Tokugawa Japan + Medieval Europe Medieval Europe and Tokugawa Japan lived in seclusion to each other, and yet there were many uncanny similarities between Tokugawa Japan and Medieval Europe. In Medieval Europe there were many key features of the social system that were introduced at the time. The social system of Medieval Europe was called Feudalism. Feudalism puts the King in charge of everything and everyone, with barons and nobles underneath him. The nobles provide loyalty and knights to the king in return for land to control.
The societies of Tokugawa Japan (c.1603-1867C.E.) and medieval Europe (c.1000-1500C.E.) had two things in common; a feudal system. A feudal system is something that features hierarchies or social structures. The feudal system normally starts with a religion, which is at the very top of the social pyramid, then it’s the King or monarch for Europe and the shogun for Japan, then there are the nobles for Europe and the daimyos for Japan. As we go down the pyramid there are the warriors, like the knight in Europe and the samurai in Japan, then there are the peasants. The peasants were included in both eras and are at the lowest part of the pyramid.
Feudalism is a system of governing and landholding. Nobles were able to use land that belonged to the king and in return, the nobles pledged their loyalty and military services to them ( doc 1 ). The feudal system was based on rights and obligations. The manor was the economic side of the feudal system. The manor was a system where the lord’s lands was taken care of by his serfs ( doc 2 ).
In the 1500s and the 1600s the feudal system was beginning to fall. Different countries were trying new different types of governments instead of the dysfunctional feudal system. The feudal system consisted of many different nobles ruling over their own land. It was not a uniform system of ruling over the country. There were small city-states run by a singular ruler.
The Sign of the Chrysanthemum- Katherine Paterson The novel The Sign of the Chrysanthemum by Katherine Paterson is a story a sef boy named Muna who runs away from his manor to the capital city of 12th century feudal Japan, Kyoto, in search of his samurai father. I will discuss the primes of social structure and politics. Katherine Paterson’s The Sign of the Chrysanthemum accurately portrays the Heiji Disturbance and the status of craftsmen and ronins.
Respect (A Discussion on Chivalry used in The Green Knight and Morte D’Arthur.) Chivalry is code of conduct used by knights, and heroes of the past. “Chivalry, the order of knighthood and, especially, the code of knightly behavior that was a feature of the High and later Middle Ages in western Europe”(Funk). Along with this idea of Chivalry, Feudalism was used in Europe as well. Feudalism is the system of both government and land ownership, where in exchange for a nobleman 's oath of loyalty, a king would grant them land.
Feudalism was a social system during the dark ages. On the top of the feudalism triangle was the king, just below him are the lords and nobles, below them are the knights that protected the king(dom), at the bottom of the triangle were the peasants. They were the slaves on the fifes (DBQ#2, Doc 1). “For the majority of Europeans, life was hard. Serfs / Peasants were required to work the land.”
However, this could be better seen in their form of government. Feudalism was a system that had land owners at the top (Kings and lords) and those who worked the land and keep the community safe at the bottom. It was basically impossible to move between social classes, and a desire to keep the rich with the rich meant that one couldn’t marry into money It was a social, economic, political, and legal system that stood in place for hundreds of years. The system, however meant that the government was weak, and it rarely stretched far; the larger the kingdom, the harder it was to keep it working. It also meant there were a lot of poor people living in the fifteen hundreds.
Eastern and Western European countries had many differences on economics and political structures. Both the East and the West tried to achieve an absolute monarchy, which can be described as a type of government where the monarch has complete rule over everything. Although both had an absolute monarchy at some point, they were structured differently and one much more successful than the other. In Eastern Europe the members of nobility had almost all of the control over the poor peasants who lived in their community.
Serfs worked for nobles on their land, and were said to be bound to the land. Feudalism was highly reliant on the social pyramid and the system of working for superiors, but this all eventually changed. The Renaissance was a time after the Middle Ages for man to
Social class played a key role in the Elizabethan Age; without social hierarchy society would have fallen apart, the people did not know of anything else other than the role of classes. Each class had different situations of life, some were wealthy and had nice homes while others were poor and living off of the streets. The class rankings were given to each individual by situations such as birth, fame, wealth, and known skills(“Elizabethan Era.”). One could only move up a class by the Queen's approval, obtaining sudden wealth, going into debt, losing your job, and many other specific conditions(“Elizabethan Era - The Lost Colony.”). For instance, marriage between two people from separate classes could alter social class and was often frowned upon.
Long before the Renaissance, government was based on feudalism, the idea of dividing society based on class. People earned a set wage for their class’ jobs. Children that were born into a family were the same class as their family. Also, thinking was deeply religious and even art and sculpture all were based on religious figures. However, humanists quashed this idea.
Since 1500, countries have pursued a policy of expansion known as imperialism for a variety of reasons. Those reasons lead to both negative and positive effects. The effects can be viewed from different perspectives. One country that was a major in Imperialism was Great Britain.
The feudal system was a medieval government system that had Lords, who owned the land, and Serfs, who worked on the land. The position of an individual was assigned by birth, and there was no movement by the individual. This idea can be seen in the quote, “the rise of the industrial capitalist appears as the fruit of a victorious struggle both against feudal power and it’s disgusting prerogatives, and against the guilds, and the fetters by which the exploitation of man by man,” (Marx 1976:875). As capitalistic is created, there are many factors that negatively contribute to society, like the surplus of workers. The major problem is that not everyone is going to work in the workforce and will beg or do other things that are not capitalistic to survive.
