Historic Replicas

Medieval Europe and Ancient Japan were a world apart.  From the early days of its culture, Japan was a closed society that shunned contact with other civilizations.  The earliest recorded contact with Europe was in 1543, when a Portuguese trading vessel brought the first guns to the Japanese weapons arsenal.  In fact, it’s entirely possible that Europe and Japan were unaware of each other’s existence until that time.  Amazingly, both cultures developed a similar class of professional warriors:  Europe had knights, and Japan its samurai.  We talked about the knights a while back, and if you read that one, you’ll recall that they were specially trained, highly respected fighters, sworn to obey a king.  Land ownership meant power, and was the ultimate sign of status; to be a landowner was to gain entrance to a special ruling class, the nobility.  In return for their services, they were granted small landholdings of their own to rule over.  From the 8th century onward, Japanese culture was much the same. (to be continued…)