Editing Concubinage (section)

=== Japan ===
{{See also|Ōoku}}
[[File:Taikō gosai rakutō yūkan no zu.jpg|thumb|16th-century [[Samurai]] [[Toyotomi Hideyoshi]] with his wives and concubines]]
Before [[monogamy]] was legally imposed in the [[Meiji period]], concubinage was common among the nobility.<ref name=a05>{{cite web |url=http://departments.kings.edu/womens_history/concubin.html |title=Concubinage in Asia|access-date=11 December 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170326034744/http://departments.kings.edu/womens_history/concubin.html|archive-date=26 March 2017|url-status=live}}</ref> Its purpose was to ensure male heirs. For example, the son of an [[Imperial House of Japan|Imperial]] concubine often had a chance of becoming emperor. [[Yanagihara Naruko]], a high-ranking concubine of [[Emperor Meiji]], gave birth to [[Emperor Taishō]], who was later legally adopted by [[Empress Haruko]], Emperor Meiji's formal wife. Even among merchant families, concubinage was occasionally used to ensure heirs. [[Asako Hirooka]], an entrepreneur who was the daughter of a concubine, worked hard to help her husband's family survive after the [[Meiji Restoration]]. She lost her fertility giving birth to her only daughter, Kameko; so her husband—with whom she got along well—took Asako's maid-servant as a concubine and fathered three daughters and a son with her. Kameko, as the child of the formal wife, married a noble man and matrilineally carried on the family name.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.sankei.com/west/news/150602/wst1506020001-n1.html |title=【九転十起の女（２７）】女盛りもとうに過ぎ…夫とお手伝いの間に子供|first=SANKEI DIGITAL|last=INC.|date=3 June 2015|access-date=11 December 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161019020813/http://www.sankei.com/west/news/150602/wst1506020001-n1.html|archive-date=19 October 2016|url-status=live}}</ref>

A [[samurai]] could take concubines but their backgrounds were checked by higher-ranked samurai. In many cases, taking a concubine was akin to a marriage. Kidnapping a concubine, although common in fiction, would have been shameful, if not criminal. If the concubine was a commoner, a messenger was sent with betrothal money or a note for exemption of tax to ask for her parents' acceptance. Even though the woman would not be a legal wife, a situation normally considered a demotion, many wealthy merchants believed that being the concubine of a samurai was superior to being the legal wife of a commoner. When a merchant's daughter married a samurai, her family's money erased the samurai's debts, and the samurai's social status improved the standing of the merchant family. If a samurai's commoner concubine gave birth to a son, the son could inherit his father's social status.

Concubines sometimes wielded significant influence. [[Nene (aristocrat)|Nene]], wife of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, was known to overrule her husband's decisions at times and [[Yodo-dono]], his concubine, became the ''de facto'' master of Osaka castle and the Toyotomi clan after Hideyoshi's death.