Heian Marriage
To get a better perspective on modern marriage and family, it’s instructive to look at them in other times and cultures. In the Heian period (roughly 800-1200 CE) in Japan, the noble class practiced a very interesting system of courtship and marriage. This is the system portrayed in “The Tale of Genji” by Murasaki Shikibu, arguably the oldest novel in the world.
If you’re a Japanese nobleman in the Heian era and a certain noblewoman catches your eye, here’s how you go about courting her:
- Get into her room at night.
- Do the horizontal dance together.
- Make sure the servants hear you going at it. They are your witnesses.
- Share some manjuu (sweet dumplings) and exchange love letters.
- Repeat the process for three nights in a row.
- Congratulations! You’re married
There are obvious reasons, I don’t really need to point them out, why this would never work out in today’s society. Heian marriage does have a lot of things going for it, though.
When Lord Genji took his numerous wives, it was a more passionate, spontaneous, and therefore loving affair. Missing were the legalism, the commercialism, the consumerism with which we bind marriage in the modern West. The act of wedding a noblewoman was an act of passion and love. Here in the west, it’s an act of signing documents, often accompanied by lots of traditional ceremony. The night after all that exhausting ceremony, newlyweds are lucky if they have enough energy to actually consummate it.
Neither was marriage so life-changing back then. Ain’t no samurai gonna be walled in by no white picket fence! A wife was really more of what we’d call a steady girlfriend. You can imagine how much easier that could be on the sanity of both the lord and his lady. Cohabitation was unnecessary, indeed would be impractical for the young prince busy adventuring around Japan.
Perhaps the biggest advantage of Heian Marriage over the western institution: internal consistency. You see, as much as we in the 21st century make a big deal about lifetime marriage and “’til death do us part”, divorce and separation are actually quite common. The U.S. legal system features a no-fault divorce system which could have come right out of Murasaki’s quill. Or rather, Murasaki’s version would be clean of the guilt and shame and feelings of failure we heap on our divorcees. And clean of the lawsuits, custody battles, alimony and legal fees.
A society can go for a passionate, spontaneous marriage system like the one in ancient Japan. Or it can go for the long-term, the golden anniversary, the white-picket-fences. But whichever way it goes, consistency is crucial. The solemn and expensive vows of Western marriage ring hollow when western marriage is in practice no more stable than Genji’s lascivious adventures.
Incidentally, you can still practice Heian marriage even if you’re not a shogun prince. You can replace the manjuu with donuts, and the servants with neighbors whom you keep awake all night Whether you’re really officially married, or just boyfriend-girlfriend, a three-night “Heian ceremony” can be a lot of fun 
FURTHER READING
Leadership in Relationships
10 Metaphors for Love
Sex Before Marriage
Hashigo