Over the course of the Kamakura period and the Muromachi period, the Japanese family system underwent substantial changes. With its proliferation of branch families, the warrior class was at the forefront of many of these shifts. The relationship between reproduction, kinship, and salvation is a long-studied topic in the anthropology of East Asia. Many classic articles in this area focus on the distinction between blood and bone (the red and the white) as a key to affinal and agnatic relationships; flesh or blood being associated with in-marrying brides and bone or semen symbolizing the patrilineal substance of the ancestral line. This paper takes up this analytical rubric, most famously associated with the work of Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry (1982), and uses it to think about the enshrinement of women’s bones in medieval Japan. Nishiguchi Junko long ago pointed out that women’s bones, cleared of fleshy remains by the fire of cremation, became eligible for burial at Mt. Kōya and other sites that were off limits to them in life because of their sex. In this paper, I will explore this notion more closely, using examples of graves and memorials for women from warrior families, both real and fictional.
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