ch to conjugal relations (Smith, pp. 201-206). The samurai and nobility depended upon agricultural productivity as the basis of their own financial security; there was little attempt made to interfere with the peasantry's ways - even if they contradicted "official" morality and codes of conduct on many points. As Meiji administrators prepared a Civil Code in the 1890s to bring Japan "up" to what they perceived to be the standards of Western civilization, it was pointedly noted by Hozumi Yatsuka, a major figure in the reform, "The customs of farmers are not to be made general customs" (Smith, p. 201).
Who was interested in these changes in gender ideology, then? There were three levels of literate society with whom consideration of the issue carried any weight. First and foremost concerned were the feudal nobility of the Tokugawa era, who were later to become the first-rung officials of the Meiji Reformation and the pre-World War II Showa imperial governments. The nobility formulated official decree, promulgating it to the Japanese public. After the nobility came the merchant class: the primary target public for all literature, decrees and public censure regarding the issue of male-female relationships. During the Tokugawa Shogunate, the merchant class constituted a rising power group within Japanese society, establishing a flourishing middle class and the basis for Japan's subsequent, successful entry into the industrial age. Midway between the nobility and the merchant class stood the samurai, the warrior class of lesser nobility from whom all powerful lords traced their origins. It was the unwritten "Way of the Warrior," Bushido, that represented feudal ideals. During the three centuries of peace ensured by the Tokugawa shoguns, however, the samurai class gradually devolved into an uneasy social position, since a local standing army for each lord was neither economically feasible nor politically desired by the shogunate ...