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| General Books on Japanese History | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Apr 22 2015, 03:13 AM (1,993 Views) | |
| Bethetsu | Apr 22 2015, 03:13 AM Post #1 |
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Tsushima no kami
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Since this is the beginners' forum, I thought it would be good to have a thread on somewhat general books relating to Japanese history. The ones I list are somewhat old, but are useful and interesting reading, and most of them are often quoted on this forum. Reischauer, Fairbank, and Craig, History of East Asian Civilization: Vol. 1, East Asia: The Great Tradition, Vol. 2, East Asia: The Modern Transformation (1960, 1965). This has the histories of China, Korea, and Japan and so is extremely useful, though of course by now some aspects are understood somewhat differently. Each period (in each country) is looked at from various point of view, as political, economic, and cultural, so it it very comprehensive. Besides, even for one whose central interest is Japan (like me), access to Chinese and and sometimes Korean history is important. Ivan Morris, The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan (1964). A classic description of court life in the Heian period, especially from the viewpoint of women authors like Murasaki Shikibu and Sei Shônagon. Michael Cooper, ed., They Came to Japan: An Anthology of European Reports on Japan, 1543-1640 (1965). The period covered by this book is one of the most popular in Japanese history--that of the Three Great Unifiers, the Kirishitan (early Japanese Christians), etc. It contains contemporary reports by early missionaries and English merchants like Will Adams. They describe Japan and its customs, audiences with people like Nobunage and Hideyoshi, and events like the attack on the Honnôji. This book is often quoted on this forum. Oliver Statler, Japanese Inn (1961). Japanese history from 1550 to 1957 as seen through the eyes of the owners of an actual inn in Okitsu, a town on the Tôkaidô Highway, now part of Shizuoka City. The bulk of the book could be called "the Edo Period as the Japanese see it." While it uses some popular sources that modern historians discount, as Sadler's biography of Ieyasu, it is useful to know even these. This is personally one of my favorite books on Japan. I keep coming across things that I first read about it in this book. See the description. E. Papinot, Historical and Geographical Dictionary of Japan (1910). This is of course is very outdated and has some errors, but I still find it very useful, and it does not seem that anything has really replaced it. (Whatever you use, do not use Frédéric, Lois, Japan Encyclopedia, trans. Käthe Roth [Harvard University Press, 2002]. It seems to be a cut and paste without comprehension from various western sources of various reliability, translated into poor English by an ignorant translator and, probably, "corrected" the wrong way by an ignorant and careless copy editor. At any rate there are many places where the facts are utterly garbled. Out of the dozens of mistakes I would like to bring up, I will limit myself to his statements that both Nobunaga and his young son became shogun (pp. xvii, 329) and that Taira no Kiyomori "was the first in Japanese history to show a determination to exterminate his opponents." See also Roy Miller's review. Stephen Turnbull, Strongholds of the Samurai: Japanese Castles 250-1877 (2009). For a review and discussion see here. |
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| chingwa | Apr 22 2015, 05:40 PM Post #2 |
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Priest
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I'd like to add Donald Keene, Yoshimasa and the Silver Pavilion (2003). It's a pretty light read but gives a nice overview not only of the life of Yoshimasa, but touches on the causes and events of the Onin war and makes a pretty good case for the importance of Yoshimasa's contributions to the rise of Higashiyama culture and how much of an influence it's had on subsequent eras of Japanese art and aesthetics. I've read my copy a number of times and it's always a nice read. |
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| owari no utsuke | Apr 28 2015, 02:39 PM Post #3 |
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Izu no kami
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I would add Warlords, Artists, and Commoners by Elison and Smith, University of Hawaii Press 1981. A book that covers just about everything related to the Sengoku Era. |
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| George.w | May 8 2015, 11:38 AM Post #4 |
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Vagrant
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Does Sansom merit a mention here? I can't speak for 'A Short Cultural History' as I haven't read it, but '-1334', '1334-1615' and '1615-1867' touch on most major topics up until 1867, (although there are several comprehensive books on general Edo history out there nowadays which might make a better substitution for the third book). What tends to be the general opinion on Sansom? I remember someone saying something in the podcast about him being a little dated and a bit much of a cultural historian, but the information seems fairly solid, (as far as I can tell - my knowledge is kind of limited). |
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| Toranosuke | May 9 2015, 05:37 AM Post #5 |
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Tosa no kami
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Cultural historian is a good thing in my book. In terms of being dated, I think the key thing is the question of interpretations. I would imagine that hopefully, probably, most of his names and dates are correct, and the general shape of the narratives - who fought who, at which time, who won which battles, and so forth - though even there, there may be discrepancies, I'm not sure. So, for detailed narratives of specific events, I do think it's still a good source to go to - when I'm looking for the complete narrative of all the incidents and reversals in the Go-Daigo / Nitta / Ashikaga / Kusunoki relationship, or for information on lesser-discussed wars like the Jokyu War or the Gosannen War, it's to Sansom that I turn. But, for an entry-level book, for someone just first reading through the narrative survey of Japanese history to understand it in a broad sense, I think that broad themes and developments are maybe more important than the details, and it is here where a scholar like Sansom can be quite dated. *How does he represent Sakoku (the "closing" and "isolation" of Japan during the Tokugawa period)? Scholars since the 1980s have done much to argue that Japan was not closed or isolated, but was merely carefully controlling, regulating, of its overseas contacts, and that actually if we take a less West-centric view, Japan was quite actively engaged with the outside world, within Asia, + with the Dutch. *How does Sansom represent the relationship between Tokugawa shogunate and the domains (han)? The standard characterization of the period today is not of a strongly centralized state under the Tokugawa, but of a rather decentralized federation, in which the domains enjoyed considerable autonomy. Further, I think there is beginning to be a shift, just in the last few years, starting to move towards terms as they were actually used at the time - "han" was used extremely sparingly in the Edo period, and only came into fashion in the Meiji period, referring backwards. Lots of terms, like sakoku, bakufu, and shogun, similarly were used more extensively in the Meiji period, and not in Edo. *How does Sansom describe peasants and the work they did? While the standard account has long followed the official (bakufu/Court) view to assume all peasants were rice-growers, count all land value in terms of rice grown, collect taxes in amounts of rice, and so forth, Amino Yoshihiko has shown that a great many villagers throughout Japan either were not rice growers, or were involved in a diverse set of activities on the side. Many people grew other crops, or were fishermen, miners, woodcutters, etc. And some number of people, as early as... well, certainly Muromachi, probably Kamakura as well, maybe even Heian, some number of people - even in rather provincial areas like Noto - were involved in rather large-scale, long-distance shipping and trading. One family he discusses, based in Noto, in I think either late Kamakura or early Muromachi, owned several large ships and traded goods all along the Sea of Japan coast, as far as Hokkaido. Alan Christy, in his translation of Amino, calls hyakushô "villagers" rather than "peasants," trying to break free from the "farmer" association. *With Sansom, you also have to watch out for interpretations of which figures are related to whom, who's even real, and interpretations of how they died and so forth. Does Sansom represent Shotoku Taishi as definitively the son of so-and-so, born in this year, who did this and did that, and died in such-and-such a year? I know some scholars have questioned whether he even existed, or whether he was invented to provide greater legitimation & justification for the rule of Empress Suiko, since she was a woman. ... George Kerr, who's basically the Sansom of Okinawan history, writes uncritically about the adventures of Minamoto no Tametomo, escaping exile and making his way to Okinawa, where he got with a native chieftain's daughter and sired Shunten, the first King of Okinawa, something pretty widely accepted today as just pure legend. So, I don't doubt that there are cases where Sansom says Shimazu so-and-so was a son of Minamoto no Yoritomo, when he was actually adopted, or was actually not related at all but that was just invented to lend legitimacy... Finally, there have been in recent decades a lot of overturning of national(ist) Japanese history as (re)written in the Meiji period through early 20th centuries... How does Sansom represent the role of the emperor, for example? A lot of scholars today are arguing that the emperor, as embodying the entire Japanese nation, as unifying force for the whole nation, was just really not historically what he was said to be in Meiji. And on a somewhat related note, how does Sansom describe Shinto? A lot of scholars today say that Shinto wasn't a singular, unified, thing pretty much at all until the late Edo period, and in certain ways not until Meiji. So, there are a lot of interpretive things, as to the character or shape of Japanese history that one has to watch out for - it's not all just about the narrative details. ... So, I think it all depends on where one is at with one's investigation into Japanese history, and what one's desires and interests are. If you don't have many books yet, don't plan on getting too many books yet, and just want one solid set of densely packed information - names, dates, narrative details - then Sansom's not a bad way to go. Cheap, easily obtainable. But, if you're looking for (more or less) your very first overview book, something to read in just a couple hundred pages, to get all the key events, key themes, the general shape of Japanese history, as an introduction I would suggest something like "A Brief History of Japanese Civilization" by Schirokauer, Lurie, and Gay, or "The Heritage of Japanese Civilization" by Albert Craig. These books are obnoxiously expensive for the latest editions, because they're college textbooks and the textbook companies like to gouge students for as much as they can get away with... but, they're about as up-to-date as can be with incorporating the newest (standard, widely-accepted) interpretations in the scholarship. |
| 上り口説 Nubui Kuduchi – Musings on the arts of Japan and beyond | |
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| Tatsunoshi | May 9 2015, 06:05 AM Post #6 |
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Miko no Kami
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Sansom's trilogy does have its share of factual errors-not a whole lot, but they're there. It's been years since I've read it but identifying the Mouri as a Christian daimyo sticks in my head. |
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| ltdomer98 | May 9 2015, 04:59 PM Post #7 |
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Daijo Daijin
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Toranosuke covered much of what I would say, so I'll merely supplement. First off, it's important to define "cultural historian". In general, "cultural history" is today very much en vogue, and interpreting history through cultural lenses is demanded by all historians. The criticism of Sansom isn't that he's a "cultural historian", it's the particular definition of "culture" he includes, and what he excludes. Older historians of all geographic areas defined "culture" as the HIGH culture of the group and time period they were studying. Which is fine, that's worth studying--however, if all you write about regarding Japanese culture in the 1000's is poetry and the Genji Monogatari, it presents this monolithic image that "all" Japanese (or at least the ones "that matter") were courtiers sending poems to one another and debating which shade of blue their kimono should be for the latest moon-viewing party. Or, that once we hit the Kamakura period, that court norms were out, rough and tumble samurai with their rustic country tastes were in, and that's all that was important. Sansom and historians of his time very much focused on what we'd now call the "1%" of their day, and a lot of more recent scholars take issue with that--some for good reason (hey, it's kind of impossible to really understand what was happening in any place or time if you only focus on 1% of the population), and some because they're Marxists. If anything, the criticism of Sansom isn't that he's a cultural historian, it's that he (and Hall, as described in the argument I had with Farris about him, and probably Mass, and Varley) are institutional historians, meaning that they focused on the power holders, the structures that those power holders set up to gain and maintain power, etc. Again, some of this is legit criticism because it ignores the majority of the populace; some of it is simply politics. As Toranosuke said, writers are all products of their time. Sansom, and others of his generation, were writing in post-WWII Japan. Japan was not only this exotic foreign "Oriental" place, but it was one we (the US/UK) had just fought in a devastating war. Many historians of the time had a two-fold purpose in studying Japan: on the one hand, historians looked for the reasons a brutal, totalitarian, fanatical, Emperor-worshipping elite could brainwash an entire country into diving planes into US carriers and charging machine guns while shouting "Banzai", and they found answers in things like the samurai war tales, "Bushido", and so on; on the other hand, they were trying to find the "Real Japan", to rehabilitate the negative image from the war and portray Japan as a land of tea ceremony, poetry, and graceful geisha. Most of these historians (many of which, in the case of those studying Japan, first went over as part of the US Occupation forces after the war) were trained prior to new philosophical movements (like Foucault's work) and literary criticism became part of mainstream academia. So when someone like Sansom read in the Heike Monogatari that so-and-so shouted his name and lineage before fighting his enemy such-and-such, they took it as fact. Whereas today, we recognize that not only is the Heike a composite text of lyrical tales rather than fact, but that shouting a name like that is probably a literary device for the audience to get the background of the character, rather than anything actually done on a battlefield. THIS to me is the biggest issue with reading Sansom (or, heck, many of the historians writing prior to 1980 or so)--they simply don't do a very good job critically interpreting sources. Sansom's description of Oda Nobunaga as an anti-Buddhist horrible brute is one of these episodes to me. He makes no attempt to sort out political motivations or understand why he would do certain things, just labels him because why else would someone burn down a Buddhist monastery like the Enryakuji if they weren't a brute? Sansom's generation of historians relied on tales like Heike or Genji (though they recognized Genji as fiction), or the Shinchoki, etc. as reliable sources of historical fact. As someone who's research focuses on how an image of one event was shaped by these tales into something completely different from what actually happened, this point really bothers me about Sansom's generation. It wasn't until Hall, and then really with Mass and his "descendants", that looking at actual legal documents and letters, rather than tales, took precedence. And it's only the last decade or so that historians have started to look beyond written documents to archaeology and artifacts to challenge previous interpretations. Going back to the motivations, historians of this era were trying to define and understand "the Japanese"--as a homogenous, flat group. Because in the world of the 1950's and 1960's, everyone "fit" into these nice, homogenized racial groups and we believed we could define things like "national character" and so on along racial lines. Sansom's horrible with this. When we read Sansom's "A Short Cultural History of Japan" in my grad seminar with Farris, I was horrified reading the book. I'd read Sansom's 3-volume history several times years before, and had probably read the SCHJ at some point in the previous decades, but rereading it in fall 2011, I was embarrassed at the way he phrases many things. It's clear that in his mind he's explaining the Japanese to a Western audience that doesn't understand them, but the way he does it... One example I remember was when he's describing Shinto ritual in the Asuka period or something, and he's talking about how important rituals and superstition were to the Japanese, and he's trying to justify it to his audience, and it just comes out as so patronizing and offensive to an audience of today. "Yes, the Japanese believed these silly rituals were important to ensuring their well-being, but, um, Europeans believed in rituals too at the time, and, um, the Japanese are really smart and don't believe this anymore, so, um, we shouldn't think they're primitive..." Much of the scholarship over the last 20 years has been directly focused on overturning and undoing the damage from nationalist/racially essentializing scholarship from the middle of the 20th century, and at breaking beyond the earlier historians' focus on the 1%. That's why I'd caution against Sansom as an "introductory" text these days, though it's still very valuable. Without understanding the viewpoints and how they've changed over the decades, it's real easy for a non-specialist to get caught up in the gross generalizations of "the Japanese". That said, history will always be interpreted through the lens of the present, and that's a good thing. What that means is that what historians today write is a reflection of the right now--the emphasis on gender issues, or the general populace that made up the farmers, fishermen, etc. not written about in heroic chronicles, etc., come from the ways we now see gender or the place of the "common man" after social upheaval and reevaluation of the roles of women, race, economic status, etc. 50 or 100 years from now, people will look back at what's being written today and will criticize it as not considering X, Y, or Z factor that isn't mentioned now but somehow gains importance by then. I know that whatever I write in the next few years, someone will eventually come along with more information (through new documents discovered or archaeological research) and new ways of looking at it and turn what I write on its head, like I'm trying to do to what's been written before me. And that really should be the point. |
![]() Daijo Daijin Emeritus 退職させていただきます。 | |
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| George.w | May 10 2015, 05:58 AM Post #8 |
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Vagrant
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Wow, thanks for the very in-depth responses - you guys are amazing! I knew that there was some level of over-presentation of Japan as alien and exotic in earlier books but I never really considered how far that extended or how misleading it could be to first-time readers. Samson's trilogy were some of the first books I read about Japanese history, although I already knew at least a little about most of the things covered beforehand. I was lucky enough to have read Sadler's (1937) biography of Tokugawa Ieyasu beforehand, so I was prepared for these "products of their time" issues, as well as the "patronizing and offensive" details, (Sadler describes Pure Land Buddhism as "attractive to those too tired or too lazy to think"). That said, I think that I still have some of that over-romanticisation to shake out of myself. Back to the topic, though: Samson isn't a great introduction to Japanese history. |
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I knew that there was some level of over-presentation of Japan as alien and exotic in earlier books but I never really considered how far that extended or how misleading it could be to first-time readers.

9:01 AM Jul 11