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Sexual Relations as Religious Practice in the Late Tokugawa Period: Fujido
- The Journal of Japanese Studies
- Society for Japanese Studies
- Volume 32, Number 2, Summer 2006
- pp. 341-366
- 10.1353/jjs.2006.0063
- Article
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During the late Tokugawa period, some religious groups stressed regulation of the body as a focus for moral cultivation. This article reviews the eschatology of the Fujidō movement, whose members believed that the emergence of a harmonious, just society depended on the restoration of a proper balance between female (yin) and male (yang) forces. Harmonization was to be enacted on a cosmic level and also in human sexual relations. The Fujidō program of restoring proper relations between women and men, although unorthodox, was part of a larger trend to cultivate moral values through physical disciplines.