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==Edo Period==
==Edo Period==
In the Edo period, among both commoners and elites, marriages were typically arranged by parents and go-betweens, based on social or business interests. 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>
Among the peasantry, however, it seems that individuals had some greater degree of agency in choosing their spouses.<ref>Leupp, 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==
