Love was a most subversive affair in Edo Japan

Sex is an anarchic current running through society. Love? That too. If the two coincide, so much the better — but they rarely do, with social and psychological consequences ranging from unsettling to tragic. Autocrats distrust love. They fear it. Sometimes they hate it. It’s ungovernable. Or is it? Maybe not, if contained. Japan’s rulers in times past made a crime — sometimes a capital one — of love outside the container.

“Persons such as those who have engaged in illicit intercourse with their master’s daughter, or who have attempted such: Death,” reads a law in force through the Edo Period (1603-1867).

“Persons such as those who commit adultery with their master’s wife, or with their teacher’s wife: Death for both the man and the woman.”