A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. What Is a Family? explores the histories of diverse households during the Tokugawa period in Japan (1603-1868). The households studied here differ in locale and in status-from samurai to outcaste, peasant to merchant-but what unites them is life within the social order of the Tokugawa shogunate. The circumstances and choices that made one household unlike another were framed, then as now, by prevailing laws, norms, and controls on resources. These factors led the majority to form stem families, which are a focus of this volume. The essays in this book draw on rich sources-population registers, legal documents, personal archives, and popular literature-to combine accounts of collective practices (such as the adoption of heirs) with intimate portraits of individual actors (such as a murderous wife). They highlight the variety and adaptability of households that, while shaped by a shared social order, do not conform to any stereotypical version of a Japanese family.

"The early modern Japanese geographical archive is as distinctive and diverse as any in the world. Yet the very profusion of these texts, and their slippage across disparate genres (from maps and gazetteers to travel accounts and imaginative writings), have made it difficult to grasp Tokugawa spatial sensibilities as a whole. "Mapping Early Modern Japan gives us our first comprehensive overview of this fluid field. Like the texts she so elegantly describes, Yonemoto's careful research 'cracks the geographic code' of literate Edo for English-language readers. A superb addition to the growing body of early modern geo-historical studies."--Karen Wigen, coauthor of "The Myth of Continents

"A bold and ambitious work that traces the ways Japanese people have drawn maps and represented travel from ancient times through the mid-nineteenth century. It contains a novel juxtaposition of maps in all shapes and sizes, poetry, travel accounts, encyclopedias, satire and parodies, and demonstrates how these shared the same mental universe. In short, this is one of the best examples I have seen of the 'new' cultural history in a Japanese context."--Anne Walthall, author of "The Weak Body of a Useless Woman: Matsuo Taseko and the Meiji Restoration

"Fascinating! An unusual book on 'geo-sophy'--wisdom on geography and maps--among the Japanese, before the global rationalization and standardization of modern cartography. Marcia Yonemoto tells the delightful life stories of places and maps, with their emotions, opinions, perspectives and more. A truly enjoyable history."--Thongchai Winichakul, author of "Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation

Early modern Japan was a military-bureaucratic state governed by patriarchal and patrilineal principles and laws. During this time, however, women had considerable power to directly affect social structure, political practice, and economic production. This apparent contradiction between official norms and experienced realities lies at the heart of The Problem of Women in Early Modern Japan. Examining prescriptive literature and instructional manuals for women-as well as diaries, memoirs, and letters written by and about individual women from the late seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century-Marcia Yonemoto explores the dynamic nature of Japanese women's lives during the early modern era.