wagyl wrote:Salty wrote:Also, 6 of 12 homes in my neighborhood share the same surname - yet are not related by blood. All of them owned by people whose fathers, or they themselves - were adopted by a farmer in one of these homes right after the war, so essentially slaves for high labor rice farming.
So it wasn`t just in Korea that poverty pushed women into prostitution and both girls and boys into slavery.
I seem to remember that you come from the United States. It is probably a good thing to be reminded that there is a significant proportion of the population of the United States which has a visceral understanding of the concept of slavery and which does not appreciate the misuse and cheapening of the term.
As for rural (or indeed artisan community) adoption, maybe you call it slavery. Can I instead call it "helping out a family with no sons [and yes, a labour shortage] and helping out a third son from another family who has no prospects of inheriting property or a role, by supporting him through his youth and providing him with status and property, and promoting the future stability of the community." It sounds like a win-win to me. Ask the adoptees where they would have been and what they would have had if they had not been adopted. Hell, ask the adoptees whether they consider they were sold into slavery before making your mind up.kurogane wrote:It seems a little unfair to confuse him with facts, but yeah to all that. The whole tenant farmer system was seriously fucked up mediaeval shit that lasted until 1947, at which point the average life span of a Japanese woman was <<<<40. I almost laughed when I read the words for tithe and corvee in post-Meiji social histories; then I cried instead.
Kuro, if you have not done so already, you should read the passages by Isabella Bird about conditions in Ibaraki (one of your faves!) 135 years ago. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2184
I won`t apologize for calling it slavery - for that is essentially what a couple of these people called it, and exactly what the one woman called it - having been sold for money and handed over. But I do agree, and so do these same people - that in desperate times, they fared better in the long run, than those who were not adopted.
As for US slavery, I certainly agree that it was a very nasty business. But historically, it only surpassed what occurred across the world in its mechanized implementation and possibly in that it occurred more recently. But if you were to take a closer look around the world today, I do believe you would find many examples comparable in brutality.
JOKING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
