In contrast to Japanese citizens today, villagers in the Tokugawa period (seventeenth through mid-nineteenth centuries) frequently resorted to lawsuits to settle conflicts, leaving a vast but hitherto untapped record of power struggles between villagers and the network of administrators above them. Through colorfully narrated and skillfully analyzed case studies of their lawsuits and petitions, Herman Ooms traces the evolution of class and status conflicts in villages during this feudal era.

Inspired by the work of Max Weber and Pierre Bourdieu, the author links detailed village analysis to a broader discussion of societal power fields and juridical domains.

Opening with an angry woman's lifelong struggle against village authority, Ooms's study examines how obscure historical actors, local elites, commoners, women, and outcastes manipulated the distinctions of class and status to their own advantage. The case studies offer a penetrating view of legal practice, including the position of women, inheritance customs, and particular forms of village justice.

In a significant contribution to the legal history of outcaste populations, Ooms also studies the origins of discrimination against the ancestors of the burakumin population, a group that even now is struggling for equality in Japanese society.