ABSTRACT
In the mid-fourteenth through the sixteenth century, evolving social, economic, and military conditions and emerging ideas and ideals shaped gender relations in ways that differed significantly from those of earlier centuries. The evidence typically appears in scattered fragments and challenges us to decipher meanings and weave them together into perceivable patterns of changing gender relations. This chapter considers the broad trends for three groups: warriors (buke), courtiers (kuge), and commoners. The historical sources produced by warriors after the fourteenth century loudly announce that this was becoming a masculine age. Nevertheless, among aristocrats, the reduced economic prerogatives of women occurred as part of the broader dissolution of the courtiers' landed wealth into the hands of the rising warriors—a major loss that affected the entire class. Sources for understanding gender relations among commoners are scarce for all periods. Although the figures represented are imagined caricatures by artists and not necessarily precise portrayals of real commoners.
