Difference Between Feudalism In Japan And Europe

Compare and Contrast: European Feudalism vs. Japanese Feudalism. Focus on: honor codes, political and social structure, women, and culture


Feudalism is widely known as a political, social, andeconomic system that appeared in Europe during the middle ages, it was mainly a system for structuring the societies derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour. Even ifFeudalism is mostly recognized in Europe, at about the same time period of the 9th and 15th century another form of feudalism appeared in Japan, both societies shared some characteristics as their code ofhonor, but they also differed in several ways such as women and culture.

One of the main similarities that both systems shared was that in Japan as well as in Europe the caste system was hereditary,meaning that in Europe wether you were born as a part of the nobility or as a peasant, you would remain this way until death, this was also a part of the Japanese system where you could be a part ofthe lords or samurai and you would belong in this positions over your life, this hereditary castes leads to another significant similarity between them, Japan and Europe followed a code of honor. InJapan warriors had to follow the Code of Bushido while in Europe knights followed the Code of Chivalry.

This two forms of feudalism were based on the ownership of land. Japan as well as Europe hadlandowning and non-landowning castes and they both seem to share the same structure, but even though we are able to find the most important characteristic that they had in common (since feudalism isdefined by the ownership of land as an exchange for services), Japan did not held a centralized authority as Europe did since the emperor never achieved a total control of the aristocracy.

A notabledifference between this two forms of feudalism is seen on the roots of both, Europe bases of its feudal system were the Catholic church as well as the Germanic and Roman law, while on the other...