This study will provide an examination of the differences between the medieval feudalism of Europe and the Japanese feudal system. We will note that on the surface there are a number of similarities between the two systems, especially in terms of social and political divisions between the landowning class and the class immediately under the landowners. However, upon greater inspection, we begin to see very important differences in the two feudal systems, especially with respect to the vassal class of Europe and the samurai class of Japan.
F.L. Ganshof, in Feudalism, defines the term in general by listing a number of its prominent features:
a development pushed to extremes of . . . personal dependence . . . , with a specialized military class occupying the higher levels in the social scale; an extreme subdivision of the rights of real property; a graded system of rights over land . . . ; and a dispersal of political authority amongst a hierarchy of persons who exercise in their own interest powers normally attributed to the State and which are often
. . . derived from its break-up (Ganshof xix).
In fact, though this study will focus on the differences between European and Japanese feudalism, Ganshof applies this description to both systems and finds that "the parallelism is very close" (Ganshof xx).
The same author offers another description for feudalism: "a body of institutions creating and regulating the obligations of obedience and service---mainly military service---on the part of a free man (the vassal) towards another free man (the lord), and the obligations of protection and maintenance on the part of the lord with regard to his vassal" (Ganshof xx).
Ganshof differentiates between the two definitions by calling the latter a legal definition and the former a political and social definition. However, again in the second definition, Ganshof finds that "in other historical environments certain institution...