Peter Stearns, World Civilizations: The Global Experience, pp. 456-7.
…Both [Japan and Europe] used feudal relationships in situations where
they could not sustain more centralized forms of political organization. The
West had the example of Rome’s empire, but the medieval leaders simply
could not reconstruct the elements that had allowed the empire to exist and
flourish. They could not organize or afford the necessary armies, and they could
not agree on standardized laws. Most critically, they lacked the means to support
an independent bureaucracy that could cut across regional societies and language
groups, except through the important but somewhat specialized mechanism of the
church. The Japanese had the example of the Chinese imperial system available
to them, and the briefly attempted a comparable kind of bureaucratic development,
using Confucianism to promote the proper political attitudes, But, as in western
Europe, a system of centralized administration could not be established in Japan.
…In both western Europe and Japan, feudalism was highly militaristic, Both
the medieval West and Japan went through long centuries of unusually frequent
and bitter internal warfare, based in large part on feudal loyalties and rivalries.
Although this warfare was more confined to the warrior-landlord class in Europe
than in Japan, in both instances feudalism summed up a host of elite military
virtues that long impeded the development of more stable centralized government,
These values included physical courage, personal or family alliances, loyalty,
ritualized combat, and often contempt for non-warrior groups such as peasants
and merchants.
The military aura of feudalism survived the feudal era in both cases. It left
Japan with serious problems in controlling its samurai class after the worst
periods of internal conflict has passed in the early 17th century. In the West,
the warrior ethic of feudalism persisted in the prominent belief that a central
purpose of the state was to make war, thereby providing opportunities for military
leaders to demonstrate prowess. But the legacy of feudalism was not simply military.
For example, the idea of personal ties between leaders or among elite groups
as a foundation for political activity continued to affect political life and
institutions in both the West and Japan long after the feudal period ended.
Furthermore, the characteristics of feudalism in Japan and in the West were
not identical. Western feudalism emphasized contractual ideas more strongly
than did Japanese. Although mutual ties were acknowledged by members of the
European warrior elite, feudal loyalties were sealed by negotiated contracts
in which the parties involved obtained explicit assurances of the advantages
each would receive from the alliance. Japanese feudalism relied more heavily
on group and individual loyalties, which were not confirmed by contractual agreements.
Probably for this reason, the clearest ongoing legacy of feudalism in the West
proved to be parliamentary institutions where individual aristocrats (as well
as townsmen and clergy) could join to defend their explicitly defined legal
interests against the central monarch. In Japan the legacy of feudalism involved
a less institutionalized group consciousness. This approach encouraged individuals
to function as part of collective decision making teams that ultimately could
be linked to the state. Although in both cases feudalism helped shape distinctive
political styles and values that would be combined with later centralizing tendencies,
the styles and values themselves were not the same.
[Stearns goes on to speculate about industrialization and economic dynamism
in the 19th and 20th century, a far more tenuous thread – although given
Japan’s early industrialization, one might speculate on the parallels between
European and Japanese imperialism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.]