Oh yes, this will help a whole lot and I'm glad my comment worked for you too! :3

For anyone who has this on their alerts and thereby receives this:
I have run out of room on the original post to fit everything in. So I'm moving all characters to a new forum post which is now up, please refer to that if you seek information from this post which is now missing.

Also, I came into some new information! It's added in the new forum, but here it is again copy/pasted below:
Kimono + Hakama
I'm about to contradict myself from my other glossary in a very peculiar manner (and this admittance will be erased once I go and edit the other version). There is a style of fold that men can give their kimono, called the shirikarage. This is when they take the hem, gather it up, and tuck it into the back of their obi. The original one I had seen had this fold lifted up past their thighs, making it bulge out quite a bit due to the ankle-length fabric being gathered in such a short space. There's a second nature to this fold though, where you lift up only enough fabric to make a knot of it of sorts above the obi. Because of this less fabric is required, and the kimono ends up hanging around the knees, leaving the fabric around the hips still smooth. This means that full length kimono can be worn with hakama! The clothing listed below will be modified from the original post for this second fold style.

Thanks for checking out this forum, I hope it serves you well in the future as well!

Whoa, that was a lot more than I expected Thank you for replying.

I don't specifically remember the episode, only that Kohaku carried the old man on his back and saved him from a fire (? not so sure about the second part though).

Though, the old dude wasn't as important as knowing how differently/simmilarly women were treated to those in Europe, and society's rules in general. (I want to write SesshKag in the future, so it's best not to go bumbling in with mediocre to no knowleadge on how it even funcioned back then..... as a matter of fact, I think there should be a seperate thread altogether for society and it's rules back then. The information on their world views and tretment of others, not to mention just about everything else, would surely help writers with their fics. Most of us here are from a entirely different culture and just don't know or understand some things, and time changes crcumstances as well.)

Anyway, thank you (again) for replying to my post and answering my questions, what I like the most is the opportunity to simply understand, not just guess at things. What I like more are people who help me with understanding. That's one of the reasons I adore Dokuga.

~lily

Hmm... The culture would be a good forum to have. It requires a lot of background knowledge though, including the fact that the samurai classes were slowly becoming absolute and even wiped out in larger cities around this time. There was also the Onin war I think some thirty years before Kagome enters that time, which made the Emperor (located in Kyoto in this time) and his family quite poor, nearly poverty-stricken, and funding for certain things (or lack there of) affected many aspects of everyone's lives. There was quite a bit of turmoil within the upper classes in this time, and anything that's a problem for them is bound to be a problem for others.

I know a lot of details already, but to make a forum about the culture and society in that time period would take... LOL, a lot of time. Over twenty hours for the initial post in research and Dokuga formatting. It may appear in the future though, I'm highly tempted, but it would be a very time consuming endeavor and I'd probably make a few errors along the way (as per usual, oh well).

Now that you've stuck the idea in my head, if I make that forum you're obligated to post a comment on it, got it? ;P If you want it, throw ideas at me on how to set it up. I'd probably end up breaking information down by year/decade but then it'd all be jumbled. Could do it by societal class (starting with the Emperor's situation) and go from there, showing the ripple effect down the classes... GAH! Now it's infecting my brain! ^_^

But of course I would comment (probably overload with questions, comparisons and maybe even start a debate too ). It's infecting your brain... good There is nothing I (and probably a lot of others as well) like more than getting to know more (especially if it's something that interests meh ). I've been known to pester someone close to insanity untilly I feel satisfied that I've found out all there is to know from that source. (You shouldn't have said anything, cause in these things if you give me a penny, I'll take you for all you're worth )

But, you don't have to do everything yourself, we are a community here after all, and I'm sure that there are others who know something as well.

That being said, I think it should have the differences (universal for all classes) between genders and ages first. Such as the position of women, their duties, the position of childeren, male and female, the elderly and men... And then expand as you go. When that is as satisfied as can be, then social classes should come and build on the previously said, add the differences and relationships between classes and everything else. Also the way of thinking: how a woman would think, a child, a man, samurai, noble woman, peasant, traveller, monk, etc..., what their percieved duties and places would be, their openness of mind, flexibility, rebeliousness, etc...Then religion and such things (even the treatment of foreigners, those different). And, then come the social and historic circumstances of that time period and how they affect everything.

It doesn't have to be extremely detailed (as I've gone into a lot of details above , it was done just to give an idea though), but enough to base a story setting on.

~lily

A post on their culture would be a great help, but yeah, that would take a very long. I would absolutly love to have what Lily Noir said, I've tried doing my own research on the subject but I've always come up empty handed.