Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #329336 in Books
• Published on: 1997-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 408 pages

Synopsis
A history of Japan, from the turbulent times of its medieval age to the emergence of modern day Japan as a leading economic power. The authors present analyses of the religion, culture and arts of the Japanese people from the sixth century BC to the present day.

Customer Reviews

Quite good; very pro-Japan when it gets to the 20th century
Overall this seemed fairly good to me. You get a general overview of most aspects of Japanese history from ancient times to the 1990s. The back cover claims that the book "provides an in-depth analysis of the religion, culture, and arts of the Japanese people from the 6th century BC to the present". Obviously, it is impossible to give an in-depth analysis of all the Japanese arts in a 400-page book. The noh drama gets six pages - not too bad, but far from "in-depth".

The last quarter or so of the book suffers from sloppy editing. And the chapters about the first half of the twentieth century are extremely strange and frequently objectionable. The authors consistently take the most positive conceivable view of Japan. Here is the start of the 17th chapter:

"The fifteen years from 1937 to 1952 were among the most eventful in the experience of the Japanese nation. They opened with an invasion of China proper, the first in Japan's long history, followed in December 1941 by a sudden attack with sophisticated aerial weapons on the world's strongest economic power and the dispatch of troops to far-flung places: Burma, Sumatra, New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Japan's leaders chose force to solve problems affecting her relations with foreign nations. Inadequate appreciation of the will of foreign peoples to resist was matched by too great a reliance on the spirit of the Japanese people."

There are a thousand things wrong with this. Why say "the first in Japan's history"? It is as though they are trying to praise Japan for graciously holding off from invading China for so long. The attack on Pearl Harbor killed thousands of innocent Americans for no good reason. But instead of mentioning that, the authors praise the sophistication of Japan's weapons and the bravery of Japan for attacking a more powerful country.

The last part of the book is full of this kind of thing. They consistently phrase everything to make Japan seem as good as possible. They often explicitly praise Japan; they frequently criticize and (as I recall) never praise any other country. Given the awful things done by Japan in the 1930s and 1940s, this is very distasteful.