[lumost]

An alternate way of viewing this is that large productive resources are channeled into providing consumption for an exponentially growing bloodline rather than re-invested for general profit.

There was a general practice that samurai funded positions for the children of their servants. By the time of the meiji restoration the number of servants a Samurai supported had grown by nearly an order of magnitude. Meanwhile the productive land remained fixed.

Unfortunately this lead to the productive assets of Japan being directed to support an increasingly capital inefficient consumption system. There is no natural reason to assume that an estate would be obliterated with time.