Life in edo japan was colorful interesting and full of wealth if you were a samurai these fine

purveyors of honorable actions and sword-based mayhem are considered one of the most
famous symbols of japan's history but they were also the reason why life was miserable
depressing and poverty-stricken for everybody else in feudal japan behind the stoic bushido
following the warrior like mine of samurais was a deeply

Disturbed psyche that introduced a lot of messed up stuff in medieval japan welcome to nutty
history and today let's find out what creepy things were normal in feudal japan as the samurais
flourished and rose to the upper echelons of japan's society during the edo period they
became the paragons of japan's social customs and traditions the top spot on the japanese
social pyramid came with lots of self-imposed restrictions and bounds

When it came to marriage the samurai kids had no say in the matter of the selection of their
life partner marriages were pre-arranged and were basically a political tool to strengthen
alliances now you got to be thinking how is it any different from any historical marriage system
well what we described was just the beginning marriages required not only parental consent
but also the consent of the dominant and shogunate authorities these

Authorities sometimes also exercise their power to arrange marriages for different families by
themselves such as forcefully marrying two rival families in an attempt to see peace between
them imagine everybody having the right of making perhaps the most important decision in
your life except yourself obviously such a system forced many young lovers to take their own
life instead of marrying somebody else except their one true love in fact falling in

Love was considered a major taboo in feudal japan and love stories were only permitted in
plays a particular genre of romantic theater evolved in feudal japan concentrated on the sad
tales of lovers ending with the couple taking their own lives in the end the romeo and juliet
kind of stories the act of a couple killing themselves off was called shinju in japan and it was
almost always sensational news from the masses when it occurred frankly one

Of the biggest figures of japanese literature made his entire career on shinju related plays and
this is where the problem began as shinju plays got popular so did the act of shinju people
were offering themselves solo or as couples under the influence of such plays in short these
plays made the act of killing oneself trendy chickamatsu's shinju plays were considered the
biggest cause of the copycat deaths shinju mostly depicted stories of young

Unmarried lovers whose love stories were doomed from the beginning other times they told
the stories of a married couple who had to commit seppaku and jigai many of you might not
know which guy is and it makes sense because jigai didn't get the same sort of importance in
pop culture as seppaku jigai was the right of killing oneself performed by female members of
the samurai family it focused on swiftness and dignity instead of honor and pain tolerance like
seppaku

So instead of bringing a blade to their midsection women would slice their own throat some
would also bind their knees together so their bodies do not collapse in a compromising
position jigai was performed in case of bringing shame to the family or to save the honor in
case of a successful enemy invasion but the most common reason for jigai was the husband
being forced to commit seppaku and then made up for a good excuse of a sad story for shinju
plays

Another source of shinju stories was the brothels which we will discuss in the next section as
feudal japanese brothels was a pandora's box of its own kind however the influence of
shenzhen plays causing more death became such a problem for the administration that
eventually they had to outright ban this macabre genre of entertainment to stop copycat self-
killings but the band itself did not put a stop to the trend altogether so the administration had
to take

Further drastic steps copycat deaths were denied funerals and if one person of the couple
attempted to kill themselves survived they would be banished from japan under the charge of
murdering their partner today prostitution is considered an illegal practice in japan but before
1956 it was a fairly legal practice and quite a questionable one during the early years of the
edo era japanese brothels were forced to be moved to the

Designated pleasure quarters of towns and cities these pleasure quarters were separated by
water from the rest of the city and the only way to access them was through an entrance in
the high walls that surrounded the quarter ordinary women were forbidden to enter the
pleasure quarter and male clients had to follow a strict code of conduct there but all of this
security and system wasn't there for the security of prostitutes it was there to make sure

The prostitutes couldn't leave prostitution in feudal japan was actually sex slavery due to
everybody being poor except samurais and merchants in japan the desperate family would
often sell their daughters to pay off debts or to gain some extra money brothels would draw
up harsh contracts for women and their families to sign so that they can make sure the soon-
to-be prostitute would never be able to quit and leave or finally most prostitutes

Were sold by their families at a very young age and they were expected to begin working
immediately after reaching the age of puberty venereal diseases were rampant and deadly in
the pleasure quarters and constituted the biggest cause of death among prostitutes they were
treated worse than slaves often died young and had to go through the horrible ordeal of
multiple abortions which resulted in death more often than not the most frequent
Customers of the regulated brothels in the big cities of edo japan were merchants and samurai
occasionally some of these men would fall madly in love with their favorite prostitutes and
incur debt or shame by repeatedly visiting them as love marriages were taboo in feudal japan
these obsessive clients would wind up meeting the horrible self-inflicted ends which would
inspire more shinju plays another ill effect of these brothels was perhaps the

First oregon black market in the world unlike today's organ black markets which thrive on
medical requirements of internal organs and rare types of blood japan's organ black market
were all about fingers and toes japanese prostitutes had quite an uncanny way of showing
their devotion to their favorite clients they would resort to self-mutilation to prove how special
their favorite client is and an amputated finger as a president was

Considered the highest honor a prostitute could offer to her client however body mutilation
was also an extreme violation of confucian taboos that japan had borrowed from china as a
result instead of wasting their digits high-level prostitutes preferred to buy peddlers or beggars
or even corpses so next time you receive an amputated finger in a pink perfumed envelope
you know where your crazy stalker could be from

[Music] merchants may have been the only class apart from samurais who were wealthy
enough to visit brothels but when it comes to respecting they had none in fact merchants were
considered one of the lower classes of feudal japanese society samurai were ranked as the
highest class followed by farmers artisans and merchants for the farmers the social

Class positioning came at a high cost as they were the only ones paying taxes in the entire
country despite generally living in terrible conditions poverty had things so bad that some
families were forced to practice infanticide malnourishment was widespread and people were
stouter because of only eating rice and fish but none of these classes had to tolerate what the
beroccuman people endured verocumen were the segregated communities made up of
laborers working

In occupations that were considered impure or tainted by death such as executioners butchers
and undertakers even among them etta were considered the lowest etta literally means an
abundance of filth in japanese and they could be killed instantly by the samurai clan members
if accused of a crime they were considered untouchables and were outcasted for being impure
just like the shooter people in imperial india shooter people were still segregated in most

Parts of india and so is the case with verocumen people in japan the japanese caste system
was abolished in 1871 along with the feudal system and yet a 19th century magistrate is
recorded declaring etta as one-seventh of an ordinary person discrimination is prevalent in
japan to this day and people had to hide their lineage to escape it [Music] created an edict in
1635 that would cut off japan from the rest of the world for
The next 200 years tokugawa made it illegal for japanese ships to set sail for any foreign
country and deemed an attempt to lead the country a punishable offense assigning the death
penalty to those proven guilty secretly planning to leave the country or returning to japan after
going overseas was also considered treachery and it warranted execution the reason behind
such harsh and ridiculous laws was shogunate's despicable attitude towards christian
missionaries and

European traders who they considered spies of western imperialism in 1639 the portuguese
were forbidden from landing on japanese shores if japanese soldiers found any portuguese
ship they were authorized to destroy it immediately and arrest portuguese missionaries
traders and civilians and behead them without having to answer to anybody any japanese
found converted to christianity were tortured severely to death to reveal the identities and
location of those who

Converted them women were punished in more humiliating ways than men while men's
punishments were more violent with the first wave of christianity 300 000 people had
converted including some feudal lords but clearly shogunate was against it the hammer came
down hard and swift soon japanese christians were tortured and pressured to renounce
christianity with some executed and even crucified for the next 50 years shogunate had
samurais hunting

Christians like wild dogs and after the shamara rebellion of japanese roman catholics
shogunate got the excuse to ban christianity all over the country this forced christianity to
become a secret cult in japan called kokora karishatin as survivors went into hiding they kept
themselves a secret for two centuries until the last few years of the edo era when astonished
western missionaries rediscovered about 30 000 of them do you think we missed any

Creepy facts about feudal japan in this video tell us in the comments also which era shall we
cover next in the series and like always thanks for watching nutty history [Music]