Word: feudality
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...after the Emperor's overthrow in 1974 by a leftist junta, Addis Ababa's relations with the U.S. cooled. Despite their ties to Somalia, the Russians saw a chance to establish a presence in Ethiopia, which is almost ten times as populous as Somalia and whose ancient feudal society might prove more receptive to Soviet socialism over the long run than Muslim Somalia had been. Many observers think Moscow diplomats genuinely believed they could continue to have it two ways: maintaining close ties with both Mogadishu and Addis Ababa while tilting toward Ethiopia in the current...
...just as de Tocqueville once mourned the demise of what he considered the idyllic, paternalistic system of feudal society in Europe, Jerry Jeff and all his friends sing a lament for the disappearance of small town society and Sunday church picnics...
...Morris was not, as his detractors suppose, a daft Luddite with pretechnological dreams of a feudal society sans feudal authority. "It is not this or that tangible steam or brass machine which we want to get rid of," he remarked, "but the great intangible machine of commercial tyranny which oppresses the lives of all of us." It was not the machine but its owners who converted skilled into unskilled labor. When Morris advocated "simplicity," he was not calling for a peevish and cloistered asceticism but for a clearing away of inessentials. "I demand a free and unfettered animal life...
...18th century Japanese craftsmen, comes from the collection of a family which, next to the Emperor's, was for more than 250 years the most exalted in Japan-the Tokugawa. The shogun, or warlord, leyasu Tokugawa unified Japan at the beginning of the 17th century, welding its scattered feudal clans into a military ruling class with himself at the top; from then until the capsule of Japanese self-containment was ruptured by Admiral Perry, the country was run by an unbroken line of Tokugawa's descendants...
Such objects are, of course, at the opposite pole of sensibility from the ideas of wabi and sabi-"artless" simplicity, near-invisible interferences with nature - which are the root of much Japanese art. These are court art, raised to an intimidating level of egotism: a feudal lord displayed his power and wealth in the costumes of his Nō troupe. Apart from the kind of tie-dyeing used for some kimonos, which took a year to tie and another year to unpick, these robes probably consumed more expert human labor than any other garments in history. The weavers might finish...