Brothers. Mouths to feed. A young woman either twenty years of age or just. Desperate and meek. Her position in this was clear: it was the same as Kazi's when he was a boy. A servant. A slave. Whichever one preferred. Whichever was legal.
Like many nations, Japan had their own official slave system. In 1590, that slave system was abolished by the daimyo Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Here was something some men did not understand. Just because something was "legally" cast aside did not mean it did not continue in practice. See Article 17 of the Gotōke reijō—the Tokugawa House Laws—stipulating that the immediate family of executed criminals could be subjected to "non-free labor" as a form of punishment or the Portuguese slave trade in Japan which sold men and women en masse. Daimyo Hideyoshi was disgusted. Laws were passed.
So what? People enslaved others anyway. His people enslaved others of his people.
