Periodization in Premodern Japan

Secondary Sources

Duus, Peter. Feudalism in Japan. 3rd Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993.

Friday, Karl. "The Futile Paradigm: In Quest of Feudalism in Early Medieval Japan." History Compass 8, no. 2 (2010): 179–196.

Friday, Karl F. "Sorting the Past." In Japan Emerging: Premodern History to 1850, edited by Karl F. Friday, 16–20. New York: Westview Press, 2012. 

Note: this article contains a useful chart that breaks down different forms of periodization

Goble, Andrew Edmund. "Defining 'Medieval'." In Japan Emerging: Premodern History to 1850, edited by Karl F. Friday, 32–41. New York: Westview Press, 2012.

Goble, Andrew Edmund.  "Medieval Japan." In A Companion to Japanese History, edited by William M. Tsutsui, 47–66. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2009.

Hall, John Whitney. "Feudalism in Japan—A Reassessment." Comparative Studies in Society and History 5, no. 1 (October 1962): 15–51.

Hall, John Whitney. "Terms and Concepts in Japanese Medieval History: An Inquiry into the 

Problems of Translation." Journal of Japanese Studies 9, no. 1 (January 1983): 1–32.

Keirstead, Thomas. "Inventing Medieval Japan: The History of Politics and National Identity." The Medieval History Journal 1, no. 1 (1998): 47–71.

Keirstead, Thomas, "Medieval Japan: Taking the Middle Ages Outside Europe." History Compass 2 (2004): 1–14.

Murata Shōzō. "Nihon hōkenseiron: Chūseishi kenkyū o chūshin ni." In Kōza nihonshi. Volume 9, edited by the Historical Science Society of Japan/Japanese History Research Association, 109–148. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1974.

Ōyama Kyōhei. "The Fourteenth Century in Twentieth-Century Perspective." In The Origins of Japan's Medieval World: Courtiers, Clerics, Warriors, and Peasants in the Fourteenth Century, edited by Jeffrey P. Mass, 345–365. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997.

Piggott, Joan R. "Defining 'Ancient' and 'Classical.'" In Japan Emerging: Premodern History to 1850, edited by Karl F. Friday, 21–31. New York: Westview Press, 2012.

Reischauer, Edwin O. "Japanese Feudalism." In Feudalism in History, edited by Rushton Coulborn, 26–48. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956.

Walley, Akiko. "Stepping out of the Shadow of Imperial Monochrony: A Place-centric Approach to Decolonizing Japanese Art History." In The Routledge Companion to Decolonizing Art History, edited by Tatiana Flores, Florencia San Martin, and Charlene Villaseñor Black, 139-150. Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2023.

Yasuda Motohisa. "History of the Studies of the Formation of Japanese Hōken System (Feudalism)." Acta Asiatica 8 (1965): 74–100.

Additional Readings of Interest (non-Japan):

Abels, Richard. "The Historiography of a Construct: 'Feudalism' and the Medieval Historian." History Compass 7, no. 3 (May 2009): 1008–31.

Davis, Kathleen. Periodization and Sovereignty: How Ideas of Feudalism and Secularization Govern the Politics of Time. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.

Le Goff, Jacques. Must We Divide History into Periods? Translated by Malcolm DeBevoise. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.

Reynolds, Susan. Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Notes:

This reading list was initially provided by Paula R. Curtis.

Suggest Additions:

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