Outside the inner quarters: sociability, mobility and narration in early Edo-period women's diaries

Abstract

This paper moves between text and context in order to trace the personal, familial and narrative connections between two women, Nakayama Suzuko (b. c. 1675), wife of a Mito domain official stationed in Edo, and her sister-in-law Kuroda Tosako (1682–1758), wife of an official of Tatebayashi domain. Drawing on four extant texts – two travel accounts and two diary/memoirs – the paper argues that, although marriage and family fundamentally shaped these bushi-class women's lives, these factors did not confine them to the home, but pushed them out into the world to act on behalf of their families as well as for their own enrichment and pleasure.