ality and renounced his home life. He felt emotions were afflictions that caused humans to suffer and that the worst of these afflictions were lust, hated, and greed. He depicts these afflictions as temptresses filled with excrement who he wouldn't even touch with his foot. Female sexuality, once respected as an equal to male sexuality, became permeated with startlingly negative connotations. Where once women were goddesses they now had to pass through a male incarnation before they could attain holiness (Minamoto 87).
The rejection of the female would become a traditional view within Buddhism, and Minamoto sates that "one cannot ignore paradigms of sexuality that have underlying Buddhist, Confucian, and Shinto ideologies" (Minamoto 89). such forces are more influential than the political, cultural, and economic mechanisms of society (Minamoto 89). Further, Minamoto states that "confucianism sustained the feudal system through the 260 years of Tokugawa rule" (Minamoto 92), and this also meant
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