Hayashi Razan
Tradition calls for Japanese women to serve as willing subordinates to men. One of the most popular sayings of the time was "ryosai kenbo", which means "good wife, wise mother". This subservient role can be traced to the widely accepted and revered teachings of Hayashi Razan, who developed a Confucian school of thought that emphasized superiority and inferiority in certain relationships. According to this school of thought, the relationship between husband and wife relied upon a woman fully devoting herself to the needs and success of her husband. Hayashi Razan's teachings, although developed during the seventeenth century, were the basis of the Japanese social and cultural structure for centuries.