The land of Japan is home to a myriad of "strange customs", and these unique customs are like adding to the wonderful legends of the country.
Before human history entered the threshold of industrialization, the size of the population often determined the success or failure of a country.
As a result, in order to ensure the reproduction of the population, Japan gave birth to a rather peculiar chapter - "Night Walking".
What is "nocturnal walking" and what kind of story is it hiding?
Amazing nocturnal customs
The tradition of nocturnal walking is not unique to Japan, and its history can be traced back to the tribal days of ancient humans.
At that time, people lived in small communities, working together and raising their offspring together.
In the days before monogamy was established, men and women could enjoy themselves in the darkness of the night as long as they were in love.
When the wheel of history entered the Asuka period, Japan was still in an uncivilized state of wilderness. At that time, there was a huge disparity between the status of men and women, and women were at the bottom and were often reduced to playthings in the hands of men.
In that special era, the peculiar custom of "night crawling" came into being spontaneously under the cover of the dark night. The rules are simple: if the man is tempted, he can creep into the woman's boudoir at nightfall, and the women, whether they want it or not, must accept the sudden "night visit".
In a country bound by geography and years of war, Japan's population growth has been struggling. The original intention was simple and pure - for the multiplication of the population, in order to prevent the ethnic group from gradually dying out in this land.
As a result, "night crawling" has become a unique landscape, giving each man the opportunity to bond with many women, thus ensuring a steady increase in fertility.
But with the passage of time, this custom that began in the village gradually crossed the boundaries and began to have a cross-village "night walk". In the night, from time to time, there are figures shuttling through unfamiliar villages, looking for unknown warmth.
In 1938, when the summer was scorching, a horrific human tragedy occurred in a small country village in Tsuyama Town, Okayama Prefecture, Japan—that is, the Tsuyama Massacre that shocked the world.
In this place, if outsiders step into the house, the women have to fulfill the gift of "hospitality" that is not embarrassing or embarrassing, which seems to have become an indispensable way of welcoming the local hospitality.
And the one who set off this bloody storm was a young man named Mutsuo Toi, who was only twenty-five years old. Weak and sick since childhood, his grandmother was afraid that he would be bullied in the school, so she was ruthless and determined not to let him enter the school gate, so she cut off his way to study.
When he was a child, he was confined to the four walls, wasting his time all day long, his hands were idle and panicked, and he gradually indulged in the long-inherited half-night secret play "Night Crawling" in the township.
As a thin but energetic offspring, Dujing began to run rampant and uninhibited in the village under the guise of "night crawling".
At that time, most of the sturdy young men in the village were conscripted into the battlefield, and the claws of Tsui stretched out to those irresistible village women.
The wind in the village always blows urgently, and it doesn't take long for rumors about Dujing climbing over the wall in the middle of the night and extending the hand of "night crawling" to several women in the village, like weeds growing wildly in the streets and alleys. Some women swallowed bitterness in tears, and some lost their hearts and were willing to sink in the sweet words of Dujing's flamboyant tongue.
In this way, in the spring and autumn seasons, they were all in a no-man's land, which made many village women bear a heavy stigma.
However, there is no banquet in the world, and as the beacon fire is extinguished, the women and men who have trembled under the claws of the Dujing devil have returned from the battlefield one by one, and with the smell of gunsmoke, they staggered back to their homes.
In that turbulent June 1938, when the night was like ink, Tsui stepped into someone else's home, with bad intentions, in a vain attempt to defile a woman of a good family with the bad behavior of "night crawling".
Unexpectedly, the woman's husband, an iron-clad man, had secretly returned from the war-torn front line to protect his homeland. He witnessed Toi's despicable deeds, and in a fit of rage, he expelled the uninvited guest from his house and denounced his crimes with words like knives.
Humiliated and angry, and full of resentment, Mitsui returned home and used machetes and other murder weapons, and in the dark night, his hands were stained with blood, and he mutilated the innocent couple and their children, committing a heinous crime. When they heard of the so-called "insult" suffered by their wives, their hearts were furious like a prairie fire, and they vowed to let the flames of revenge consume everything.
At dawn the next day, Toi was still running rampant in the village, ignoring men, women and children, and poisoning every man, women, and children, resulting in a heart-wrenching tragedy, with the death toll climbing to 36, and behind each number was a heartbreaking story.
It is such a man, whose persistence and irrepressible desire for the ancient custom of "night crawling" turned into a bloody case that shocked the four wilds.
And Mutsuo Toi was also sentenced by the law to be hanged because of his atrocities.
This tragedy gave birth to the Japanese government's explicit ban on the custom of "night crawling" at that time, and an unbearable history came to an end.
In the cycle of earthly reincarnation, the Japanese government turned its pen and cracked the custom of "night crawling" into the cold palace, and the following year it was condemned as a felony of rape in the house by iron law.
If we unfold the scroll of history, we can see the rise and fall of the folk custom of "night crawling", which is closely linked to the ups and downs of the Japanese social system, like two parallel lines that never intersect.
Dating back to the 7th century, when marriage laws were introduced from the mainland, a woman who fornicates with an outsider is considered a lawbreaker and is subject to moral shackles.
In the 14th century, during the turmoil between the North and the South, the Japanese government had to change its course and open the door to "night crawling" as a remedy for its survival.
The years of the Tokugawa shogunate were a time of tranquility when the Iron Horse Glacier had come to a dream, and the land of Japan was full of people flourishing like spring grass and trees, and it never stopped. By 1872, the population of the rising kingdom had grown to 34,810,000 people, and its population was so large that even England, the overlord of the sea, had been left behind.
In those peaceful and quiet years, coupled with the fact that men were able to accompany their lovers leisurely, the once popular custom of "night crawling" naturally gradually restrained its wild and uninhibited.
However, in that upper class where nobility and decay coexisted, those lonely aristocrats still indulged in the last revelry of this ancient custom under the cover of night.
The Tokugawa shogunate, for the sake of the jingle of copper coins, not only did not prohibit it, but supported this legal custom industry with great fanfare, and brought the secret "night crawling" behavior of the people under the official wing one by one, and controlled it, which became a unique scenery of that era.
During the reign of the Tokugawa shogunate, Japan ushered in a peaceful period of more than 260 years, and the afterglow of feudalism sprinkled the last glory on this land. However, beneath this tranquil surface, the women of the Tokugawa period endured embarrassing treatment and constraints.
Greedily chasing gold and silver, the Tokugawa shogunate's methods seemed so cruel and unrighteous that they left morality behind and the official banner clearly held up the umbrella of the customs industry, and strictly managed and manipulated it. At that time, the shogunate not only established the infamous Yoshiwara Red Light District in the bustling city of Edo (present-day Tokyo), but also hundreds of "yukoku" sprung up all over the country—places that were like purgatory on earth and became abysses of women's suffering.
In these custom neighborhoods, a large number of young women who have been forced or deceived into buying are gathered.
They are deprived of their liberty, tortured and ill-treated, and reduced to the playthings of men to satisfy their desires.
Many women suffer so much from this "sex slave" life that some even commit suicide to end their lives.
It can be said that the treatment of women by the Tokugawa shogunate was extremely harsh and unfair. This is in ironic contrast to the samurai spirit of "civilization and enlightenment" and "the way of etiquette" that they keep proclaiming, and it is a picture that runs counter to it. At that time, women's suffering and helplessness seemed to be submerged under the flowery rhetoric of so-called "humility and courtesy", but real life was full of roughness and ruthlessness.
In this land where greed and selfish desires are intertwined, they treat women as goods to be sold, ruthlessly auctioning off their dignity and human rights, and making wealth the yardstick by which everything is measured.
In this structure forged by male power, women are deprived of the right to speak, deprived of the freedom of choice, and degenerated into male appendages, even playthings to play with.
Although the high-ranking shogunate had some restrictions on such acts as "night crawling", the essence of the shogunate was still to maintain this unethical order, so that those unbearable transactions could continue under the protection of the government.
They talk a lot about Confucian morality, but their attitude towards women is so bad that it is outrageous. Isn't this a great irony and slander of the word "civilization"?
Even in order to chase a small amount of foreign exchange, the Japanese government could not bear to send its own women to Nanyang and fell into the dust. They also set up special accounts for these women, but it is disgraceful that they keep their hard-earned money for themselves.
At a time when militarism was rife, the Meiji government, in order to temper the absolute obedience and bestial instincts of the soldiers, tolerated a gruesome vice that spread among the new army.
Whenever the battle clouds were thick and the sergeants were about to embark on their journey, their commanders could arbitrarily choose the wives of the soldiers to "relieve their worries."
If there is a disobedient, the sergeant will taste the "cold reception" on the battlefield.
In that era of gunpowder, thousands of Japanese men were driven to the battlefield.
In order to make ends meet, more than 5 million Japanese women had no choice but to join the ranks of prostitution, and even in broad daylight, they had to go along the door, and finally ended up as "comfort women" of the occupying army.
epilogue
From a medical point of view, the so-called "night crawling" vice not only hides the risk of STD transmission, but also leads to the tragedy of blood confusion.
From an ethical and moral point of view, this is undoubtedly an extreme desecration of women's dignity.
As the times faltered into modern civilization, the ugliness of "night crawling" was finally abandoned, but the Japanese AV industry continues to play out similar tragedies in a different form.
All in all, the ancient custom of "night crawling" is like a mirror that reflects the vicissitudes of Japanese society. Not only did it play a role in history, but it also contributed to the decline of women's status in Japan.
Here, let's lift this veil and explore the old custom of "night crawling" in Japan. In front of the screen, what do you think about the heaviness of history and the reflection of reality? You may wish to leave your insights in the comment area......