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Heian Japan
Our club president was looking for a speaker for this week’s Toastmasters meeting, so I signed up, and proceeded to speak on “The Growth of Private Estates and Private Armies in Heian Japan,” reusing the title and some the content from a paper I wrote as a seventeen year old college sophomore taking a Japanese history course.
This seemed to go over well. I spoke while sitting in front of a computer, communicating with people by a Zoom-equivalent. The evaluator praised me for, among other things, my use of hand gestures, which I had not been aware of making.
As to the substance of talk, I began by quoting Gibbon that, had there not been a single barbarian in Europe, the West Roman Empire could not have survived, or would have survived without honor. Heian-kyo provides confirmation of a sort, as it never fell to external barbarians. Decadence, the appropriation of public land as private estates (which became not only tax-exempt but immune from all entry by imperial officials), and the development of relationships of vassalage between fighting man and lord led to Japan creating its own internal barbarians.
This seemed to go over well. I spoke while sitting in front of a computer, communicating with people by a Zoom-equivalent. The evaluator praised me for, among other things, my use of hand gestures, which I had not been aware of making.
As to the substance of talk, I began by quoting Gibbon that, had there not been a single barbarian in Europe, the West Roman Empire could not have survived, or would have survived without honor. Heian-kyo provides confirmation of a sort, as it never fell to external barbarians. Decadence, the appropriation of public land as private estates (which became not only tax-exempt but immune from all entry by imperial officials), and the development of relationships of vassalage between fighting man and lord led to Japan creating its own internal barbarians.
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Intersting. And perhaps a lesson for ourselves in modern times (if anyone ever did learn from history other than by falling flat on their faces and/or swords).