The Kamakura Period is awesome.
Long story short, my East Asian History instructor is covering the Kamakura period of Japanese history, which is one of my favorite historical periods to study.
Now, I do not consider myself to be a Japanophile, and least not, a “weeaboo”, but there is something inherently fascinating about Japanese history in general. Compared to China, Japan was almost entirely isolated throughout it’s existence. This is not to downplay the importance, and my love of Chinese history, but this aspect of isolation in Japan had created a very interesting, and at times, a little odd, cultural and historical landscape. Note that my judgments of oddness are dictated by my entirely Southern California sensibilities and perspective, and thus must be taken with a grain of salt.
I’ve elaborated before on my fascination with Feudal societies, and the developments of Feudalism in Japan and Western Europe. I find these developments to be more interesting than the developments of similar art and architectural in isolated countries. The most obvious examples of these being pyramids and depictions of “space men” in ancient culture. These concepts have a geometric and deity-conceptual basis, respectively. Feudalism is almost a complete cultural and political de-evolution for societies that were, arguably doing somewhat well. This is of course barring the neglect and abuse of the lowest rungs of society, but what successful society does not do that? Indeed, Feudalism is ultimately the result of societies that are working, who eventually pause to reflect, and then immediately decide to make terrible governing choices and decentralize.
These terrible governing choices almost always boil down into a single concept: don’t let your military personnel become surplus. So much of Feudalism is a response by poor, bored warriors who jump to the logical conclusion that they can change their lot in life by force. Combining these thrill-seekers with a perpetually unhappy lower-class, and you have a powder-keg of decentralized government ready to explode in the face of the society you have built up. Explosions are messy, much like the Feudalistic mess that follows.
I was intending to write more about Japanese history, but it became something about Feudalism. Oh well.
