In ancient and modern times, in China and abroad, various countries and ethnic groups have blossomed and developed a variety of different cultural customs.
Many of the customs that seem incredible to us today may have become accustomed to them in other places.
In mainland Yunnan, there is an ethnic group called the Mosuo people, who magically retain the matrilineal social system and the custom of walking marriage.
In the Mosuo people, the highest status is women, and it is also women who preside over the overall situation at home.
They don't advocate marriage, and they don't think that a marriage letter can guarantee their feelings.
Therefore, after the Mosuo man and woman have a relationship, they will not choose to get married, but after the relationship is confirmed, the man will secretly come to the woman's room at night, and the two parties will confirm the relationship in private.
If the woman gives birth to a child, the man does not need to be responsible, and the child is fully entrusted to the woman to raise, raised in the name of the woman's family, and the woman's family will be taken care of when she grows up.
The man needs to take care of his sisters' children.
If his sister or sister gives birth to a child, they, as part of the family and as the child's uncle, need to contribute money and effort to help the sister raise the child.
Do you think the customs of the Mosuo people are amazing enough?
But in fact, the ancient Japanese custom of "night crawling" is the most magical.
Japanese wife asks for marriage
Night crawling in Japan originated from their ancient marriage of visiting wives, also known as wife-asking marriages.
The ancient Japanese custom of asking for marriage is somewhat similar to the Mosuo marriage custom, after the man and woman have determined their affection, the man will secretly go to the woman's room at night to confirm the relationship.
During the daytime the next day, the man will leave automatically.
However, the wife's marriage and the marriage are basically the same, but some details are different, and there are two biggest differences between the wife's marriage and the marriage.
The first is that the Mosuo people are more loyal to marriage, and most of them will only identify one person, while the Japanese are different, they are not loyal to one object, and there is often a phenomenon of polygamy and polyanry.
The second is that Mosuo men do not need to pay responsibility for their children, but ancient Japanese men had to bear some responsibility for their children.
The reason why the Mosuo people have a marriage system is because they still retain the primitive matrilineal system.
The reason why there were wives asking for marriage in ancient Japan was because their historical development was relatively slow, and they were heavily influenced by the matrilineal system in history.
Unlike the Chinese civilization, which has a long history, Japan has been a tribal society for a long time in ancient times, and its historical development has always been very backward.
Because of backwardness, their country has been in a matriarchal social system for a long time, and women have a huge voice in the tribal era.
Later, although Japan slowly changed from a matrilineal society to a patrilineal society, because the transition time was relatively short, women still had a huge voice in society.
In ancient Japan, there were eight female emperors.
Eight female emperors, this is inconceivable if it is placed in ancient China, which is dominated by the patriarchal line.
There were so many strong women in ancient China, but only Wu Zetian dared to be the emperor in that patriarchal society.
Even powerful women like Cixi and Empress Lu did not dare to risk the disapproval of the world to become emperors.
Judging from the appearance of eight female emperors in ancient Japan, the influence of their ancient matriarchal system is indeed huge.
It is precisely because of the remnants of the matrilineal system that Japan has long retained the custom of asking wives for marriage in ancient times.
After the union of the man and the woman, the child stays with the woman, and the man only needs to provide some financial support, so he does not need to worry too much.
The custom of asking for marriage between wives began in the Yamato period, which was written in Japan, and was spread until the Heian period, when it slowly disappeared in Japan.
The Yamato period in Japan is equivalent to the Sui and Tang dynasties in China, and the Heian period is equivalent to the Song dynasty in China.
I think that looking at the corresponding times of these two eras and the Chinese dynasties, everyone should be able to guess the reason for the disappearance of the custom of asking for marriage.
The Sui and Tang dynasties were the time when Japan studied Chinese culture on a large scale.
During that time, they frantically studied Chinese writing, architecture, food, and culture.
The Confucian culture from China and the intellectual culture of all kinds swept into Japan like a frenzy, and it quickly changed the lives of Japanese people.
Under the influence of Chinese culture, the patriarchy of the Japanese became stronger and stronger, and men paid more and more attention to their offspring.
The custom of "night crawling" in Japan
However, although the marriage of wives has disappeared, the tradition of some wives asking for marriage has not disappeared.
For a long period of time, the Japanese have been obsessed with "night crawling".
Night crawling, as the name suggests, is to climb into the woman's room at night.
In ancient Japan, as long as there was a woman from the same village who was in love with them, they only had to ask for the woman's consent, and then they could climb up to the woman's room at night.
This relationship is not bright, it is carried out secretly, and only the man and woman who love it know about it.
And this relationship also has a time limit, if the woman is married, then the relationship has to be temporarily interrupted.
Only when the woman returns to her parents' home and village, will the two parties briefly continue to get on the front line.
And if the woman conceives a child during the night crawl before she gets married, then the child they give birth to will be raised by the mother's family, and the man will subsidize a certain amount of money.
If the woman's nightlife is too chaotic to tell whose child it is, then the whole village will help her mother's family raise the child.
The Jinmen Incident
Regarding night climbing, during the Japanese invasion of China, a bloody case of 31 deaths and 3 injuries broke out.
The murderer of the murder was named Mutsuo Toi, who was 21 years old at the time, and was influenced by Japanese militarism, and he, like all young people of his generation, had a dream of joining the army.
But because of Mutsuo Toi's poor physical fitness and tuberculosis, after he signed up for the army, he was eliminated by the army and only got a C position rating.
In Japan at that time, women especially admired men who served as soldiers.
As long as a man is rated by the army as a first-class position, then he will instantly become the object of countless women in the village.
Even if he is not attractive personally, many women in the same village will be greatly changed by his rating and status, and will gladly accept him when he is crawled by the night.
Before Mutsuo Toi signed up for the army, because of his family's rich wealth and his talent for writing novels, he was quite favored by women in the same village, and many women maintained a night crawling relationship with him.
But after being rejected from the army and being given such a bad rating by the army, Mutsuo Toi instantly became the object of dislike of the whole village.
The women who used to have a night crawling relationship with him all closed the doors and windows, unwilling to let him enter the room, and refused to say a word to him.
When the children and men of the village saw him, they laughed at him and turned away from him.
In the disgust and ridicule of the whole village, Mutsuo Toi suffered for a while.
It wasn't until May 1938 that it couldn't help but explode because of an incident.
In May of that year, two foreign-married women who had been crawled by Mutsuo Toi at night returned to the village one after another, and Mutsuo Toi came to the door again with the idea that the two of them did not know their ratings.
But unexpectedly, both of them heard about Muo Toi, and both of them turned Muo Toi away, and they were unwilling to associate with him in disgust.
After both were rejected, the anger in Mutoshi Toi's heart finally couldn't be suppressed.
In the early hours of May 21, Mutsuo took a shotgun and 100 rounds of ammunition, as well as a Japanese knife and two daggers to begin his plan to vent his anger.
The first person he killed was his grandmother.
He killed his grandmother because her grandmother wouldn't let him go on to higher education.
And once when he was giving medicine to his sick grandmother, his grandmother thought he was going to poison himself and call the police to arrest him, so he hacked his grandmother to death with an axe that night.
After hacking his grandmother to death, Mutsuo Toi went to the homes of the women who rejected him and the homes of those who mocked him, killing 31 people and wounding three others, causing the Tsumen Incident that shocked Japan.
After killing people, Mutsuo came to a family with whom he had no entanglements, asked them to borrow a pen and paper to climb a mountain to write a suicide note, and finally committed suicide with a gun.
And the married girl who ignited his anger was not killed by him because she ran in time.
However, the mother's family of the foreign married girl was not so lucky, and they all died at his hands.
Judging from this case, we can see that night crawling is still practiced in Japan even in modern times.
After Japan's defeat in World War II, Japanese society developed rapidly, and in the contemporary era of serious urbanization, the word "night crawling" completely disappeared from Japanese society and was replaced by a new name.