Mori Family Injustice

In the Edo period, some families used two different ways to track their families lineage. The Mori family used two ways. One way they tracked their lineage was through the government. The government-use version of their lineage tracked the males of the household and the services they did for the lord. “The names of all male heirs were entered into it.” When it came to marriages and criminal records, they were the only place you could find a woman. Their names were not identified. Instead, they were someone’s daughter. On top of this, no age, even for males, are shown on the government-use version of the lineage. The other way was a family-use version. This version was one that the Mori did themselves. In this version, names of women and all …show more content…
The organization of this can be viewed from the government’s official criminal records. It is true that women were listed in criminal records, but they were not punished directly. Instead, the male head of the household had to do this. For example, if a woman committed a crime and she was caught, the head of the household had to punish her. The government then punished him for not doing his job and controlling her. “Undesirable behaviors among men were handled in the same way, and the house took responsibility.”
Another example is of Mori Nao. She married an abusive man from the Maeno family. Since women could not divorce, the Mori clan had to help persuade the Maeno clan to make the husband sign a divorce letter. “The Maeno built a cage in the garden and locked the husband in there for two mid-winter months, until he finally wrote the divorce letter.” A male member of the Maeno clan documented this, but left Nao’s name out of it. Historians found this only because the Mori clan recorded it with Nao’s