The samurai instead received an income from their local lords, depending on the produce from the lord’s land. Secondly, although Japan’s inferior nobility (samurai) were religiously loyal to their local lords, the lords didn’t give them land to own, while the European nobility got land in exchange for their time in the military.
#DESCRIBE EUROPEAN FEUDALISM IN THE MIDDLE AGES FULL#
Even though the majority of local aristocrats paid the emperor lip-service, Japan’s rugged terrain made it hard for the emperor to have full control of the local aristocracy, making local aristocrats in Japan much more powerful than their European counterparts. This was mainly due to two facts: Firstly, Japanese authority was as centralized as the case was in the European nation states. Unlike European feudalism, Japanese feudalism had no true pyramid form, with a hierarchy of ‘inferior’ nobles being presided over by the monarch. The defining feature of a feudalistic society was land ownership, and both the Japanese and Europeans had land owning castes, as well as those that didn’t own land during the medieval time. It’s important to note that the two feudalistic societies exhibited some shared practices and principles, but nonetheless differed in many important aspects. This centered around three concepts of lords, vassals and fiefs.Īlthough feudalism is largely considered a European invention, a type of feudalism was invented by the Japanese, at about the same period that European feudalism was at its peak, which was completely independent of the European system. Feudalism may vaguely refer to the form of government made up of a decentralized socio-political system where a weak monarchy tries to take control of territories under it, but not physically part of its kingdom, using reciprocal agreements with the territorial leaders.Ī classic definition of feudalism refers to the European political system of the middle ages, which comprised of a set of reciprocal military, as well as legal duties they were obliged to do among the nobles who were warriors.
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