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Feudalism in Japan — a Reassessment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

John Whitney Hall
John Whitney Hall
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

The question of whether Japan can rightly be said to “have had feudalism” is by no means settled. Although Westerners have been writing about “Japanese feudalism” for well over a hundred years, the acceptability of this practice is still a matter of controversy among professional historians, notably among those who make the study of medieval Europe their specialty. To a long line of Western historians ending with Herbert Norman, however, there was no question about the appropriateness of placing the feudal label on Japan. Nor does the contemporary Japanese historian question a term which has become so important a part of his professional as well as everyday vocabulary. In a Japan in which the reading public is daily reminded that the “struggle against feudalism” is still being waged, feudalism seems a present reality which by its very nature cannot be denied to have existed in Japan's past.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , October 1962 , pp. 15 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1962

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References

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