Heian-period romance can look elegant when viewed through waka poetry and visiting marriage customs. But once pregnancy and childbirth enter the picture, the story suddenly becomes much heavier.
There was no modern medical system for treating bacterial infections with drugs, replacing severe blood loss with transfusions, or performing surgery when necessary to deliver a baby and save mother and child. Childbirth was an event that carried major risks for both the mother and the baby.
In other words, people entered the real event with very few safety mechanisms.
To borrow a metaphor from modern system development, this is what this article calls a “production environment for birth risk.”
Before childbirth was a “family celebration,” it was major physical work performed by the person giving birth
Prayer and various rituals played a major role in childbirth among Heian aristocrats. In The Diary of Lady Murasaki, the birth attended by Empress Shōshi is described with many people gathering and praying as they waited for the child to be born.
After delivery, ceremonies called ubuyashinai were also held to celebrate the child’s birth. A safe delivery—and then the child’s continued survival and growth—was important enough to carry this much weight.
So dismissing the prayers and rituals of the time as “just superstition” misses the point. In a world without modern lifesaving medicine, people mobilized what they had and prayed for the safety of mother and child.
For high-ranking aristocratic women, childbirth could also be political
Another heavy factor was the family’s position.
By the middle Heian period, becoming maternal relatives of the emperor could bring enormous political power. Fujiwara no Michinaga consolidated his position through such maternal kinship ties. For elite aristocratic families, a daughter’s marriage and the birth of her children therefore could not be separated entirely from politics.
That does not mean every woman in the Heian period faced the same pressure. The point is that among elite aristocrats—especially families linked to the imperial house—childbirth was more likely to become something larger than the individual woman’s private event.
From the family’s point of view: “the next generation is born.”
From her point of view: “I give birth with my own body.”
That difference is enormous.
If childbirth is viewed only as an event of family succession, the danger borne by the mother disappears from sight.
She is giving birth with her whole soul.
The weight of it makes that phrase feel appropriate.
Birth was not the end of the danger
Even when a baby was born safely, this was not an age in which everyone could finally relax.
The Pillow Book includes a room where a baby has died after childbirth among its examples of things described as susamajiki. We cannot give an exact infant mortality rate for all Heian society in the way modern nationwide statistics can, but contemporary writings and ceremonies marking children’s growth both show that birth and survival through childhood were uncertain.
So reducing the story to “people used to have lots of children” erases the risks borne by both the person giving birth and the child being born.
Why the “production environment for birth risk” metaphor works
The Heian period lacked the lifesaving options available today. At the same time, among elite aristocrats, expectations about family succession and political advantage could be layered onto childbirth.
Put those two facts together, and childbirth was not simply a “happy family occasion.”
The physical risk to mother and child was high, while the family could still expect the next generation to be produced.
That is what the metaphor “production environment for birth risk” is trying to capture.
The world of waka poetry may be elegant, but pregnancy and childbirth happen in the body.
Once that is included in the picture, the history of Heian romance suddenly acquires a very real weight.
