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Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was a combination of legal, economic, military, cultural, and political customs that flourished in medieval Europe from the 9th to 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structuring society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.
The Japanese were introduced to several new technologies and cultural practices (so were the Europeans to Japanese, see Japonisme), whether in the military area (the arquebus, cannon, European-style cuirasses, European ships such as galleons), religion (Christianity), decorative art, language (integration to Japanese of a Western vocabulary ...
The koku is a Japanese unit of measurement equal to about 180 litres, or 5 bushels. [7] The power of feudal lords was often directly quantified by their output in koku rather than acreage of land ownership or military might. [8] In fact, the amount of military service required from a vassal depended on the koku of their specific fief.
The European towns could grow outside of the feudal system instead of being integrated into it since the landed aristocrats were settled in manors. Thus, the towns and their people were independent of the influence of the feudal lords and were usually solely under the political authority of the monarchs of the European kingdoms.
Feudal duties were the set of reciprocal financial, military and legal obligations among the warrior nobility in a feudal system. [1] These duties developed in both Europe and Japan with the decentralisation of empire and due to lack of monetary liquidity, as groups of warriors took over the social, political, judicial, and economic spheres of the territory they controlled. [2]
In the 19th century, Japanese intellectuals reinvented the Chinese terms fengjian (封建) for "feudalism" and nongmin (农民), or "farming people", terms used in the description of feudal Japanese society. [25] These terms created a negative image of Chinese farmers by making a class distinction where one had not previously existed. [25]
Feudal societies are characterized by reliance on personal relationships with military elites, rather than a bureaucracy with a state-supported professional standing army. [55] The label of feudalism has thus been used to describe many areas of Eurasia including medieval Europe, the Islamic iqta' system, Indian feudalism, and Heian Japan. [56]
The Tokugawa shoguns governed Japan in a feudal system, with each daimyō administering a han (feudal domain), although the country was still nominally organized as imperial provinces. Under the Tokugawa shogunate, Japan experienced rapid economic growth and urbanization, which led to the rise of the merchant class and Ukiyo culture.