japanese peasant men were not required to kill wives who committed adultery but samurai were. the majority of the japanese people in this period were townspeople, fisher people or peasant commoners and they did not take adultery, virginity or paternity of their children as serious issues unlike the samurai families, who were a minority of the japanese population. japanese commoner women and men mixed with each other and had out of wedlock or bastard children through adultery and they made up the majority of prostitutes. japanese commoners did not have surnames until the meiji restoration in the 19th century.