Oda Nabunaga

Oda Nobunaga was the first of the great Three Unifiers who rose to power in the late Sengoku Period, uniting much of Japan under his rule, and setting the stage for the eventual end of the wars and chaos which had dominated the archipelago for more than 100 years.

Nobunaga is known for numerous military, political, economic, and cultural activities, accomplishments and innovations, including his innovative use of firearms and victory at the battle of Nagashino in 1575; his abolition of guilds and customs barriers, leading to significant economic integration; and the construction of Azuchi castle, the model for Japanese castles in the mode most well-known today.

His death in 1582 in the Honnoji Incident led to his retainer Toyotomi Hideyoshi rising to power as hegemon over the archipelago.

son of Oda Nobuhide (1508? –1549), a minor lord whose family once served the Shiba  shugo. Nobuhide was a skilled warrior, and spent much of his time fighting the samurai of Mikawa and Mino. He also had enemies closer to home - the Oda were divided into two separate camps, with both vying for control of Owari's eight districts. Nobuhide's branch, of which he was one of three elders, was based at Kiyosu castle. The rival branch was to the north, in Iwakura castle.

Many of Nobuhide's battles were fought in Mikawa, against the Matsudaira and the Imagawa clan. The latter were old and prestigious, rulers of Suruga and overlords of Totomi. The Matsudaira were as obscure as the Oda, and while not as splintered politically, they were slowly coming under the Imagawa's influence. The decade leading up to 1548 was dominated along the Mikawa-Owari border by the contention of three men - Oda Nobuhide, Matsudaira Hirotada, and Imagawa Yoshimoto. In 1542, Imagawa, supported by the Matsudaira, marched as far west as the Owari border, and was met by Oda Nobuhide and his younger brother Tsuda Nobumitsu at Azukizaka. In this bitter fight, the Oda emerged victorious, but not decisively. In 1548 Nobuhide attempted to arrange the defection of a certain Matsudaira Tadamoto of Mikawa away from Hirotada. Tadamoto, however, ended up being killed in the attempt, and Oda launched an attack on Okazaki, evidently to make up for the disappointment. Matsudaira Hirotada thus found himself in difficult straights, and called on Imagawa for assistance. Yoshimoto replied that he would be happy to help - so long as Hirotada was willing to send along his young son as a hostage. Hirotada had little choice, and shipped off 6-year old Takechiyo (the future Tokugawa Ieyasu) westward. En-route to Suruga, unfortunately, Oda loyalists intercepted the hostage party and made off with Takechiyo, taking the child to Nobuhide. Nobuhide immediately made use of his new card and demanded that Hirotada give up Okazaki in return for his son's life. Hirotada wisely refused, and Nobuhide, his bluff called, did no harm to the boy. Later in 1548, Imagawa and Oda met again in battle, and this time the Imagawa came out the winner. The following year Nobuhide died, leaving an Oda clan divided in every possible way.

Anxious to capitalize on the death of his rival, Imagawa Yoshimoto sent his uncle, the talented monk-general Sessai Choro, to attack Nobuhide's heir, Nobuhiro. Sessai besieged Nobuhiro in Anjo castle, and sent word to Nobunaga that unless he wished to see his elder brother made to commit suicide, he would have to send back Takechiyo. Nobunaga could hardly refuse, and so Takechiyo ended up in Suruga, even though his father Hirotada had passed away that same year.

The progress of the next three years is hazy. By 1551, however, Nobunaga was the leader of his faction of the Oda and master of Kiyosu. His principal enemy (beyond his own family) was his father's nemesis, the Imagawa. Nobunaga's northern borders (not counting the area of Mino controlled by the Iwakura Oda) were more or less secured, at least: before his death, Nobuhide had arranged for the marriage of Nobunaga to Saito Dosan's daughter. Saito Toshimasa  (Dosan) (1494-1556) was a colorful figure, a former oil-merchant (if tradition is to be believed) who supplanted the Toki family of Mino.

As just noted, Saito Yoshitatsu was the new lord of Mino, having killed Dosan at the Battle of Nagaragawa (1556), and he was no friend to the Oda. The Oda's forts in Mino were quickly reduced, and Nobunaga's attempts to make in-roads in that province were turned back. At the same time, Imagawa Yoshimoto was knocking on Owari's southeastern door, having all but absorbed Mikawa and the Matsudaira clan. Imagawa's army had lost some of it's potency with the death of Sessai Choro in 1555 but Yoshimoto could call on the services of a young and skillful ally – Matsudaira Motoyasu, a man whose fate would prove inter-twined with that of Nobunaga. In 1558, Motoyasu fought his first battle - at Nobunaga's expense. Oda had recently bribed Terabe castle away from the Matsudaira, and Motoyasu, with the Imagawa's blessing, took it back, defeating a relief force sent by Nobunaga. The next year, Imagawa did a little horse-trading of his own, and lured Otaka castle away from the Oda. Nobunaga was furious, and had the fort surrounded. Soon, the garrison began to run out of food, and to lead a relief effort, Imagawa sent Matsudaira Motoyasu. Using a crafty bit of diversion, Motoyasu successfully provisioned Otaka - much to Nobunaga's chagrin.

Okehazama, 1560

The following year, 1560, Imagawa Yoshimoto  decided to make a decisive move to the west. His aim was to drive along the Tokaido coast, brushing aside the Oda and any who did not submit to the Imagawa army with the ultimate goal of occupying Kyoto. To this end Yoshimoto gathered perhaps 20,000 to 25,000 men from Suruga, Totomi, and Mikawa in June, leaving his son Ujizane to run things while he was off conquering. He included Matsudaira Motoyasu in the invasion force, and dispatched the Mikawa samurai to reduce the fort of Marume. Meanwhile, the rest of the Imagawa host crossed in Owari and assaulted Washizu castle. The commanders of the besieged forts (Sakuma Morishige and Oda Genba) managed to get off letters of warning to Nobunaga in Kiyosu, and his retainers were divided on what course of action to take. Given the obvious disparity in numbers, it seemed logical to adopt a defensive posture, or even to capitulate. Nobunaga was for fighting. With all the brash and unpredictable élan he was to show throughout his career, he ordered a conch shell blown and the garrison of Kiyosu made ready for battle.

The next morning, while Marume and Washizu were going up in flames, Nobunaga led a handful of men out of the castle and headed in the direction of Imagawa's army. Along the way he was joined by enough ashigaru and samurai to make an attack credible-if not particularly wise. At ten to one odds, Nobunaga's chances seemed slim at best, although the priests at the Atsuta Shrine that he stopped at to pray for victory commented on how calm he appeared.

Meanwhile, Imagawa was celebrating the course of his campaign so far. Encamped in the Dengakuhazama gorge, Imagawa's army rested and enjoyed sake, their leader engrossed in the viewing of the heads taken at Marume and Washizu. Nobunaga, paused near the Imagawa's Narumi castle, learned of the Imagawa's location from scouts, and played a stratagem. He had battle flags hoisted up from behind a hill, presenting the image to the Imagawa stationed inside Narumi that the Oda were resting nearby. In fact, Nobunaga slipped his men quietly away, leading them in the direction of the Dengakuhazama. At this critical point, a bit of good luck went Nobunaga's way. A summer thunderstorm broiled over and let loose with a torrential downpour, enabling Nobunaga to sneak up quite close to the Imagawa's position. When the rains abated, he gave the order to attack.

Such was the suddenness and ferocity of the attack; Imagawa assumed that a fight had broken out among his own men. His misconception was quickly righted by the appearance of Oda spearmen who succeeded in taking the head of the lord of Suruga. Nobunaga's surprise attack worked beautifully, and once word spread of Yoshimoto's demise, the Imagawa army fled, utterly defeated. Matsudaira Motoyasu, resting his men in Marume, heard of the defeat and thought it best to return to Mikawa forthwith.

Nobunaga's Move To Regional Power, 1561-1570

In 1561, Saito Yoshitatsu, who had continued to fend off advances by the Oda, passed away, probably of leprosy. This left his son, Tatsuoki, in command and Nobunaga was quick to take advantage of the new lord's weak character. By bribing away key Saito generals, Nobunaga was able to weaken the defenses of Mino and in 1567 he attacked Inabayama, the headquarters of the Saito clan. According to tradition, the hill-top castle was brought down by Hashiba (Toyotomi) Hideyoshi, although this valuable Oda retainer does not begin appearing in written records until around 1576.

The following year, Nobunaga moved his capital to Inabayama and renamed the castle Gifu. Everything about the move was auspicious, and made possible by two alliances - one to Matsudaira Motoyasu, and another to Takeda Shingen of Kai and Shinano. The name Gifu was taken from the castle from which King Wu of Zhou (or Wu Wang), ruler of the Zhou Dynasty, had set out in the 11th or 12th century BCE to unify China. Emperor Ôgimachi sent a letter of congratulations and Nobunaga adopted the motto Tenka Fubu, or 'the realm covered in military glory' (or, alternatively, 'The nation under one sword").

Nobunaga's ambition was given a powerful stimulant with the arrival of Ashikaga Yoshiaki  at Gifu in 1567. The brother of the late shogun, Ashikaga Yoshiteru, murdered in 1565, Yoshiaki had spent the intervening years seeking out a patron. Yoshiteru's assassins - the Miyoshi and Matsunaga clans - had seen fit to legitimize their domination of Kyoto politics by naming the 2-year old Ashikaga Yoshihide as Yoshiteru's successor. When Yoshiaki heard the news, he gave up a Buddhist priesthood and fled with Hosokawa Fujitaka, both out of fear for his own life and in the hopes he would find a warlord strong enough to set things right in Kyoto. That he was the logical choice to follow Yoshiteru was clear…finding a Daimyo that would do something about it proved difficult. In his search, he approached the Takeda of Wakasa (not to be confused with the Takeda of Kai), the Uesugi of Echigo, and the Asakura of Echizen. The last seemed the most promising, in terms of military strength relative to a proximity to the capital, and indeed, Asakura Yoshikage promised to help. But Yoshikage stalled and in the end admitted that he was powerless to assist Yoshiaki's nomadic party.

Then Yoshiaki turned to Oda Nobunaga, who fairly jumped at the opportunity. In fact, he had expressed a desire in late 1565 to do just what Yoshiaki was asking, and it may be that Yoshiaki had been leery of approaching this young upstart to begin with. Uesugi and Asakura, after all, were names that carried quite a bit of prestige along with them. But, by 1567, Yoshiaki had evidently decided that beggars couldn't be choosers.

In 1568 Nobunaga's army marched westward in Yoshiaki's name, brushing aside the Rokkaku of southern Omi and putting to flight Miyoshi and Matsunaga. Matsunaga Hisahide  promptly submitted (for which he was confirmed Daimyo of Yamato) while the Miyoshi withdrew to Settsu. In the ninth month Nobunaga entered Kyoto and within three weeks Yoshiaki was installed as the fifteenth Ashikaga shogun with the approval of Emperor Ôgimachi. The mutually beneficial relationship of Yoshiaki and Nobunaga had thus far borne sweet fruit. In time, it would grow quite sour, foreshadowed by Nobunaga's refusal to accept the position of Kanrei, or deputy shogun, even when the Emperor himself requested he do so in 1569. Nobunaga seemed determined to exist in a sort of political limbo, and expressed little interest in any orthodox rank or titles, including, as we shall see, that of shogun. That Nobunaga was the real ruler in Kyoto was the only part of the equation that lacked any sort of ambiguity.

Resistance, 1570-1573

It was hardly surprising that the Daimyo who lived outside Nobunaga's sphere of influence would become quite agitated by the developments in Kyoto. Naturally, upheaval in Kyoto was nothing new - but Nobunaga was. He was quite unlike any of the various Miyoshi, Hosokawa, or Hatakeyama contenders of the past. Those lords, the Hosokawa Sumimoto's and Miyoshi Motonaga's of 1500-1565, had struggled for personal gain and prestige. Nobunaga seemed different. Certainly, he aimed for personal gain and prestige as well, but the sort of gain he desired was most different. By 1568, it is safe to say that Nobunaga aimed to rule all of Japan. Of course, this particular wish was hardly unique among the Daimyo - in point of fact, it is quite misleading to say that Nobunaga somehow possessed a vision denied his contemporaries. Rather, Nobunaga was in the right place at the right time and presented with the right window. The other great warlords of his day (some arguably greater as men go), Mori Motonari, Takeda Shingen, Uesugi Kenshin, and Hojo Ujiyasu  were all far removed from the capital, and in the case of the last three, unable to move due to the ambitions of their neighbors. The key was location. By taking Kyoto, Nobunaga positioned himself nicely in the center of Japan, which could be called the nation's 'soft under-belly'. While Nobunaga would face an implacable enemy in the Ikko-Ikki that dwelled just beyond the Kinai, the weakness of the Daimyo within that region allowed him to build, by 1573, a considerable power-base. This is not to say, of course, that Nobunaga lacked the talents usually ascribed to him. But it is perhaps inaccurate to describe him as something other than a 'sengoku Daimyo'. He was rather the ultimate expression of the 'sengoku-Daimyo'. His power was based almost solely on the point of a sword, and as he grew in power, so did his use for diplomacy diminish. He kept a tight rein on his retainers, and was ruthless to his opponents, especially those who proved especially troublesome to him. His campaigns would be long and hard-fought as his reputation for cruelty grew. Few of his enemies had any illusion about what surrender would mean.

In early 1570, Nobunaga was presented with the first real challenge to his rise. Perhaps in an effort to feel out opposition, Nobunaga had evidently pressed Yoshiaki to request all the local Daimyo to come to Kyoto and attend a certain banquet. One of those who presence was requested was none other than Asakura Yoshikage, the very Daimyo who had frittered his own chance to champion Yoshiaki. Suspecting that Nobunaga was behind the 'invitation', Yoshikage refused, an act Nobunaga declared disloyal to both the shogun and the emperor. With this pretext well in hand, Nobunaga raised an army and marched on Echizen. Initially, all went well for the attackers, with the Asakura revealing their rather lack-luster leadership abilities. By March Nobunaga, supported by Tokugawa Ieyasu (the former Matsudaira Motoyasu), had penetrated Echizen's southern approaches and was moving on Yoshikage's capital (Ichijo-no-tani). Just then, Oda received startling news. His brother-in-law, Asai Nagamasa, had suddenly switched sides and gathered troops to help the Asakura. In fact, Nagamasa's change of heart was probably not as great a surprise as one might think. The Asai and Asakura had been allies for decades, and a single marriage - even if it included the Daimyo of the clan - was not enough to nullify such a long friendship.

Nobunaga the Ruler

Prior to Ashikaga Yoshiaki’s fall in 1573, Nobunaga had not accepted any court titles. Now he accepted the prestigious rank of Kugyo. As a kugyo, Nobunaga was officially part of the ruling hierarchy and could act in state affairs. Court appointments would continue to be lavished on a near-yearly basis. He was named Gondainagon and Ukon’etaishou in 1574 and two years later was elevated to Udaijin. He showed his regard for the Court by assuring the property of the kuge  (nobles) and ordered that all land in Kyoto that had belonged to the kuge in the previous one hundred years be restored to them. Normally, statutes of limitations were considered to come into effect after a period of 20 years. On the same token, he assumed the right to settle disputes involving members of the nobility, a right he excersied by placing under temporary arrest the nobleman who had opposed his selection of the head abbot of the Kofuku-ji. During this time he handed over the official leadership of the Oda to his son Nobutada and clearly intended to carve out a political structure for his hegemony of the country. In 1577 he resigned from his ranks of Udaijin and Ukon’etaishou, pleading unfinished work in the provinces. Actually, since the policy of the court was to honor an individual based on the highest post he had achieved, Nobunaga lost no influence by so doing. According to some historians, such as Fujiki Hisashi, Nobunaga maneuvered to try to force Emperor Ogimachi  into retirement. Osamu Wakita has refuted this theory. Nobunaga adopted a son of Ogimachi’s in 1579 and in the construction of Azuchi Castle had a room set aside to receive visits from the future emperor. As Nobunaga would be the father-in-law to the emperor, he would enjoy a status along the lines of a Retired Emperor. Far from disdaining the court, Nobunaga had worked to link it directly to his vision of a united country under his rule.

Nobunaga accepted no other titles before his death, including that of shogun. Traditionally, the rank of shogun was withheld for men of Minamoto stock and Nobunaga had openly associated himself with the Taira. This is not to say that the court would not have made this appointment; in fact, such was suggested in 1582. As it was, before Nobunaga, shoguns had been the only warriors to attain the title of Kugyo. Nobunaga died before he could give an answer to the court's offer to elevate him to whatever lofty title he wanted. Yet it seems that Nobunaga was willing to honor the existing political framework of the country, at least vis-à-vis the court. What his ultimate plans were as for how he would excersise his rule over the entire country are a matter for mere speculation.

Wilusa

.This land lay in the extreme northwest of Anatolia, including the Troad, and features quite prominently in the affairs of the  region during the 13th century BC, though never a state of the first  rank. Linguistic evidence indicates that Wilusa lay outside the Luwian-speaking zone: it therefore seems reasonable to see this as a  hint that it was not strictly part of the Arzawa lands. This could be  one factor behind the loyalty to Hatti of Wilusa as a vassal state,  whose geographical location made it especially valuable to the Hittites. After his campaign, led by the general Gassu, Muwatalli II  restored Hittite control over Wilusa, establishing Alaksandu as  ruler and drawing up a treaty with him, in which the past loyalty  of Wilusa to Hattusa is stressed. Troubles in Wilusa later came to  a head in the time of Tudhaliya IV, when Walmu was the vassal  ruler: he was deposed, fleeing to Millawanda, where a new, proHittite ruler had come to power, possibly allied by marriage to the  Hittite royal house. Significantly, Walmu was apparently answerable both to Tudhaliya in Hattusa and to Milawat, an arrangement  which would not have been tolerated by earlier Hittite kings, who  demanded exclusive fealty to themselves and who did not differentiate between their vassals in terms of status.  The location of Wilusa, commanding the sea route through to  the Black Sea, provided it with a source of wealth but also the danger of attack by envious, rapacious neighbors. In the 13th century  BC these were above all the Mycenaeans, almost certainly identifiable with Ahhiyawa. As long as this power flourished, Wilusa was  in constant danger of attack. Its links across the Dardanelles with  Europe were archaeologically clearest in the 12th century BC, after  the heyday of Mycenaean power in the maritime region of western  Anatolia and the downfall of the Hittite Empire.   If Hissarlik--the site of Heinrich Schliemann’s and later excavations--is indeed to be identified with Homeric Troy, then it  must surely be with Troy VIH, imposing in its architectural remains in contrast with those of the following levels, and destroyed  most probably around 1250 BC. The last two names in the list of  states comprising the alliance defeated by Tudhaliya I/II (ca.1400  BC)--Wilusiya and Taruisa--have been identified with the Greek  names (W)ilios or Ilion and Troia (Troy). The implication is that  the name of Wilusa, clearly in the first instance that of a land or  minor state, came to be given to the city we know as Troy. Mycenaean-Greek elements in western Anatolia seem implied by the very name of Alaksandu, vassal ruler of Wilusa. On the identification of Wilusa as Ilios and thus Troy a divergent theory distinguishes Truisa from Wilusa, with the former lying not far east of  the latter.  One of the sources of the wealth of Troy was the plentiful  supply of fish, an attraction to covetous neighbors. The sea came  further inland than today, and ships would have plied to and fro between the port and Mycenaean harbors, as well as in the more hazardous maritime trade with the Black Sea.  Wilusa lay at the junction of two continents and the meeting  place at various times of different populations, among them the ancestors of both Lydians and Etruscans.  In the 13th century BC its  situation gave it a pivotal role for Hittite policy in the west, not  least for curbing the designs of Ahhiyawa.

Not all scholars have accepted the identification of Wilusa with Troy. There is an alternative hypothesis, for example, that Wilusa was located near Beycesultan, which was known in the Byzantine era as "Iluza" (Ἴλουζα).

Wilusa per se is known from six references in Hittite sources, including:

• the Manapa-Tarhunta letter (c. 1310–1280 BC); which places it beyond the Seha river;
• the Alaksandu treaty (c. 1280 BC), between Alaksandu of Wilusa and Muwatalli II of Hatti;
• the Tawagalawa letter (c. 1250 BC), addressed to the king of the Ahhiyawa by Hattusili III, mentioning a military conflict over Wilusa, and;
• the Milawata letter (C. 1240 BC), believed to be written by Tudhaliya IV of Hatti, discussing the reinstallation of Walmu as king of Wilusa.

patriarchy

The government of a family, church, or society by the fathers. The term patriarch was originally applied to the fathers of the tribes of Israel, then became an honorific designation of the bishops of the Church, and later the official designation of the heads of the Eastern churches.

Power is related to privilege. In a system in which men have more power than women, men have some level of privilege to which women are not entitled.

The concept of patriarchy has been central to many feminist theories. It is an attempt to explain the stratification of power and privilege by gender that can be observed by many objective measures.

A patriarchy, from the ancient Greek patriarches, was a society where power was held by and passed down through the elder males. When modern historians and sociologists describe a "patriarchal society," they mean that men hold the positions of power and have more privilege: head of the family unit, leaders of social groups, boss in the workplace, and heads of government.

In patriarchy, there is also a hierarchy among the men. In traditional patriarchy, the elder men had power over the younger generations of men. In modern patriarchy, some men hold more power (and privilege) by virtue of the position of authority, and this hierarchy of power (and privilege) is considered acceptable.

The term comes from pater or father. Father or father-figures hold the authority in a patriarchy. Traditional patriarchal societies are, usually, also patrilineal — titles and property are inherited through male lines. (For an example of this, the Salic Law as applied to property and titles followed male lines strictly.)

Feminist theorists have expanded the definition of patriarchal society to describe a systemic bias against women. As second-wave feminists examined society during the 1960s, they did observe households headed by women and female leaders. They were, of course, concerned with whether this was uncommon. More significant, however, was the way society perceived women in power as an exception to a collectively held view of women's "role" in society. Rather than saying that individual men oppressed women, most feminists saw that oppression of women came from the underlying bias of a patriarchal society.

Gerda Lerner's Analysis of Patriarchy

Gerda Lerner's 1986 history classic, The Creation of Patriarchy, traces the development of the patriarchy to the second millennium B.C.E. in the middle east, putting gender relations at the center of the story of civilization's history. She argues that before this development, male dominance was not a feature of human society in general. Women were key to the maintenance of human society and community, but with a few exceptions, social and legal power was wielded by men. Women could gain some status and privilege in patriarchy by limiting her child-bearing capacity to just one man so that he could depend on her children being his children.

By rooting patriarchy — a social organization where men rule over women — in historical developments, rather than in nature, human nature or biology, she also opens the door for change. If patriarchy was created by culture, it can be overturned by a new culture.

Part of her theory carried through into another volume, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness, that women were not conscious that they were subordinate (and it might be otherwise) until this consciousness began slowly to emerge, starting with medieval Europe.

In an interview with Jeffrey Mishlove on "Thinking Aloud," Lerner described her work on the subject of patriarchy:

"Other groups that were subordinated in history — peasants, slaves, colonials, any kind of group, ethnic minorities — all of those groups knew very quickly that they were subordinated, and they developed theories about their liberation, about their rights as human beings, about what kind of struggle to conduct in order to emancipate themselves. But women did not, and so that was the question that I really wanted to explore. And in order to understand it I had to understand really whether patriarchy was, as most of us have been taught, a natural, almost God-given condition, or whether it was a human invention coming out of a specific historic period. Well, in Creation of Patriarchy I think I show that it was indeed a human invention; it was created by human beings, it was created by men and women, at a certain given point in the historical development of the human race. It was probably appropriate as a solution for the problems of that time, which was the Bronze Age, but it's no longer appropriate, all right? And the reason we find it so hard, and we have found it so hard, to understand it and to combat it, is that it was institutionalized before Western civilization really, as we know it, was, so to speak, invented, and the process of creating patriarchy was really well completed by the time that the idea systems of Western civilization were formed."

Some Quotes About Feminism and Patriarchy

From bell hooks: "Visionary feminism is a wise and loving politics. It is rooted in the love of male and female being, refusing to privilege one over the other. The soul of feminist politics is the commitment to ending patriarchal domination of women and men, girls and boys. Love cannot exist in any relationship that is based on domination and coercion. Males cannot love themselves in patriarchal culture if their very self-definition relies on submission to patriarchal rules. When men embrace feminist thinking and practice, which emphasizes the value of mutual growth and self-actualization in all relationships, their emotional well-being will be enhanced.

A genuine feminist politics always brings us from bondage to freedom, from lovelessness to loving."

Also from bell hooks: "We have to constantly critique imperialist white supremacist patriarchal culture because it is normalized by mass media and rendered unproblematic."

From Mary Daly: "The word ‘sin’ is derived from the Indo-European root ‘es-,’ meaning ‘to be.’ When I discovered this etymology, I intuitively understood that for a [person] trapped in patriarchy, which is the religion of the entire planet, ‘to be’ in the fullest sense is ‘to sin'."

From Andrea Dworkin: "Being female in this world means having been robbed of the potential for human choice by men who love to hate us. One does not make choices in freedom. Instead, one conforms in body type and behavior and values to become an object of male sexual desire, which requires an abandonment of a wide-ranging capacity for choice..."

Credit: https://www.thoughtco.com/patriarchal-society-feminism-definition-3528978

HITTITE LAWS.

These differ markedly from the better-known Code  of Hammurabi of Babylon (1792­1750 BC), not only in content  but also in the form in which they have survived. Whereas the laws  of Hammurabi are inscribed on a stela found by the French expedition in Susa, southwestern Iran, the Hittite laws have been transliterated, translated and edited from hundreds of fragments of clay  tablets excavated in Hattusa, for the most part in Büyükkale. Inevitably many such pieces duplicate larger fragments; but gaps in  the texts have been filled from elsewhere, such is the number of  fragments recovered by the German expedition. 

The Hittite Laws have been published in successive editions in  French, English, German, Italian and most recently again in English, beginning with the pioneer publication by Bedrich Hrozny  (1922). Johannes Friedrich used contemporary grammatical and  lexical research to produce an updated German edition (1959); and  Fiorella Imparati’s Italian edition (1964) built on the work of Friedrich. Since then the late Annelies Kammenhuber, in due course  in collaboration with Inge Hoffmann, developed the work of Friedrich (1975­ ). Now the Hittite Dictionary of the Oriental Institute  of the University of Chicago is under the sole command of Harry  Hoffner, following the death in 2000 of Hans Güterbock. American scholarship has indeed played an increasing role in Hittite studies over the past two decades. These details serve to exemplify the  international character of research into the civilizations of the ancient Near East, unimpeded by claims for patents!  There is agreement among specialists that there was a code of  laws divided into two series, each numbering 100, and accordingly  numbered 1­200B in the modern literature. The laws were each  worded beginning with a conditional clause (“if a man. . . .,” “if a  vineyard. . . .”), the first series concerned mainly with persons and  the second largely with property, although the order of subjectmatter is by no means entirely logical. This suggests additions  made from time to time, without redrafting the entire code. The  matters covered by the Hittite Laws are remarkably wide-ranging,  more so than the Babylonian code. It is worth listing these:  homi-cide, justifiable or not, or by pushing a man into a fire; assault and  battery; ownership of slaves; sanitation; marriage procedure, in  exceptional cases or where irregularity has been alleged; feudal duties in the context of land tenure, and conditions of land tenure; hiring for a campaign; accidents at a ford; magical contamination;  finding property; offenses related to cattle; theft; arson; offenses  related to vineyards and orchards; theft and damage to various  types of property; irregularities in sale and purchase; rates of pay  for various services; offenses connected with canals, and with cattle; religious ordinances related to agriculture; sorcery; disinheritance by a mother; compensation for maintenance during famine;  refusal to comply with a legal sentence; an obscure offense (bestiality?) connected with a bull; list of prices; sexual offenses; the  standard fee for instruction of an apprentice.

The wide range of the Hittite Laws gives a clear indication of  the complexity of the state. Unfortunately there is only the most  meager evidence concerning the Hittite courts and legal tribunals,  largely owing to the total absence of private lawsuits, in marked  contrast with Babylonia, though textual references do occur. The  specific coverage of some of the laws indicates their basis in case  law, in decisions over the years by the courts. The king was the  fount of all law, and his decisions are frequently recorded, often in  the context of changing a penalty formerly in force to one now decreed, usually less severe. This is one of the indications that Hittite  law was always evolving, without excessive respect for the precise  regulations of the past. Indeed, it seems to have come into force  only as the need arose, custom presumably governing such fields  as inheritance and contract, not included in the Hittite Laws.  It has been claimed with some reason that the laws of the Hittite state were more humane than those of Babylon and Assyria.  This claim rests primarily on the more sparing application of the  death penalty, the Hittite courts often imposing fines instead: as  with the Germanic (including Anglo-Saxon) wergeld, payment depended on the status of the victim. Capital punishment was reserved for only a few crimes, comprising bestiality, incest, sorcery  by a slave against a free man and stealing a bronze weapon from  the King’s Gate. This last--reminiscent of the English law against  setting fire to the king’s docks--is a hint of fears for the security of  the state. It could also of course be an indication of the value attached to the products of the bronzesmiths.    While there is no doubt of the evolving character of the main  law code, never as rigid as the word “code” may imply, another  factor probably limited its remit. This was the likelihood that the  law was not uniform throughout the Hittite Empire, and that this  was an accepted fact, with tolerance of local customs. At one point  garrison commanders were ordered to apply the death penalty  wherever this was customary for certain crimes; but elsewhere banishment was to continue as the appropriate penalty.