The Language and Contours of Familial Obligation in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Japan

Late medieval warrior houses were multi-layered organizations comprising both blood relatives and biologically unrelated affiliates (housemen). Over time, a house had to contend not only with the inexorable attenuation of blood-ties between descendants of the core "family," but also with the constant threat of non-relatives' defection to to other houses. In practice houses prospered as long as their members were persuaded that affiliation offered the best chance of survival and prosperity. Straining against the instability of houses' contractual membership, lords and elders drew on Confucian ideals of conduct to cast the mutual obligations of members as moral imperatives, conflating the theoretically distinct roles of sons (relatives) and vassals (housemen): both must serve loyally; both must consider the house as their family.