Japan

The land

Ryuziro Isida, Geography of Japan (1961), covers the country’s physical geography as well as its economy and cultural environment. Glenn Thomas Trewartha, Japan: A Geography (1965, reissued 1979), is considered the classic regional geography in English. Association of Japanese Geographers (eds.), Geography of Japan (1980), is a highly regarded study. Representative geographic works include Regional Geography of Japan, trans. from Japanese, 6 vol. (1957), the proceedings of a conference of the International Geographical Union; Norton Ginsburg, “Economic and Cultural Geography,” in Arthur E. Tiedemann (ed.), An Introduction to Japanese Civilization (1974), pp. 423–459; Gil Latz, “The Experience of Place in Japan,” Asian Art, 5(2):2–7 (Spring 1992); and Jacques Pezeu-Massabuau, The Japanese Islands: A Physical and Social Geography (1978; originally published in French, 1968), a thoughtful account from a European perspective. Toshio Noh (Toshio Nō) and Douglas H. Gordon (eds.), Modern Japan: Land and Man, rev. ed. (1978); and Toshio Noh (Toshio Nō) and John C. Kimura (eds.), Japan: A Regional Geography of an Island Nation, 2nd ed. (1989), review the distinctive regional character of the archipelago. Geomorphology is covered by Watanabe Akira (Akira Watanabe), “Landform Divisions of Japan,” Bulletin of the Geographic Survey Institute, 2(1):81–94 (1950); and Torao Yoshikawa, Sohei Kaizuka, and Yoko Ota, The Landforms of Japan (1981). Climatology is dealt with in E. Fukui (ed.), The Climate of Japan (1977). Aono Hisao (Hisao Aono) and Birugawa Shōhei (Shōhei Birugawa) (eds.), Nihon chishi, 21 vol. (1967–80), is a comprehensive series (in Japanese) dealing with Japan’s regional geography by prefectures. A detailed survey of biogeography can be found in M. Numata (ed.), The Flora and Vegetation of Japan (1974).

A classic field survey of village life from geographic, historical, and social viewpoints is Richard K. Beardsley, John W. Hall, and Robert E. Ward, Village Japan (1959, reissued 1969). Japan’s cities are treated in detail in Ronald P. Dore, City Life in Japan: A Study of a Tokyo Ward (1958, reissued 1965); and in Japanese Cities: A Geographical Approach (1970). David Kornhauser, Japan: Geographical Background to Urban-Industrial Development, 2nd ed. (1982), contains an original assessment of Japan’s urban and historical geography.

The people

Three penetrating profiles of Japanese society include Chie Nakane, Japanese Society, rev. ed. (1973, reissued 1984; originally published in Japanese, 1967); Takeo Doi, The Anatomy of Dependence (1973, reissued 1981; originally published in Japanese, 1971); and Takie Sugiyama Lebra (ed.), Japanese Social Organization (1992). George De Vos and Hiroshi Wagatsuma, Japan’s Invisible Race: Caste in Culture and Personality, rev. ed. (1972), discusses the burakumin minority. Studies of Japanese religions include Ian Reader, Religion in Contemporary Japan (1991); and H. Neill McFarland, The Rush Hour of the Gods: A Study of New Religious Movements in Japan (1967, reissued 1970). Gender questions are explored in Gail Lee Bernstein, Haruko’s World: A Japanese Farm Woman and Her Community (1983); Takie Sugiyama Lebra, Japanese Women: Constraint and Fulfillment (1984); Anne E. Imamura, Urban Japanese Housewives: At Home and in the Community (1987, reissued 1992); and Sumiko Iwao, The Japanese Woman: Traditional Image and Changing Reality (1993).

The economy

General background texts include G.C. Allen, Japan’s Economic Recovery (1958, reprinted 1986), Japan’s Economic Expansion (1965), and A Short Economic History of Modern Japan, 4th ed. (1981); and Penelope Francks, Japanese Economic Development: Theory and Practice (1992). Robert B. Hall, Jr., Japan: Industrial Power of Asia, 2nd ed. (1976), contains a brief analysis of post-World War II industrial development. Japan in Transition: One Hundred Years of Modernization (1968, reissued 1975), is an illustrated description of Japan’s transition to an industrial power. Edward Augustus Ackerman, Japan’s Natural Resources and Their Relation to Japan’s Economic Future (1953), is a basic source for understanding post-World War II economic development. Energy and power issues are treated in Richard J. Samuels, The Business of the Japanese State: Energy Markets in Comparative and Historical Perspective (1987). Cogent analyses of the Japanese agricultural sector can be found in Ronald P. Dore, Land Reform in Japan (1959, reissued 1985), and Shinohata: A Portrait of a Japanese Village (1978, reissued 1994).

Other valuable works on the economy are Richard K. Beardsley (ed.), Studies on Economic Life in Japan (1964); Alice H. Cook, An Introduction to Japanese Trade Unionism (1966); William W. Lockwood (ed.), The State and Economic Enterprise in Japan: Essays in the Political Economy of Growth (1965, reissued 1981); Yutaka Matsumura, Japan’s Economic Growth, 1945–1960 (1961); Takafusa Nakamura, The Postwar Japanese Economy: Its Development and Structure, 1937–1994, 2nd ed. (1995; originally published in Japanese, 1978); Ardath W. Burks, Japan: A Postindustrial Power, 3rd ed. rev. and updated (1991); Ronald P. Dore, Taking Japan Seriously: A Confucian Perspective on Leading Economic Issues (1987); Frank Gibney, Miracle By Design: The Real Reasons Behind Japan’s Economic Success (1982), and Japan: The Fragile Superpower, 2nd rev. ed. (1985); Edward J. Lincoln, Japan’s Unequal Trade (1990), and Japan’s New Global Role (1993); Kenneth B. Pyle, The Japanese Question: Power and Purpose in a New Era (1992); and Yoshio Suzuki (ed.), The Japanese Financial System (1987, reissued 1992; originally published in Japanese, 1986).

Administration and social conditions

Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–1975 (1982), offers a seminal contribution to understanding Japan’s government-business relationships. Thoughtful discussions of the Japanese political system include Hans H. Baerwald, Japan’s Parliament: An Introduction (1974); Gerald L. Curtis, The Japanese Way of Politics (1988); Takeshi Ishida and Ellis S. Krauss (eds.), Democracy in Japan (1989); and Daniel I. Okimoto and Thomas P. Rohlen (eds.), Inside the Japanese System: Readings on Contemporary Society and Political Economy (1988).

Reviews of the Japanese educational system can be found in William K. Cummings, Education and Equality in Japan (1980); Thomas P. Rohlen, Japan’s High Schools (1983); and Merry White, The Japanese Education Challenge: A Commitment to Children (1987).

Cultural life

H. Paul Varley, Japanese Culture, 3rd ed. (1984), is the most useful cultural history. Cultural aspects also are treated in the encyclopaedias cited above. Additional sources may be found in the bibliographies to the articles arts, East Asian, and Japanese literature.

General works

The classic survey is George Bailey Sansom, A History of Japan, 3 vol. (1958–63, reissued 1978). The most comprehensive and detailed account in English is John W. Hall et al. (eds.), The Cambridge History of Japan (1988– ). James Murdoch, A History of Japan, 3 vol. (1903–26, reprinted 3 vol. in 6, 1964), though dated, is a pioneer work detailing political history. Shorter, excellent interpretive works include Edwin O. Reischauer, Japan: The Story of a Nation, 4th ed. (1990); Edwin O. Reischauer and Albert M. Craig, Japan: Tradition & Transformation, rev. ed (1989); Edwin O. Reischauer and Marius B. Jansen, The Japanese Today: Change and Continuity, enlarged ed. (1995); Saburō Ienaga, History of Japan, 9th ed. (1965); and John Whitney Hall, Japan from Prehistory to Modern Times (1970, reissued 1991). Another authoritative general history is John K. Fairbank, Edwin O. Reischauer, and Albert M. Craig, East Asia: Tradition & Transformation, rev. ed. (1989). Works covering more specific periods include Mikiso Hane, Premodern Japan: A Historical Survey (1991), and Modern Japan: A Historical Survey, 2nd ed. (1992); John Whitney Hall, Government and Local Power in Japan, 500–1700: A Study Based on Bizen Province (1966, reissued 1980); Conrad Totman, Japan Before Perry: A Short History (1981); and W.G. Beasley, The Rise of Modern Japan (1990), which updates and is based on his classic The Modern History of Japan, 3rd ed. (1981).

Ancient Japan

Useful works on Japan’s ancient history include C. Melvin Aikens and Takayasu Higuchi, Prehistory of Japan (1982), an inventory of archaeological sites and finds; and Gina L. Barnes, Protohistoric Yamato: Archaeology of the First Japanese State (1988). The earliest compilations of myths and histories are contained in L. Carrington Goodrich (ed.), Japan in the Chinese Dynastic Histories: Later Han Through Ming Dynasties, 2nd ed. (1968); and Donald L. Philippi (trans.), Kojiki, trans. from Japanese (1968, reissued 1992). Further English-language materials are W.G. Aston (trans.), Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A.D. 697, 2 vol., trans. from Japanese and Chinese (1886, reissued 1972); J.E. Kidder, Jr., Japan Before Buddhism, rev. ed. (1966); Michiko Yamaguchi Aoki (trans.), Izumo Fudoki (1971; originally published in Japanese, 1931); Robert S. Ellwood, The Feast of Kingship: Accession Ceremonies in Ancient Japan (1973); and Richard J. Miller, Ancient Japanese Nobility: The Kabane Ranking System (1974), and Japan’s First Bureaucracy: A Study of Eighth-Century Government (1978).

The Nara and Heian periods are discussed in Robert Borgen, Sugawara no Michizane and the Early Heian Court (1986, reissued 1994); G. Cameron Hurst III, Insei: Abdicated Sovereigns in the Politics of Late Heian Japan, 1086–1185 (1976); Allan G. Grapard, The Protocol of the Gods: A Study of the Kasuga Cult in Japanese History (1992); Ivan Morris, The World of The Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan (1964, reissued 1994); Karl F. Friday, Hired Swords: The Rise of Private Warrior Power in Early Japan (1992); and William Wayne Farris, Population, Disease, and Land in Early Japan, 645–900 (1985), and Heavenly Warriors: The Evolution of Japan’s Military, 500–1300 (1992).

Medieval Japan

Among works of note on medieval Japan are several by Jeffrey P. Mass: Warrior Government in Early Medieval Japan: A Study of the Kamakuru Bakufu, Shugo, and Jitō (1974, reissued 1991), The Development of Kamakura Rule, 1180–1250 (1979), and Lordship and Inheritance in Early Medieval Japan: A Study of the Kamakura Soryō System (1989). Excellent volumes of essays by Japanese and Western scholars include Jeffrey P. Mass (ed.), Court and Bakufu in Japan: Essays in Kamakura History (1982); John Whitney Hall and Jeffrey P. Mass (eds.), Medieval Japan: Essays in Institutional History (1974, reissued 1988); and John Whitney Hall and Toyoda Takeshi (Takeshi Toyoda) (eds.), Japan in the Muromachi Age (1977).

Other useful works include H. Paul Varley, Imperial Restoration in Medieval Japan (1971), and Warriors of Japan as Portrayed in the War Tales (1994); Minoru Shinoda, The Founding of the Kamakura Shogunate, 1180–1185 (1960); Kenneth Allen Grossberg, Japan’s Renaissance: The Politics of the Muromachi Bakufu (1981); Carl Steenstrup Hōjō Shigetoki, 1198–1261, and His Role in the History of Political and Ethical Ideas in Japan (1979); Peter Judd Arnesen, The Medieval Japanese Daimyo: The Ōuchi Family’s Rule of Suō and Nagato (1979); Martin Collcutt, Five Mountains: The Rinzai Zen Monastic Institution in Medieval Japan (1981); Thomas Keirstead, The Geography of Power in Medieval Japan (1992); and Hitomi Tonomura, Community and Commerce in Late Medieval Japan: The Corporate Villages of Tokuchin-ho (1992).

Early modern Japan (1550–1850)

Conrad Totman, Early Modern Japan (1993), is a good general text. Among the many excellent collections of essays are John Whitney Hall and Marius B. Jansen (eds.), Studies in the Institutional History of Early Modern Japan (1968); John Whitney Hall, Nagahara Keiji (Keiji Nagahara), and Kozo Yāmamura (eds.), Japan Before Tokugawa: Political Consolidation and Economic Growth, 1500–1650 (1981; originally published in Japanese, 1978); Chie Nakane and Shinzaburō Ōishi (eds.), Tokugawa Japan: The Social and Economic Antecedents of Modern Japan (1990); and Tetsuo Najita and Irwin Scheiner (eds.), Japanese Thought in the Tokugawa Period, 1600–1868: Methods and Metaphors (1978, reissued 1988).

The Sengoku era is discussed in Mary Elizabeth Berry, Hideyoshi (1982), and The Culture of Civil War in Kyoto (1994); George Elison, Deus Destroyed: The Image of Christianity in Early Modern Japan (1973, reissued 1988); George Elison and Bardwell L. Smith (eds.), Warlords, Artists & Commoners: Japan in the Sixteenth Century (1981); and Neil McMullin, Buddhism and the State in Sixteenth-Century Japan (1984).

The political history of the Tokugawa period is best covered in Conrad Totman, Politics in the Tokugawa Bakufu, 1600–1843 (1967), and The Collapse of the Tokugawa Bakufu, 1862–1868 (1980); James L. McClain, Kanazawa: A Seventeenth-Century Japanese Castle Town (1982); and Harold Bolitho, Treasures Among Men: The Fudai Daimyo in Tokugawa Japan (1974). Economic history is discussed in William B. Hauser, Economic Institutional Change in Tokugawa Japan: Ōsaka and the Kinai Cotton Trade (1974); Thomas C. Smith, The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan (1959, reissued 1984); Thomas C. Smith, Robert Y. Eng, and Robert Lundy, Nakahara: Family Farming and Population in a Japanese Village, 1717–1830 (1977); Susan B. Hanley and Kozo Yamamura, Economic and Demographic Change in Preindustrial Japan, 1600–1868 (1977); Charles David Sheldon, The Rise of the Merchant Class in Tokugawa Japan, 1600–1868 (1958, reprinted 1973); and Tetsuo Najita, Visions of Virtue in Tokugawa Japan: The Kaitokudō Merchant Academy of Osaka (1987). Excellent scholarship on Tokugawa thought is found in Masao Maruyama, Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan (1974, reissued 1989; originally published in Japanese, 1965); H.D. Harootunian, Things Seen and Unseen: Discourse and Idealogy in Tokugawa Nativism (1988), and Toward Restoration: The Growth of Political Consciousness in Tokugawa Japan (1970, reissued 1991); and Herman Ooms, Tokugawa Ideology: Early Constructs, 1570–1680 (1985). E.H. Norman, Origins of the Modern Japanese State, ed. by John W. Dower (1975), is a collection of representative essays; the themes are continued in two studies of peasant revolts: Herbert P. Bix, Peasant Protest in Japan, 1590–1884 (1986); and Anne Walthall, Social Protest and Popular Culture in Eighteenth-Century Japan (1986). Cultural history is well covered in Ronald P. Dore, Education in Tokugawa Japan (1965, reprinted 1992); Howard Hibbett, The Floating World in Japanese Fiction (1959, reissued 1975); and Donald Keene, The Japanese Discovery of Europe, 1720–1830, rev. ed. (1969). Ronald P. Toby, State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan: Asia in the Development of the Tokugawa Bakufu (1984, reissued 1991), discusses foreign relations.

Japan since 1850

Useful works on the opening of Japan and the fall of the shogunate include Matthew C. Perry, Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas and Japan, 3 vol. (1856, reissued 1967); Oliver Statler, Shimoda Story (1969, reprinted 1986); Grace Fox, Britain and Japan, 1858–1883 (1969); and W.G. Beasley (trans. and ed.), Select Documents on Japanese Foreign Policy, 1853–1868 (1955, reissued 1967). Works on the Meiji Restoration include W.G. Beasley, The Meiji Restoration (1972); Marius B. Jansen, Sakamoto Ryōma and the Meiji Restoration (1961, reissued 1994); Albert M. Craig, Chōshū in the Meiji Restoration (1961); Thomas M. Huber, The Revolutionary Origins of Modern Japan (1981), a newer interpretation; and E. Herbert Norman, Japan’s Emergence as a Modern State: Political and Economic Problems of the Meiji Period (1940, reprinted 1973). The emergence of the modern state during Meiji is surveyed in William W. Lockwood, The Economic Development of Japan: Growth and Structural Change, expanded ed. (1968, reissued 1974); Thomas C. Smith, Political Change and Industrial Development in Japan: Government Enterprise, 1868–1880 (1955, reissued 1974); Johannes Hirschmeier, The Origins of Entrepreneurship in Meiji Japan (1964); and Marius B. Jansen (ed.), Changing Japanese Attitudes Toward Modernization (1965, reissued 1982).

Meiji political issues are the focus of Robert Arden Wilson, Genesis of the Meiji Government in Japan, 1868–1871 (1957, reprinted 1980); George Akita, Foundations of Constitutional Government in Modern Japan, 1868–1900 (1967); and Robert E. Ward (ed.), Political Development in Modern Japan (1968, reissued 1973). Foreign relations are treated in Hilary Conroy, The Japanese Seizure of Korea, 1868–1910: A Study of Realism and Idealism in International Relations (1960, reissued 1974); John Albert White, The Diplomacy of the Russo-Japanese War (1964, reissued 1984); and Shumpei Okamoto, The Japanese Oligarchy and the Russo-Japanese War (1970). Meiji social and intellectual trends can be followed in Kenneth B. Pyle, The New Generation in Meiji Japan: Problems of Cultural Identity, 1885–1895 (1969); Carol Gluck, Japan’s Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period (1985); Sharon L. Sievers, Flowers in Salt: The Beginnings of Feminist Consciousness in Modern Japan (1983); and Gail Lee Bernstein (ed.), Recreating Japanese Women, 1600–1945 (1991). Developments in late 19th- and early 20th-century agriculture and industry include James I. Nakamura, Agricultural Production and the Economic Development of Japan, 1873–1922 (1966); Richard J. Smethurst, Agricultural Development and Tenancy Disputes in Japan, 1870–1940 (1986); Andrew Gordon, The Evolution of Labor Relations in Japan: Heavy Industry, 1853–1955 (1985); and Sheldon Garon, The State and Labor in Modern Japan (1987).

Works dealing with the emergence of politics and nationalism include Tetsuo Najita, Hara Kei in the Politics of Compromise, 1905–1915 (1967); Peter Duus, Party Rivalry and Political Change in Taishō Japan (1968); Robert A. Scalapino, Democracy and the Party Movement in Prewar Japan (1953, reissued 1975); Gordon Mark Berger, Parties out of Power in Japan, 1931–1941 (1977); Masao Maruyama, Thought and Behavior in Modern Japanese Politics, expanded ed., edited by Ivan Morris (1969); William Miles Fletcher III, The Search for a New Order: Intellectuals and Fascism in Prewar Japan (1982); Delmer Myers Brown, Nationalism in Japan: An Introductory Historical Analysis (1955, reissued 1971); Akira Iriye, After Imperialism: The Search for a New Order in the Far East, 1921–1931 (1965, reissued 1990); Ramon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie (eds.), The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895–1945 (1984); James B. Crowley, Japan’s Quest for Autonomy: National Security and Foreign Policy, 1930–1938 (1966); Francis Clifford Jones, Japan’s New Order in East Asia: Its Rise and Fall, 1937–45 (1954, reprinted 1978); and Richard Storry, The Double Patriots: A Study of Japanese Nationalism (1957, reprinted 1973).

Studies of the wartime period include Sadako N. Ogata, Defiance in Manchuria: The Making of Japanese Foreign Policy, 1931–1932 (1964, reprinted 1984); a four-volume series, Japan’s Road to the Pacific War, ed. by James William Morley, Deterrent Diplomacy: Japan, Germany, and the USSR, 1935–1940 (1976), The Fateful Choice: Japan’s Advance into Southeast Asia, 1939–1941 (1980), Japan Erupts: The London Naval Conference and the Manchurian Incident, 1928–1932 (1984), and The China Quagmire: Japan’s Expansion on the Asian Continent, 1933–1941 (1983), all trans. from Japanese; Dorothy Borg and Shumpei Okamoto (eds.), Pearl Harbor as History: Japanese-American Relations, 1931–1941 (1973); Ronald H. Spector, Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan (1985); Robert J.C. Butow, Japan’s Decision to Surrender (1954, reissued 1967); Thomas R.H. Havens, Valley of Darkness: The Japanese People and World War Two (1978, reprinted 1986); and John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (1986, reissued 1993).

Important postwar studies include Masataka Kosaka, 100 Million Japanese: The Postwar Experience (1972, reissued as A History of Postwar Japan, 1982); Andrew Gordon (ed.), Postwar Japan as History (1993); Robert E. Ward and Sakamoto Yoshikazu (Yoshikazu Sakamoto) (eds.), Democratizing Japan: The Allied Occupation (1987); Kazuo Kawai, Japan’s American Interlude (1960, reprinted 1979); Shigeru Yoshida, The Yoshida Memoirs (1961, reissued 1973; originally published in Japanese, 4 vol., 1957–58); Ezra F. Vogel, Japan as Number One: Lessons for America (1979, reprinted 1985); Hugh Patrick and Henry Rosovsky (eds.), Asia’s New Giant: How the Japanese Economy Works (1976); Yasutake Murakami and Hugh Patrick (eds.), The Political Economy of Japan, 3 vol. (1987–92); J.A.A. Stockwin, Japan: Divided Politics in a Growth Economy, 2nd ed. (1982); T.J. Pempel, Policy and Politics in Japan: Creative Conservatism (1982); I.M. Destler et al., Managing an Alliance: The Politics of U.S.-Japanese Relations (1976); Michio Nagai, Higher Education in Japan: Its Takeoff and Crash (1971); Joyce Lebra, Joy Paulson, and Elizabeth Powers (eds.), Women in Changing Japan (1976); Martin E. Weinstein, Japan’s Postwar Defense Policy, 1947–1968 (1971); John Owen Haley, Authority Without Power: Law and the Japanese Paradox (1991); Frank K. Upham, Law and Social Change in Postwar Japan (1987); Chae-Jin Lee, China and Japan: New Economic Diplomacy (1984); Dennis J. Encarnation, Rivals Beyond Trade: America Versus Japan in Global Competition (1992); and Edward J. Lincoln, Japan’s New Global Role (1993).