Changes in Japan | edo-japan-guide

Before, in the Edo Period.

There was a very strict society and succes was based on your social class. If you were born in a certain class, it was near impossible for you to change your class and a lot of attention was payed to grouping people in society.

Now Japan's society is more modern and less attention is payed to labeling people in society. Depending on the amount of hard work that you execute, you can change the amount of succes in your life either for better or for worse.

The upper classes in society (such as the samurai, bakufu and the shogun) had a very large amount of power and they got to decide what was what. Whatever they said, you must do it and if you disobeyed then there would be a heavy penalty, possibly your life.

Even though today there are still higher positions in government, there is more power with the people and citizens like in a normal modern day society. Instead of a shogun ruling over you, you and the citizens around you make the decisions and the people in authority cary them out and do them.

Samurai were known as warriors before the Edo period, they protected the citizens in each domain from other daimyo who were attacking. Then during the Edo period there were no wars sto fight so they became highly educated warriors who also governed over each domain. They wore lots of armour and carried swords that they had to protect with their life, if they didn't they would have be put to shame and punished, possibly forced to commit suicide.

Now samurai are seen as less violent and more noble, they are not as feared and they have less power compared to back in the edo period. Although they are less feared they still have a lot of respect and shouldn't be disrespected. Instead of showing off their heavy armour & roaming the streets with their righteous swords, they stay more in dojos and meditate and don't have nearly as much armour as they did back then. The penalty for losing your sword isn't as extreme as it was back then although it is still frowned upon.

During the Edo Period Japan had great peace and got in touch with itself by developing new ideas and techniques for various subjects but over the course of the 200 year period Japan started to lack and fall behind in the latest technology. This happened because they were not trading and exchanging ideas with the western world.

Right after the Edo Period Japan was rich and once they found out they were behing on different technologies, they quickly understood the concepts of western reasoning because of the confucianism lifestyle and it was easy for them to start making various types of equipment and technology.