Feudal Japanese and European societies were built on a system of hereditary classes. The nobles were at the top, followed by warriors, with tenant farmers or serfs below.
Japanese and European feudalism was similar in different aspects:
- An economy based on land, the presence of a centralized state structure but which is relegated to the background by the division of power, and the clear distinction of a warrior group.
- Private armed groups and with it a militarization of society. Another would be the lack of pressure from external groups ( the viking and muslim incursions and invasions for the case of europe and the mongols for japan that took place centuries later , but without success) making possible the particular social gestation of both places in the dawn of feudalism.
- The rise of both feudal worlds, emerged from a previously regular centralized political system that in the case of france was the old carolingian empire and for japan the imperial decline of the heian period.
