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==Edo Period==
==Edo Period==
In the early Edo period, marriages were typically arranged by parents and go-betweens, based on social or business interests, among both commoners and elites. Love was "condemned ... as an irrelevant and possibly disruptive element."<ref>Gary Leupp, ''Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900'', A&C Black (2003), 44.</ref> Couples often did not even meet one another until the wedding, and afterwards were obliged to simply negotiate between them a way to get along and forge a life together. "The relationship which developed between man and wife was usually one of loyalty rather than of romantic attachment."<ref>Donald Shively, ''The Love Suicide at Amijima'', Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan (1991), 23.</ref> Over the course of the period, however, marriage by mutual agreement of the couple themselves gradually became more widespread, even as they adopted some samurai practices, such as formal meetings with suitors (''omiai''), and the exchange of engagement gifts (''yuinô'').<ref>Leupp, 101.</ref> Among the peasantry, meanwhile, it seems that individuals had considerable agency in choosing their spouses, based on their own feelings.<ref>Leupp, 101, 241n2.</ref>
Wedding ceremonies were small, private, affairs, which involved some minimal ritual, such as the sharing of a wedding meal, and the exchanging of cups of [[sake|saké]]. The ceremony bore little or no deep religious meaning, in contrast to the Catholic Christian notion of marriage as a sacrament, and did not involve any extensive religious element to the ritual; the [[Shinto]] wedding ceremony is one of those many traditions which was invented in the Meiji period. The meal was typically attended by the couple, a few close relatives, and a formal go-between (''nakôdo''). Among the elites, wedding gifts (''yuinô'') were often exchanged.<ref name=leupp45>Leupp, 45.</ref>
Historian Gary Leupp compares marriage ceremonies to the forging of bonds between a lord and his retainer, or between a craftsman and his new apprentice; something that involves some small degree of ceremony, and seriousness of the bonds forged, but still not an extensive, public, or religious event as weddings very often are today. That said, Japanese were typically monogamous; a samurai lord or other elite might have one or more concubines (側室, ''sokushitsu''), but none counted as his "wife" (正室, ''seishitsu''), and a man would only ever have one wife at a time. A man could initiate a divorce on a whim, but that divorce, or the wife's death, was necessary before a man could take a new wife (much like today).<ref name=leupp45/>
==Meiji Period==
==Meiji Period==
