Question 2C: Using ADAM ANT, choose ONE secondary source to answer the question, "Describe how your chosen source could be useful to an historian investigating the relationship between husbands and wives during the Tokugawa period"
The secondary source is an article written in 2014. The article is available to the public via the Internet. This sourceʼs intention is to convey information as well as to educate the public about the role of women and men in marriage during the Shogunate rule while not being biased or showing a particular perspective. As the article is not biased, it shows that despite not having an author, this source is still reliable. Through the source’s use of description, showing detail and information in describing the role of husband and wife, we can determine that in a marriage the husband is head of the house and has more power over his wife. This power base meant the wife was inferior to the husband and had little freedom in the relationship. An example of a husband’s dominance is shown in the source where the article explains about the rules of divorce. The source tells us that a husband has the right to divorce his wife by saying she is unhealthy or unable and she is then sent back to live with her parents. On the other hand the woman could only divorce her husband by seeking in her temple and becoming a nun for 2 years. This is due to men dominating samurai rule and shogunate society. Therefore because men had more power over their wives it meant there was power imbalance in the relationship of husband and wife as his was the traditional shogunate and Japanese values. However, using the quote, “While life for lower-class women was hard, they were likely to have more freedom than noblewomen in their choice of husbands” from the source we know that lower class women were likely to have a bit more freedom in the relationship, than women of higher classes. None the less it came with the price of hard labour, as they had to help their husbands with their work, which was often physical in the fields. From the information we got from the secondary source we can conclude that this chosen source is useful to an historian investigating the relationship between husbands and wives during the Tokugawa period as the article discusses a basic and general outline about the relationship between husbands and wives through the use of description, showing detail and information to clearly convey the message.
Secondary source, article address: http://www.skwirk.com/p-c_s-14_u-177_t-516_c-1922/nsw/history/medieval-and-early-modern-societies-japan/life-in-feudal-japan/women
Secondary source, article address: http://www.skwirk.com/p-c_s-14_u-177_t-516_c-1922/nsw/history/medieval-and-early-modern-societies-japan/life-in-feudal-japan/women