Sexual Relations as Religious Practice in the Late Tokugawa Period: Fujido

Abstract

During the late Tokugawa period, some religious groups stressed regulation of the body as a focus for moral cultivation. This article reviews the eschatology of the Fujidō movement, whose members believed that the emergence of a harmonious, just society depended on the restoration of a proper balance between female (yin) and male (yang) forces. Harmonization was to be enacted on a cosmic level and also in human sexual relations. The Fujidō program of restoring proper relations between women and men, although unorthodox, was part of a larger trend to cultivate moral values through physical disciplines.