Pre-modern Japan: The Rise and Fall of the Samurai

Catalog description

An introductory survey of the society and culture of pre-modern Japan, this course examines the formation of the early Japanese imperial state, the disposition of Japan’s feudal rule by military elite, and the commercial and social conditions that characterized the early modern era in Japan. Particular attention is directed to the transformation of the samurai from proud and able warriors into what was by the nineteenth century in all practice little more than a class of inflexible bureaucrats and raucous brigands.