​Introduction

In recent years, the study of women’s history has been flourishing both theoretically and empirically, and despite the difficulty in grasping the subject matter, many outstanding works have been published. Among them, Amino Yoshihiko analyzed the genealogy of the priestesses of Ichinomiya and Ninomiya in Wakasa Province with 227 males and 112 females in the genealogy from the Kamakura period to the Sengoku period. He found that there are 47 marriages within Wakasa Province, and of those 35 marriages are between gokenin (direct retainers of the bakufu), and the remaining between religious institutions such as Jingūji Temple within the province. In contrast, there were no cases of marriages with jitō (bakufu stewards), who had come from the East.[1] In other words, he found the non-hierarchical nature of marriage in Wakasa province, where the local lords of Wakasa maintained a web of marital relationships, centered on the senior priests and the priests of Kokubunji and from this result, Amino concluded that each of them would marry someone of the same class as themselves.

Therefore, guided by Amino’s point that marriages between people of the same status were common for the Wakasa provincial lords, this paper examines the marital relations of the Kumagai, a family of local lords (zaichi ryōshu; warriors that had actual control over the territory in the region) in the Muromachi period, and contrast it with the case of the Hino, one of the highest ranking court noble family at the time. I also clarify the principles underlying the marriages between warrior families and court nobles from the Kamakura period to the Sengoku period. In this way, this article provides an insight into status and role given to women in the Kamakura, Muromachi, and Sengoku periods.

 

[1]Amino 1996, p. 55.