1962/10/01 by John W. Hall · 46 citations
Social Sciences · #Japanese History and Culture #Chinese history and philosophy #Feudalism #History #Reading (process) #Vocabulary #Classics #Political science #Law #Philosophy #Politics
paper · doi:10.1017/s001041750000150x
published in Comparative Studies in Society and History 5(1), 15-51 (Cambridge University Press)
openalex publication_date 1962/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
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.