FEUDAL SOCIETY-FACT SHEET Feudal Japan and feudal Europe evolved independently of each other, yet their feudal

periods were similar in many respects. The following pages will describe the structure of each, as well as the similarities and disparities of European and Japanese feudalism. Feudal Europe There were three main characteristics of feudal political organization in Europe between the 10th and 13th centuries. First, feudal Europe lacked the institution of a strong centralized state. Government as we usually think of it today, simply did not exist. There was no one center of power or authority that could claim the paramount and undisputed right to collect taxes, issue laws, raise armies, keep public peace and order, and dispense justice. Effective government was fragmented into small local units, dominated by feudal lords who performed most of the functions we normally associate with the state. The feudal lords were the only rulers most people saw or knew. They maintained order, settled disputes among people, and determined what was law. Second, feudal lords and their subordinate followers were drawn from a class of heavily armored, horseriding fighting men. Together they formed a warrior elite who eventually emerged as the national aristocracies of a later age. This warrior elite was bound together by a peculiar set of socio-political ties that gave feudalism its distinctive character: vassalage and the fief. The primary tie was vassalage, a personal bond of loyalty and obedience by which a warrior promised service to a lord or chieftain in return for military protection, security, and assistance. Vassalage was voluntary. It was a bond struck between two warrior freemen: the stronger a lord and the weaker, in search of protection, his man, or vassal. Since the tie was not only voluntary, but also personal and conditional, vassalage also differed from the political loyalty that binds a subject to a monarch or a citizen to a modern state. The vassal not only felt respect and even personal warmth toward his lord, but also he expected something concrete in return. If he did not get it, he could break the implied contract with his lord. The other tie was the fief, or feudum, from which our modern term 'feudalism' derives. In the early stages of European feudalism, the lord often supported the vassal under his own roof and at his own table. Sometimes he granted the vassal some source of income, such as an office, a rent, or a toll. The source of income was usually some type of income-producing property that provided the vassal with the wealth and leisure he needed to maintain his status as a fighting man. It also served to reward his loyalty and guarantee his continued service. Third, the economic system of feudal Europe was as decentralized as its political order. The peasant communities were relatively self-sufficient, producing most of their own food, and most necessities of daily life. There were few centers of manufacture, and aside from an occasional market town, there were few places where money facilitated the exchange of goods. The principal economic resources of feudal Europe were, therefore, land and the people who farmed it; wealth was measured in acreage not in coin or treasure. As a result, the dominance of the warrior elite, and their institutions of government, ultimately rested on control over the land. The economic source of the lord's power lay in his ability to distribute landed fiefs, and the fief was, in effect, the payment of the vassal. Feudal government was therefore linked to the manorial economy, and most vassals were masters of manors, as well as fighting men. Feudal government in medieval Europe was thus characterized by the absence of a strong centralized state, the transition of political power into local political units, or domains, the control of these domains by an aristocracy of mounted warriors linked by ties of vassalage and the fief, and a political economy in which land constituted the principal form of wealth. Feudal Japan The history of Japan was conditioned by a geographic, economic, social, and intellectual environment vastly different from that of Europe. However, the political institutions of Japan between 1300 and 1600 closely resembled those of feudal Europe. By 1300 a horse-riding warrior class (also referred to as bushi or samurai) dominated the countryside, the system of vassalage was widely practiced, and warrior leaders at the highest level of society made grants of land or office to their followers as a reward for loyal service. But the transition of public power into the hands of local feudal lords had not yet been completed. The estate system and the Kamakura Shogunate or Kamakura bakufu still served to bind the provinces to some form of central control. It took nearly two centuries for these last remnants of central authority to be sloughed off by the aggressive and land-hungry local warrior class. There was incessant local warfare in the early 14th century. This land hunger was a result of pressures to increase their holdings. Usually warrior families were large, and the family head needed new land to provide for his numerous offspring. Equally important, the practice of equal inheritance also stimulated the desire to enlarge family holdings. When a warrior died, his property was shared by all his sons rather than bequeathed to one of them. As a result, landholdings were broken into smaller and smaller portions with each generation, and often these parcels were too small to maintain their holders in warrior

status. Primogeniture (the right of inheritance of the eldest son) was slow in developing. By the 14th century the practice of equal inheritance had been abandoned in the upper reaches of warrior society. One son was chosen as heir of both the family headship and all the family holdings. Local warriors, prior to this, looked for other means to aggrandize their land holdings. The lands of their warriors neighbors, or even those of his personal lord, were tempting prizes. The warrior therefore welcomed warfare not merely as a chance to establish one's fame and glory for posterity, but as an opportunity to encroach on the land rights of others. By the late fifteenth century, chronic local warfare resulted in the emergence of local feudal lords, or daimyo, who used the practice of vassalage and the granting of fiefs to piece together small consolidated domains similar to the baronies of 12th and 13th century Europe. The countryside was scattered with castles and fortifications that, like those of European feudal lords, served as capital, military headquarters, and court for the localities surrounding them. The local feudal lord exercised public powers as a matter of private prerogative. If his right to exercise these powers was challenged, the challenge came not from above, but from neighboring lords or rebellious vassals. Local disorder was constant and political fragmentation complete. By 1500 feudal government in Japan had reached the same stage of development as it had in Europe four centuries earlier. During the Warring States Period (1467-1568), power was fragmented to an extraordinary degree. Power lay at the local level. The most important institution was the small feudal state dominated by the daimyo and his band of samurai retainers. The lord's power was based solely on his own military strength, for there were no sources of security and prestige other than raw power. His position depended on the continuing loyalty of his samurai retainers, and thus he rewarded his leading vassals with fiefs, cities, and other preferential treatment. The normal state of relations among these small feudal states was warfare. If a lord failed to defend his territory, he would either lose it to a more powerful neighboring lord or he would be overthrown by one of his own vassals. Perhaps because betrayal and treachery were frequent, loyalty was the highest virtue. Yet no lord could wholly trust his vassals. They might try to overthrow him. Lords were constantly suspicious of one another. These suspicions were well-founded for lords rose and fell from one decade to another. Daimyo were able to impose greater control than their predecessors had over both their fighting men and the economic resources of the territory they controlled. The local daimyo learned that by obliging his vassals to reside close to him he could much more effectively control them. The lord achieved greater subordination of his warriors by organizing them more tightly into a methodical ranking. As the process of consolidation of power at the local level went forward, a lord could associate himself with a more powerful lord in his region who would protect and guarantee his position. The consolidation of power and the increased strength of the daimyo were dramatically symbolized by the massive castles they built in the latter half of the 16th century. From 1580 to 1615, castles sprang up across the Japanese countryside. By 1615, the Tokugawa Shogunate, seeking to secure complete control over the country, ordered that the daimyo could only maintain one castle at the heart of their domains, where they could assemble their samurai retainers and effectively dominate the strategic and productive resources of the surrounding countryside. As the warriors moved from the countryside into the castles, merchants, and artisans, and shrines and temples followed quickly to service the warriors' needs. Across Japan new castle towns came into being. Prior to 1550 nearly everyone had lived in farming and fishing villages. After 1550, new cities began to spring up as a result of the increasing stability at the local level, the building of castles, and the withdrawal of samurai from the countryside. The castle towns became important urban centers in the various regions of Japan and remain so today. Two-thirds of the present prefectural capitals were once castle towns. The building of those castle towns and the events associated with it, particularly the removal of most samurai from the countryside into the city, constitute one of the most important developments in the history of Japan. The long-range historical significance first became apparent when these fortresses helped stabilize the local areas and provided the building blocks upon which national unification could rest. (With the samurai settled closely about the castle keep, the daimyo could more easily control them.) The gradual withdrawal of the samurai from the countryside set in motion a fundamental change in the nature of the warrior ruling class. Previously samurai had been scattered over the land in villages, living on fiefs granted them by their lord, where they had been responsible for levying taxes, administering local justice, and keeping the peace. Now, however, living in a castle town, the warrior's ties with the land were soon cut. Instead of being rewarded with a fief from his lord, he was paid a stipend. Gradually, the warriors became more akin to bureaucrats, for the daimyo used his retainers as officials and clerks. Living in the castle town, the warriors staffed the daimios bureaucracy. As the warrior's legal relationship to the land changed, and as he became more like a bureaucratic officeholder, he came to lack private economic or political power. Gradually, the feudal ruling class transformed into a landless bureaucratic elite. Another consequence associated with the appearance of castle towns and the consolidation of local power was

the development of local administrative practice. The great castles of Japan came to house the central and local administrative headquarters of the nation. The growth of the castle towns helped bring into being a large and vital merchant class. Along with the rise of this mercantile class, there was a gradual growth of a market economy and of specialization and commercialization in agriculture. In place of the old self-sufficient pattern, farming tended to become far more specialized as produce was sold in the local market. More and more the peasants grew the special crops for which their climate and land were best suited. Castle towns contributed to development of an urban culture. The growth of these towns contributed to the improvement of transportation. Roads to and from the castle towns became essential for economic, administrative, and strategic functions. The stabilization of power at the local level made available the firm base upon which first regional and then national unity could be built. Three successive daimyo from central Honshu, Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582), Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598), and Tokugawa Ieyasu (15421616), assembled a powerful coalition of forces and one by one gained the submission of other regional clusters of daimyo, and ultimately succeeded in unifying Japan. A key factor in unification was Japan's geography. Unlike the newly formed monarchies of late feudal Europe, Japan's boundaries were clearly defined by the seas that surrounded and isolated the country, from the foreign interference or invasion that might have impeded her reunification. The islands formed a natural geopolitical unit, and their conquest from within was a manageable goal. Conclusion The fragmentation of Japan during the "Warring States" period was similar to Europe during "high" feudalism, but it was also less complex. The feudal periods of both Europe and Japan were characterized by the absence of a strong centralized state, the devolution of political power into local political units, or domains, the control of these domains by an aristocracy of mounted warriors linked by ties of vassalage and the fief, and a political economy in which land constituted the principal form of wealth. However, since the samurai warrior served only one lord at a time and since the vassalage bond was never diluted by the financial needs of the lord, there did not evolve the intricate webs of vassal ties that characterized many parts of Europe. Also, the Japanese vassal never regarded the feudal bond as a source of income, but primarily as a guarantee of his security. The boundaries of political jurisdiction in Japan were also much clearer. There were fewer ambiguities as to who controlled a given piece of territory or who was to receive taxes from the peasants of a particular village. On the whole, feudal government in Japan was much neater than in the European case. Perhaps as a result, it was easier to unify Japan than it was to create the modern nations of Western Europe.