(An interesting historical aside: samurai rank was conferred by birth, and held by women as well as men. Employment as a yoriki or dōshin carried a social stigma, and men often ended up in these professions as a last resort. However, where magistrates normally came from powerful clans, assistant magistrates and police were usually drawn from low-ranked samurai families. Like magistrates, yoriki and dōshin were always drawn from the samurai class. In addition to the pair of swords all samurai wore, dōshin carried a forked truncheon, called a jitte, as a symbol of their rank. (Members of the samurai class had special privileges, and generally handled legal matters amongst themselves.) Magistrates of samurai rank presided over courts of law in every major city (and many towns), resolving disputes, trying cases, and sentencing commoners who committed crimes.īeneath the magistrates, the yoriki (“assistant magistrates”) conducted investigations and supervised the dōshin (whose function was similar to that of modern “beat cops”) who patrolled the cities, kept the peace, and made arrests when necessary. Various members of the ruling class, including both emperors and shoguns, changed and added to the legal codes over time.ĭuring the medieval era, the magistrates and police appointed by the shogun were charged with enforcing these laws, arresting and sentencing criminals, and keeping the peace among the lower classes. This system was based on elaborate written codes of law, the earliest of which were codified during the seventh century. Samurai also ran the official, organized justice system, which existed primarily to enforce the law among the lower social classes. Only rarely were samurai required to submit their disputes to a magistrate, or to answer to police. Daimyō frequently intervened on behalf of their samurai retainers, who in turn were expected to support their lords on the field of battle. In fact, the country had two different, parallel systems: one for members of the ruling samurai class, and the other for commoners.įor the most part, samurai clans resolved their own disputes through negotiation or, when talking failed, on the edge of a sword. These laws, and the Japanese justice system, continued to develop over time, and by the 16th century Japan had a highly developed system of courts and law enforcement. While the magistrates and police had only limited power over other members of the samurai class, they exercised significant control over the lower classes: the farmers, artisans, merchants, and outcastes who made up the numerical majority of the Japanese population. One way the shoguns attempted to solidify their control over Japanese feudal society during the fifteenth century-and particularly over the samurai warlords, known as daimyō, many of whom considered their fiefdoms independent feudal states-was by establishing increasingly detailed codes of laws and appointing their loyal samurai retainers as magistrates and police with the power and duty to enforce the laws.
By the fourteenth century the shoguns asserted de facto control over much of Japan. The shogunate era lasted from the 12th to the 19th centuries, and although the shoguns nominally answered to the emperor, in reality military control equated to rulership of Japan. Japan’s medieval era followed a similar pattern, except that the country essentially had two rulers: the emperor (who was considered divine) and the shogun, a military commander appointed by the emperor to exercise military power on his behalf. During the medieval age in Europe, most countries were ruled by a king, beneath whom were feudal lords with varying degrees of power and wealth.