The Feudal Era

Matt DuffyCollin Peck

Dominic Holden

What is Feudalism?

• A dominant social system• Japan based more on absolute loyalty to ruler and

based on personal honour over religious ideals

• In the fourth century A.D., the Yamato clan introduces elements of Chinese culture into Japan.

War in the Feudalism Era

• Soldiers were called samurai in Japan• In the twelfth century a strongman Yoritomo

controlled the empire and declared himself a shogun (general)

• Next four centuries a series of shoguns ruled Japan• Warlords kept the country in constant warfare

Downfall of Feudalism

• 1500s: powerful shogun destroys feudal lords, and the Tokugawa shogunate, (shogun-ruled regime) rules Japan from a new capital at Edo

• 1633: Japan becomes a closed society and all were forbidden to leave the country under penalty of death

• The Japanese maintained the policy of isolation for two centuries

Shintoism and Zen Buddhism

• Shintoism is an ancient religion • Believed in divine spirits called kami which reside in

natural places and objects

• Zen Buddhism originated in India• Zen Buddhism was imported from China in about

1200• Zen priests helped develop landscape gardening and

military arts such as judo

Japanese Literature

• Japanese adopted the Chinese system of writing and modified it

• composing poetry has always been a highly respected activity in Japan

• Tanka is a form that emerged in the eighth century A.D. and is characterized by brief lyrical bursts of feeling

• Haiku is a form developed in the seventeenth century

Two Great Women Writers

• The Tale of Genji is considered by many scholars to be the world’s first true novel, written by the aristocrat Lady Murasaki Shikibu: a lady-in-waiting to the empress

• Sei Shōnago revealer her journal about court life, The Pillow Book

Japanese Drama

• Noh was the most distinctive form of Japanese drama

• Kabuki is a theatrical kind of play involving dancing and singing