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Compare and contrast piracy of feudal England (Cinque Ports) and Japan. Make an argument based on whether you view them as more similar or more different and why. Feudal Japan and England bore a surprising amount of similarities. Their geography and politics created spaces outside of the control of land-based feudal powers where piracy could flourish. In both places, coastal peoples who participated in and supported piracy gained a degree of political independence and recognition from established authorities. The similarities in the piracy of these two distant islands show how their geography and the politics of feudalism shaped trade and maritime raiding during the medieval period. , The geographical similarities of Japan and Britain are clear. Both are clusters of islands that sit a relatively short distance from the mainland. The places where the mainland is closest, the English Channel and the Korea Strait, are passages between two larger bodies of water that create chokepoints for trade. These coastal regions were well-suited to both piracy and trade. In Japan, the Seto Inland Sea (connected to the Korea Strait by the Kanmon Straits) created even more opportunities for maritime trade. The early feudal period created opportunities for piracy in both Japan and England. In Kamakura Japan, when the samurai seized power as a feudal ruling class, piracy boomed. Due to political upheaval, landless samurai became pirates and the newly founded shogunate was unable to stop them.' The nature of the feudal system, in which local lords with their own military forces were obligated to support the shogun, created problems when it came to issues like piracy. This loose, decentralized form of government meant that there was a lot of leeway for daimyo to pursue their own interest, making it difficult for the shogun to completely control his territory.” Feudalism created similar problems in England. Scholars generally credit William the Conqueror with the beginning of English feudalism, though some argue that the Norman 1 James E, Wadsworth, Global Piracy; A Documentary History of Seaborne Banditry, (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), 70-71. 2 Keiji Nagahara. "The Social Structure of Early Medieval Japan." Hitotsubashi Journal of Economics 1, no. 1 (1960): 90-97 
