What are the differences between medieval Japan feudalism and medieval Europe feudalism?
Answers
Answered by
8
Thats way too broad of a question to be answered easily- Japan is one country (or a kingdom at the time) and Europe has several countries (or kingdoms at that time), some of which dont exist today. So, which country?
Example: Russia’s feudal system was known as krepostnichestvo and the pesants were effectively slaves, never allowed to leave the lands of their owners- the nobility.
Also, which time period are we discussing?
Roman empire, Bulgarian empire, Empires of France, Britain and Spain happened at different timeline and have different social structures, ideologies, forms of rule and etc…
The answer cannot be simple, but here are some major points:
Social structure:
The emperors in Europe and Japan had same power. Exception was the religious part- in Europe, emperors were empowered humans. In Japan, emperor was believed to be a god.
The pillars of the european empires, were Nobility, Clergy and Peasantry.
As pointed out, in some european empires, Peasantry was actually not that different from slaves.
The Clergy (catholic) had authority over ALL catholic empires. Clergy was inseparable from the state (the empire) for quite long time. The Pope could declare a crusade against one emperor or another (as he did), which would oblige all the other empires and kingdoms to attack and pillage.
That puts the Clergy above the emperors in terms of power and income (even today, church is exempted from taxes).
Japan never gave such power to its higher priests and religion leaders.
Nobility- In most european empires, nobility was local warlords or knights, who raised through the ranks in wars. And then there are the vassals- Europe is a continent, where wars were quite often fought, borders changed…
A lot of bordering territories were very mixed ethnically and their owners were pledging loyalty to one emerging power or another depending on their own politics of survival.
That means, that in regions like the Balkans, some christian warlords would become vassals to mongols or ottomans, then fight against their christian neighbor on the behalf of the Khan or Sultan.
Japanese nobility was also warlords, although been an island, the above situation was not existing.
In retrospect, Europe moved from feudal to the next step and did a lot of social experiments on the way, creating Magna Carta, for example. Then did some fighting, revolutions, exploring the world, became colonial, abolished colonial regime, denounced racism, slavery, fought 2 world wars, created the idea of human rights, labor laws and all together became one of the driving forces behind human progress.
Japan has largely remained the same.
Example: Russia’s feudal system was known as krepostnichestvo and the pesants were effectively slaves, never allowed to leave the lands of their owners- the nobility.
Also, which time period are we discussing?
Roman empire, Bulgarian empire, Empires of France, Britain and Spain happened at different timeline and have different social structures, ideologies, forms of rule and etc…
The answer cannot be simple, but here are some major points:
Social structure:
The emperors in Europe and Japan had same power. Exception was the religious part- in Europe, emperors were empowered humans. In Japan, emperor was believed to be a god.
The pillars of the european empires, were Nobility, Clergy and Peasantry.
As pointed out, in some european empires, Peasantry was actually not that different from slaves.
The Clergy (catholic) had authority over ALL catholic empires. Clergy was inseparable from the state (the empire) for quite long time. The Pope could declare a crusade against one emperor or another (as he did), which would oblige all the other empires and kingdoms to attack and pillage.
That puts the Clergy above the emperors in terms of power and income (even today, church is exempted from taxes).
Japan never gave such power to its higher priests and religion leaders.
Nobility- In most european empires, nobility was local warlords or knights, who raised through the ranks in wars. And then there are the vassals- Europe is a continent, where wars were quite often fought, borders changed…
A lot of bordering territories were very mixed ethnically and their owners were pledging loyalty to one emerging power or another depending on their own politics of survival.
That means, that in regions like the Balkans, some christian warlords would become vassals to mongols or ottomans, then fight against their christian neighbor on the behalf of the Khan or Sultan.
Japanese nobility was also warlords, although been an island, the above situation was not existing.
In retrospect, Europe moved from feudal to the next step and did a lot of social experiments on the way, creating Magna Carta, for example. Then did some fighting, revolutions, exploring the world, became colonial, abolished colonial regime, denounced racism, slavery, fought 2 world wars, created the idea of human rights, labor laws and all together became one of the driving forces behind human progress.
Japan has largely remained the same.
Similar questions