The Daily Life Of Women Of The Chonin Class In The Edo Peirod

Tokugawa legasu chose Edo for the capital,after that established TokugawaShogunat. Edo Period was the transitional period in Japanese history from the middleages to the early modern era. It had started to show the disintegration of feudal societyin the beginning. Tokugawa Shogunat had rigid hierachical system of scholar,farmer,artisan and merchant status: As warriors,it is their duty to sacrificed themselves fortheir country. In return, the government gave them the Tax Rice. But they couldn’tengage in production and business activities. Farmers engaged in agriculturalproduction and gave the Tax Rice to the government. The Chounins’ duties was toserve the warriors. On the one hand, every class had their own duties and one classcould not engaged in other classes’. So, the chounin class had the privileages ofbeening in business. On the other hand, the separation of the production andconsumption prompted the warrior class to become the parasitic class. The reasonabove prompted the development of commodity economy. The chounin class whowere the lowerest class of the four kinds of people became richer and richer. Whilethe warriors class who lived by commodity economy became poorer and poorer. Theyeven lived on the chounin class. Specially at the later period of Genroku Period,thedisintegration of feudal society showed a qualitation change. The class boundariesbecame blurreder and blurreder. The rich merchants could buy the warriors’ identity.The warriors flocked to be the apdpted son of the rich merchants……It was there thatthe strict Feudalism Rank orders which were established by Tokugawa Legasuwhisked away his own dynasty. The Chounin class stepped on to the stage ofhistory,shinning out infinite vitality.Women of the chounin class’s clothing,food,shelter and transportation were thesymbols and signs which had the significance of wealth,class,culture and feature. Wecan study the social changes form them.The clothes of living history of the chounin class’s women contained abundanceof rich contents such as hairstyle,hairaccessories,dressing and clothing.Looking fromthe hairstyle,we can see that the chounin class women’s hairstyle was changed fromhair all long and hanging down to propriety which was easy to working. The hairstyleof LingLun and ShengShan were chounin women’s representative hairstyle. Becauseof the complicated hairstyle,the hairaccessories which was fixed developed quickly.The popular hairaccessories were clasps,combs. Clasps were used by noble women inancient.The tortoiseshell comb which was best in combs was spread from vassal state’s wives and daughters to rich chounins. Looking from the dressing,women wereconsidered beautiful as it was wide between eyebrows and eye;teeth were black; noeyebrows; a little red lipstick.The distance between eyebrows was consideredquiet-natured. They were all requirement to women’s image and moral. Eyebrowmakeup,black tooth and no eyebrows were women of warrior class’s makeupway.They were popular to ordinary families in Edo Period. Looking from clothing,women of chounin class should wear clothes made of the upper society’s clothing,chounin class women thought those were beautiful. For example,the short sleevewhich was popular among chounin class women was Queen’s inner clothing before.Because the short sleeve was easy to working, chounin class liked it very much.Furisode was the samurai class women’s clothing. It was widespread to richmerchants’wives at the later time of Edo Period. Though the government issued a lotof sumptuary code, people didn’t care about them.Chounin class women’s food of living history included staple,subsidiary food,dim sum, fruit and addictive product. Staple included rice and pasta. Rice are the mostimport food. Sushi were the far reaching food to aftertime. Subsidiary food includedseafood, bean curd and salted vegetables. The chounin class and the other class’s dietwere not much difference in Edo Period. The difference was that fruits becamepopular in Edo Period. Ordinary people couldn’t eat fruits before Edo Period becauseof the development of the traffic and commodity economy problem. As well,addictive products spreaded from upper class to fansnan. The rich chounin classwomen drank and smoked usually.Looking from the housing and transport of living history, the chounins who livedin shops and Longhouses began to imitated the upper class in home improvement.They installed the ceiling, sacra mento, push windows, screen and kinds of storagebox.The most typical character thing was the kago which was rided by womendeveloped quickly. The provision was that the chounin class couldn’t go out in sedanchairs. But women of the chounin class in Edo Period went out in sedan chairsusually.Above all, the clounin class developed quickly in Edo Period.Their good fortureinfluented all areas of life. The daily necessities were not limited to the upper class.Odinary people began to enjoy them. The level boundaries were broken downbyandby. The feudal systerm increasingly loosed. A disintegration of feudal societymovement was coming quietly.