The origins of Japan's medieval world

Jeffrey P. Mass

This pioneering collection proposes to change the way we think about fourteenth-century Japan. It argues that Japan's medieval beginnings are found not in the developments flowing from the establishment of the first shogunate in the 1180s, but rather in the shogunate's collapse 150 years later. Under the leadership of Japan's truly 'medieval men' (the emperors Go-Daigo and Ashikaga Takauji), the old order was dramatically transformed. Topics examined include new partnerships within the social hierarchy, the impact of sustained warfare on societal values, the new subservience of women in the post-Kamakura environment, the unprecedented emergence of warriors as the moralists and spokesmen of a new age, and the appearance of a new, more sharply partisan religious sectarianism.

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