Peter Duus, in Feudalism, identifies a strong commonality between medieval Japan and medieval Europe. He observes that a synchronicity exists between two geographically isolated cultural movements which, as products of parallel societal developments, have reacted to the imposed former order of Roman civilization and the profound influence of the Chinese empire, respectively:
An examination of Japanese feudalism is not only interesting in itself; it also gives the historian a good opportunity to speculate on the origins and significance of feudalism in general. It is clear that the political institutions of feudal Japan and feudal Europe evolved independently of each other. Located thousands of miles apart across the Eurasian land mass, there was no possibility of direct influence between the two cultures. A comparison of the two is about as close to a laboratory experiment as the historian is ever likely to come. (11)
The era of feudalism is one that has been commonly misunderstood and open to wide and varied interpretations. Duus' complaint is to the point. In general “feudalism . . . in common parlance has come to signify something backward, arbitrary, and even irrational” (5). For contemporary Marxist historians, “. . . feudalism is equated with a manorial or seigneurial economic system and the power structure that grows out of it” (6). And for the Western powers of France, England, and the United States, feudalism is represented largely in economic terms: “They use it to describe a system of military and political organization in which armed warriors or knights rally to leaders who give them grants of land in return for personal service” ( 7). Duus' persuasive argument is that feudalism ought to be simply understood as a societal structure in which there is an absence of a strong centralized state, typical of agrarian societies. In sharp contrast to many of his contemporary historians, Duus argues that far too much emphasis has been placed on the economic factors of feudalism in the relationship between the feudal lords and the peasantry. As a result, many of the military and political aspects of this system have been largely overlooked, especially in any comparative studies. The relationship between commoners and the nobles in terms of its symbiotic, rather than its potentially exploitive, nature is often neglected in Marxist interpretations. Western historians make the same error by emphasizing feudal knighthood as largely a mercenary service for payment in the form of gold or land. In either case, these interpretations focus primarily on the economic equation and in doing so neglect the human qualities of loyalty which truly drew the elements of feudalism together:
Medieval society was prolific in creating forms of association to which entry was obtained by some form of oath. This connexion between freedom and individual acts of acceptance of its responsibilities again emphasizes the rational character of freedom. The serf's unhappy freedom from law was involuntary, but the submission of the knight, the baron, the clerk, the monk, the burgess, to their various codes of law was voluntary. The nobleman was bound by several codes of law--as a Christian, a baron, a knight, a subject of the king; and he could suffer all manner of penalties for a breach of any of these codes of law. Into all these obligations he had entered by an individual contract in the ceremonies of baptism, homage, knighthood and fealty. If he was punished, even by being burnt as a heretic, he could reflect that he was being punished for breach of contract. (Southern 110)Both Southern and Duus argue that within what we call feudalism there exists an imperative relational quality which binds people together and which in turn gives the society a stability that would not otherwise exist. Breaking social contracts could prove to have devastating results but such consequences may have seemed necessary in order to preserve the delicate structures of medieval society.
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