The Floating World

An analogy to the courtly romances of Medieval Europe can be found in Japanese kabuki theater. Kabuki plays were idealized myths and legends that aggrandized the Japanese nobility while also imparting moral lessons about personal conduct and proper behavior. Just as men of the Europe’s barony class would read stories of courtly romance to learn about chivalry, the Japanese Samurai read poems and watched plays that demonstrated the tenets of bushido. And much like Don Quixote, sitting in his manor reading stories about knights and using these fictions to reconstruct is now obsolete position in society as a knight himself, the Japanese samurai of the Edo period expended their ample leisure time consuming cultural artifacts which confirmed their position and status in feudal Japan in the absence of any operative role.

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The samurai languished in the floating world for more than three centuries. In 1868, the Meiji restoration took place, conferring complete power into the hands of the emperor and essentially leading to the capitulation of the shogunate. In 1877 the Meiji restoration official disbanded the samurai and dissolved their privileged status, thus allowing them to enter the ranks of productive society as government officials and businessmen.