Marriage and Adoption Strategies of Warrior Families in Japan's Sixteenth-Century Time of War

• In Event: Family Strategies in Times of War and Violence

Abstract

Non-blood based relations formed by marriage and adoption are fundamental to the construction, maintenance, and expansion of a kinship unit in most societies and times, despite the variations governed by class, status, and regional differences. For Japan’s sixteenth-century warrior families, successful marriage and adoption practices were of great strategic significance, equal to that of victorious battles. The goal of family strategies was the continuation of the corporate household, or ie, recognized by the ie name and assessed by the named property. This paper examines the family strategies that emerged in the face of the stress caused by perpetual and potential warfare in the period of the “country-at-war” (sengoku).
Two methods guide my investigation. First, I examine one kinship group in depth over time. This focused examination reveals that pragmatic flexibility characterized adoption practices, which drew candidates from a vast pool of either the paternal or maternal lines. The decisive role of vassals in choosing the potential adoptee into the lord’s family also marked family strategies of this era.
My second method focuses on a particular region where multiple households wove a complex network of power relations and engaged in multidimensional adoption practices with each other. I focus on the warrior families of western Japan, with comparative references made to the northeastern region. The war economy stretched the traditional boundaries of marriageable families, and they found adoption to be a highly effective means toward networking. In these ways, warrior families of sengoku Japan strategized to maintain competitiveness for their ultimate survival.

Author

• Noriko Kurushima, University of Tokyo