Episode 647 – A Fief By Any Other Name, Part 2

October 30, 2026 Leave a comment

There’s a bit of a division in the scholarship on medieval Japan regarding whether “feudalism” is a useful scholarly category to study the period. So if we actually look at the history, what are these scholars arguing over? And what can we make of their arguments?

 

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)

Images

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.
The Hogen Rebellion as depicted in this illustrated Byobu, from the early Tokugawa period.
Detail from a 13th century illustrated version of the Heiji Monogatari, showing Minamoto no Yoshitomo’s followers seizing the Sanjo palace of the retired emperor Go-Shirakawa at the start of the Heiji Rebellion.
A contemporary rendering of Minamoto no Yoritomo. This image shows him as he looked in 1179, the year he married Masako and two years before the start of his rebellion.

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