What would you do if your spouse kept chasing after other women?
Being the most powerful man in the east in the Kamakura Period, Minamoto no Yoritomo
had a lot of thirsty women to choose from, and he was more than willing
to quench their thirst.
Dehydration is a serious condition.
His wife, Hojo Masako, was not so pleased, but she wasn’t the type to suffer in silence.
She preferred other people suffer instead.
Two famous examples gave Masako the reputation of being a ruthless and super jealous wife.
The first time was when Masako gave birth to her second child, a son.
Back then, when a woman gave birth, she moved to a separate home for a few months,
because you can’t have that dirty womanly business in your own home obviously.
Masako did this, and when the time came, she was overjoyed when a boy popped out.
He was going to be Yoritomo’s heir.
Masako came back home all happy to show Yoritomo the baby boy,
and then forgot about all that BS when she discovered what had happened.
While she was away, Yoritomo thought it was the perfect opportunity
to fool around with another woman,
and even let her couchsurf in the house of one of his samurai.
Look, when you’re Yoritomo, you don’t buy a girl a drink. That’s an insult.
You buy her a house.
Masako thought, “Well, it *is* normal these days for a man
to seek the bed of a woman other than his wife.
Likewise, it’s also normal for me to set that harlot on fire.”
And so she convinced one of Yoritomo’s samurai to burn down the harlot’s house.
Unfortunately, she escaped the fire.
When Yoritomo found out, he got super mad and cut off the top-knot
of that samurai who torched the house.
It was the ultimate humiliation for a samurai.
This whole incident briefly caused a rift between Yoritomo and the Hojo clan, because
Masako’s father thought that Yoritomo dishonored his daughter,
but soon everyone made up and things got back to normal.
Although Yoritomo still continued meeting the woman,
he was just more careful about it.
Unfaithful Husband, the Sequel happened the next time Masako gave birth.
It seemed Yoritomo had a thing for cheating while his wife gave birth.
It’s a rare fetish.
He found the bed of a lady-in-waiting.
When Masako came home, she would’ve blown a gasket if she knew what that was.
She got mad though.
Not wanting to face her wrath, Yoritomo fired his new love interest
from her lady-in-waiting career.
Now he may have done this to save the girl because she was pregnant.
The girl later gave birth to a boy.
This wasn’t enough for Masako, who made plans to kill the boy.
The woman had to run out of town to save her son.
Now because of these incidents, people have called Masako ruthless and jealous.
But is that really fair?
It *was* normal for men to sleep with many women back then,
because it was a polygamous society,
but this was more common in the capital than in the provinces.
Yoritomo was raised in the capital so he was fine with it, but Masako was raised in the
provinces where they had less of that hippie s--t.
And then there was this fun tradition at the time called uwanari uchi うわなり打,
which means “beating the secondary wife.”
You’ll like this.
So here’s how marriages worked back in the Kamakura Period.
A man would typically go out with a bunch of women in his youth, and at some point he’ll
meet a special girl and the couple would decide that she would be his main lover and the bearer
of his legitimate children.
But he still goes to see other women.
A marriage back then was not permanent.
It was not a “until death do us part” type of thing.
So that’s it for the similarities between marriages today and marriages back then.
Now for the differences.
We use the words marriage, husband, and wife, but that’s just using modern words to describe
things in the past in terms we understand.
Relationships were more fuzzy.
They didn’t have official papers for marriages.
It was a social thing, if everyone saw a couple as husband and wife,
then that couple was husband and wife.
But that meant if a husband wanted to leave, technically he could have just left
and found another wife.
That was bad news for the wife and her family because in a typical marriage, the husband
joined the wife’s family and it was the wife’s family who gave him financial support.
They were basically investing in him, hoping he’d go on to do something great.
But if some lil hoe comes by and gives Yoritomo a son,
and he chooses to make his new side piece his main piece,
that son becomes his heir and all of the Hojo’s investment in him would be wasted.
So Masako, logically, had to cut a bish.
It wasn’t jealousy, it was pragmatic.
Okay probably a little jealousy.
This practice of the wife attacking the husband’s new lover was called uwanari uchi.
It was actually socially acceptable.
People were like, “Well yeah, it’s the wife’s right to burn that tramp’s house.”
So Masako wasn’t being overly jealous, she acted perfectly normally for the time.
There was another famous incident that strained their marriage, and that involved the beautiful
Shizuka Gozen 静御前, or Lady Shizuka.
She’s a very famous figure.
Like a lot of historical accounts at the time, it’s hard to tell what is fact and what
is fiction, but we can still enjoy the story.
Yoritomo started a manhunt for his brother Minamoto no Yoshitsune 源義経.
Yoshitsune was a threat and became an enemy of the state.
Yoshitsune already had a wife and consort, but he also had a lover in Lady Shikuza,
who was a famous dancer from the capital.
Yoritomo’s forces happened to capture her for interrogation, but she didn’t give up
any info on Yoshitsune’s whereabouts.
Yoritomo ordered her sent to him, probably to the annoyance of his wife.
Unfortunately for Yoritomo, Lady Shizuka was already pregnant with Yoshitsune’s child,
and he wasn’t into that so he didn’t do anything with her.
But he did order her to dance for him and a few of his loyal samurai,
even though she was already super pregnant.
Yoritomo may have even entertained the idea of pardoning her afterwards.
On the day when Lady Shizuka was supposed to perform, Hojo Masako surprised Yoritomo
by showing up to make sure her husband wasn’t up to no good.
Lady Shizuka started dancing.
Everyone thought it was a beautiful dance, but she surprised Masako
and horrified Yoritomo’s samurai when she started to sing.
She sang about her fierce love for Yoshitsune.
It was a melodic smack to Yoritomo’s face.
Having Shizuka sing about her lover right in front of him and his samurai was more than
Yoritomo could take, and he stormed out.
Any thoughts of letting her off easy vanished from his mind.
But Masako was impressed.
This goes against the idea that she was the jealous type.
She spoke up to Yoritomo on Shizuka’s behalf.
Masako compared Shizuka’s love for Yoshitsune to her own love for Yoritomo when she left
home against her father’s wishes and trekked over mountain roads to be with him.
Perhaps because of Masako’s influence, Yoritomo spared Lady Shizuka’s life.
She didn’t get off free though.
He said that if Shizuka gave birth to a girl,
then she could bring it home and take care of it.
If she gave birth to a boy though, he would kill the boy.
And when the time came, Lady Shizuka gave birth to...
a boy.
And they killed him. Sorry.
Shizuka went back to the capital and became a nun.
She died a year later.
There are more details to the story, so let me know in the comments
if you want me to tell it.
Now I do have some info that may change the way you see this story.
The story implies that Masako may have convinced Yoritomo to spare Shizuka’s life, but she
was probably going to be spared anyways because she was not Yoshitsune’s main wife.
Also, Yoritomo killing Shizuka’s baby son may seem cruel, and you would think it was
because the son could come after him when he grew up.
But again, this was not a big risk because Shizuka
was not Yoshitsune’s wife or official consort.
She didn’t have a big house or big name behind her.
The main reason for killing the baby was because of another custom at the time:
the idea that boys belonged to their father, and girls belonged to their mother.
This custom was written down during the Kamakura Period, but probably existed long before.
Since the boy belonged to his father, Yoshitsune, and his father was a traitor,
the boy deserved death.
It was not overly barbaric on Yoritomo’s part.
Just...a little barbaric.
Okay, today’s quiz question is this: What is the name for this type of Japanese sword?
Let me know the comments.
I’ll randomly choose a winner tomorrow from among the correct answers.
Winner gets one of these. Good luck.
We have some new patrons this week.
Leo (the Lion), Joseph Jackson, and Cristian Sanchez.
Thank you so much you guys.
Alright I love you, and spread the knowledge!