Asking for recommendations for #books about the #history of #Japan. Any time period is interesting to me at this point.
I've read Jonathan Clement's "A Brief History of Japan" and "Japan: A History" by Noel Fairchild Busch. Currently, I'm reading Donald Keene's "Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World" and I have Herbert P. Bix's "Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan" waiting.
Any other ideas about further recommended reading?
@mike_vlasman Thanks for the tip!
@djupsjob - One more book and then I'll stop - Sumie Seo Mishima's The Broader Way: A Woman's Life in the New Japan (1953) is a clear-eyed, insightful, unsentimental (yet warm towards others) account of being in Tokyo during and after WWII by someone who had attended an American university and then returned to Japan just before WWII. There are chapters on the war years, the occupation, family life, the new democracy, promised equality of the sexes, and more.
#Japan #History
@mike_vlasman Thank you again! Lots of great reading here.
@djupsjob
High City, Low City.
@CP93 Thanks for the tip! This book seems to be quite hard to find, but I’ll put it on my list and see if I have any luck finding it.
@djupsjob
I'm a historian of Japan, so I have... thoughts.
My personal favorites are deep dives:
* Mary Elizabeth Berry, Japan in Print: Information And Nation In The Early Modern Period. U Cal Press, 2006. [Sounds tedious, but actually very vivid reconstruction of what people knew and how they thought about their world]
* Amy Stanley, Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Japanese Woman and her World. Scribner, 2020. Dramatic biographical sketch of a pretty normal person, with great context.
@jondresner Your thoughts are very welcome! This is exactly why I asked. I’ll look into these and see if I can find them. Not every book is readily available here in Helsinki, Finland…
@djupsjob
I don't like Bix's Hirohito book, to be honest: he's aggressive with sources, to the point of mishandling them.
John Dower's "Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II" W. W. Norton, 1999. Deep humanistic look at the experience of war and reconstruction.
Eiko Siniawer, Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan. Cornell UP, 2018. Great social/cultural history.
WW Farris, Japan to 1600: A Social and Economic History, U Hawaii Press, 2009. Very up-to-date archeological and lifestyle info.
@djupsjob
I can keep going, obviously...
@jondresner Oh - thanks, that’s good to be aware of. Thanks for your tips, they sound really interesting! I’m definitely into reading more about everyday life and the lives of ordinary people, so much of popularised history is of the “great men of history” kind anyway.
@djupsjob I'm currently reading "Stranger in the Shoguns City - A woman's life in nineteenth century Japan" by Amy Stanley. It's a vivid description of the late Edo period and how middle and lower class people were living.
@Snoeksen Thanks! Second mention already of this particular book - think I might try this one next.
@djupsjob I read John Dower’s “Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II” and it was fascinating. Winner of the #PulitzerPrize for nonfiction in 2000. #books #history #Japan
@MelindaATL Thanks! Second mention of that book in this thread, so I’ll bump it up on the waiting list.