Episode 646 – A Fief By Any Other Name, Part 1

What is feudalism? It’s a surprisingly hard question to answer, and one that raises an interesting follow up. Here on the podcast I’ve been describing medieval Japan as a “feudal state” for a long time, but should I even be doing that?

Sources

Friday, Karl. “The Futile Paradigm: In Quest of Feudalism in Early Medieval Japan.” History Compass 8, No 2 (January 2010)

Friday, Karl, ed. Japan Emerging: Premodern History to 1850.

Duus, Peter. Feudalism in Japan

Brown, Elizabeth A.R. “The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe.” The American Historical Review 74, No 4 (Oct, 1974)

Abels, Richard. “The Historiography of A Construct: Feudalism and the Medieval Historian.” From the Public Medievalist.

Images

Homage ceremony of vassal of Count Frederick I of the Palatinate.
A miniature detail from medieval Europe depicting a ceremony of homage.
This is an image of the way a samurai would have been armored in the late Heian/early Kamakura period. Note the prominence of the daikyu (bow) and the armor, which is lamelar.
Karl Friday, from his faculty page at the University of Georgia
Peter Duus, from his obituary.

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