What a Friend We Have in Jizōs 30

Yoritomo’s wife, Masaka, rode with him on his campaigns and was never defeated. Later, as the Nun Shogun, she enacted laws allowing women to control finances, bequeath property, and receive equal rights of inheritance with fraternal kin. Traits valued in women of the samurai class were humility, obedience, self-control, strength, and loyalty. Maintaining the upkeep of the home, managing servants, raising children, and caring for elderly parents or in-laws living under her roof, were already the main duties of bushi samurai wives, especially crucial during early feudal Japan, when warrior husbands were often traveling abroad or engaged in clan battles. But they were also expected to defend their households forcibly in times of war, and were trained in the use of weapons to do just that. These okugatasama remaining in the home were trained in the special tantojutsu skill of the kaiken knife but, even more effectively, how to wield a long polearm with a curved blade at the tip. The iconic naginata was effective against marauders on horseback, or in close quarter combat. Despite Musashi’s little regard for the weapon, a strong woman armed with a naginata could keep most combatants at bay. The Mongols had taught the samurai class that much.
Chiyo, wife of Yamauchi Kazutoyo, has long been considered the ideal samurai wife. According to legend, she made her kimono out of a quilted patchwork of bits of old cloth and saved pennies to buy her husband a magnificent horse, on which he rode to many victories.
By the Edo Period and beyond, samurai were no longer concerned with battles and war. They were bureaucrats. Along with physical attractiveness, marriage criteria began to weigh intelligence and education as desirable attributes in a wife. Many of the texts written for women, as the Tokugawa period progressed, transcended the usual successful household manager themes, and emphasized the learning of philosophical and literary classics. 
Most samurai married women from a samurai family, arranged by someone with the same or higher rank than those being married; for lower ranked samurai, marriages with commoners were permitted, if a dowry or tax exemption was provided. Some rich merchants had their daughters marry samurai to erase a samurai's debt and advance their positions. Daughters of upper class households, became pawns to dreams of success and power.
But the roaring ideals of fearless devotion and selflessness were replaced by quiet, passive, civil obedience. The social acceptance of women in seventeenth century Japan had strangely devolved. Samurai viewed women as child bearers. The relationship between a husband and wife was that of lord and vassal. Husbands and wives did not customarily sleep together. The husband visited his wife to initiate sexual activity and afterwards retired to his own room. Women were still expected to show solace for death when it came to defending their husband's honor, in the spirit of self-sacrifice and self-renunciation. If a samurai's wife gave birth to a son he could then one day become a samurai.