
eachother to arrange the marriage.

However, the Edo period also witnessed a societal shift in which families were rushing everything
for their children, including arranging their marriages at younger and younger ages. Subsequently, divorce was
also common in this period, to deal with this often samurai girls would first be sent to live in the home of her
future husband until the time that she was ready to marry.
CONCLUSION

Samurai children

were valued for their roles in maintaining family continuity, while males could assure this, the adoption of samurai womens
husbands as heirs meant all children were valuable.

Families devoted substantial resources to the health and life-stage ceremonies of all of the children regardless of gender and whether
they were born to the wife or a concubine or were adopted.

Given their function as the continuance of the household – their childhood was shaped by
behavior and the installment of values that would ensure this.

- Youthful love or dislike might end up embroiling families and kin groups in troublesome conflicts or
conversely might help to create friendly associations. ( SHAPING OF SOCIAL INTERACTIONS)

- Additionally, adults and children alike confronted the frequent vicis-situdes of accident and illness that
sometimes emerged from family strategies and sometimes randomly intruded into plans for success.

- But the goal of keeping house-hold status and income from one generation to the next remained, and
the legal framework required successful inheritance and transition to a new male heir who would
achieve adulthood

would achieve adulthood.

It is impossible to define a clear end to samurai childhood in a generalized way because the many markers of
adulthood in samurai society did not occur in coordination or at rigidly prescribed ages.

The genpuku adulthood ceremony in which sons had their hair cut according to adult fashion was certainly an
impor-tant moment, but it might happen so early as to make it only a partial marker of becoming a full-fledged
man, as happened with Sasaki Takayuki, who was four-teen and still just finding his way in school among peers
(Sasaki 1970: 22).

Marriage also might happen young but end quickly.

Perhaps it was increasing anxiety over status and familial success, evident in the latter half of the Tokugawa
period, that led to the earlier enactments of such markers of advancement toward adulthood.

Seventeen was an age that legally allowed a man to adopt an heir but he did not become family head until his
father retired or died. Family headship might occur at an earlier age than adulthood as we have seen in the
case of the three-year-old

Even though family life was filled with ceremonies marking stages of childhood and finally entry into
adulthood, life itself was infinitely complex and samurai families adjusted in the interest of maintaining the
legal samurai household upon which so many people depended.