earticle

영어

Among the samurai society in the middle ages, there were many of cases of taninyoshi which means adopting a person with no blood relation. Tanin yoshi includes people of different social class, but there was a clear distinction between samurai and the lower classes as seen for example in the type of punishment meted out to members of each class. It is thus interesting to consider the issues of what happens when adopted children of different rank clash and, as an extension of this, how social rank itself can be defined. For that purpose, the case of a lawsuit over the territory of Tara Manor in the Wakasa country (present western Fukui Prefecture) is very enlightening. The lord of that territory was a samurai named Ungen Niu. After his death, two people presented themselves as heirs to the territory. One is named Joren. He insists that he is an
adopted son of Ungen. The other, who bears the name, Nakahara (given name unknown), insists that she is a granddaughter of the Ungen’s adopted son. So a dispute over inheritance arises between them. Joren is ‘hyakusho’ which is a class below the samurai, in control of less land. He
himself and others around him admitted that he was hyakusho but he grandly speaks of Ungen as his ancestor. However, Nakahara has no problem with him being a hyakusho. Her only issue is whether or not he undertook the formal procedure to be adopted as a son of Ungen.
In the course of the lawsuit, she is quoted as saying sarcastically, “He has only a hyakusho myo (hyakusho land). So he has not associated with samurai, and therefore he doesn’t know samurai circumstances.” She implies that Joren is hyakusho because of having only a hyakusho myo.
From the above mentioned, I conclude that there existed a legal principle that the person who manages a hyakusho myo was deemed hyakusho, while a person who manages a ryoshu myo (samurai land) was deemed samurai and therefore it is only after land succession is decided that the social class is in turn determined. Joren has already received a hyakusho myo from someone else so he was considered to be a hyakusho. In Japan in the middle ages, pledges between married couples as wells as parents and children were connected by various bonds which transcended social class, and the society was more fluid than is generally imagined.