Training of a Town Girl - Customs of Samurai Servitude Depicted in the Late Edo Period (Edo: Kaei era, 1848)

Training of a Town Girl - Customs of Samurai Servitude Depicted in the Late Edo Period (Edo: Kaei era, 1848)

The cover of "Kyokuso jyobo kataiki," a book published in 1848, depicts a town girl who has gone to the back of a samurai residence to apprentice herself. She is holding a pair of chained chopsticks, a tool in which two chopsticks are chained together so as to avoid mishaps in eating manners, a symbol appropriate for a girl learning etiquette. At that time in Edo, it was common for town girls to go to the residences of samurai families to learn not only cooking and sewing, but also language and manners. This was done both to help the family finances and to prepare for future marriages.

After the Tempo Reforms, society was still unstable, but urban culture had matured, and the lives of samurai and townspeople were closer than ever before. Townswomen who went into service adapted to samurai society within the framework of the status order and acquired life skills and courtesy. Their appearance symbolizes the social mobility that the metropolis of Edo faced and the resilience of the common people's lives. The illustrations left on Kusa-Soshi are a valuable source of genre information that vividly conveys a part of the culture of the townspeople in the late Edo period.