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Essay on Feudalism In Japan
The meaning of the word 'feudalism' is far more problematic than assumed. There is a loose, commonly used, sense which might fit the story above, but once one examines the technical literature on feudalism it becomes apparent that there are major differences between areas, and that if it is to be a useful concept it cannot be applied indiscriminately to all agrarian civilizations.
For example, the 'feudalism' of England in the middle ages was very different from the 'feudalism' that developed in France. That in France, and some other parts of northern Europe, as classically described by Marc Bloch was in essence founded on 'the dissolution of the state'. The English version was the opposite, the unification of the state so that every inch of England was, ultimately, held of the Crown and every allegiance was primarily to the sovereign.
The stretch of feudal property, the core dynamics, all sorts of aspects of the socio-political and legal framework were different, particularly after the twelfth century.
Modern knowledge about the first peoples to inhabit the Japanese (island chain) has been pieced together from the findings of and anthropologists and from the myths of ancient Japan.
Although the date of the first human habitation is not known, anthropologists have identified one of the earliest in Japan as the Jomon culture, which dates from about 8000 BC. A culture, it used stone and bone tools and made pottery of distinctive design. In the 3d century BC, Jomon culture was disrupted by a new people, known as Yayoi, who probably emigrated from continental.
They introduced rice cultivation, primitive weaving, wheel-made pottery, domesticated horses and cows, and simple iron tools. Yayoi culture overlaid and fused with the earlier Jomon culture (Duus, 12-22).
In 1869, the reformers persuaded the daimyo of the Choshu, Satsuma, and other western....
