ABSTRACT
The idea of family is at once universal and specific. While some idea of family or kinship is found in virtually every human society, family in Tokugawa Japan united and defined its members in ways unique to time and place. With exceptions, sovereigns have been men; male warlords, shoguns, politicians, and thinkers dominate the landscape of early modern Japanese history. This is due in part to the bias of historians, who have only recently begun to focus on questions of gender. At the same time, the masculine cast of early modern Japanese history also reflects trends in early modern Japanese society at large. Historians have previously argued that the Tokugawa period, with its emphasis on social order and its comparative conservatism, helped to produce new limitations on the roles of women in society. The ease with which men could obtain a divorce, for example, was thought to indicate the low status of Tokugawa women and their insecurity in society.
