Synopses & Reviews
This balanced account of Japanese history focuses on developments in art, religion, literature, and thought as well as economic, political, and social history in a new four color-format. In addition to Conrad Schirokauer, this text has two new authors. Suzanne Gay is Professor of East Asian Studies at Oberlin College. Her research interests include the social and economic history of medieval Japan, with a particular emphasis on the role of commoners in history. David Lurie researches the history of writing systems in Japan and also works on the cultural and intellectual history of Japan through the Heian period. This author team combines strong research with extensive classroom teaching experience to offer a clear, consistent, and highly readable text accessible to students with no previous knowledge of the history of Japan.
About the Author
Conrad Schirokauer, Senior Scholar and Adjunct Professor at Columbia University and Professor Emeritus at the City University of New York, received his doctorate from Stanford. He has studied in Paris and conducted research in Japan and China. His published papers and articles deal mostly with Song intellectual history. He is co-editor, with Robert Hymes, of ORDERING THE WORLD: APPROACHES TO STATE AND SOCIETY IN SUNG DYNASTY CHINA (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). His current research is on Song perceptions of and attitudes toward history. Schirokauer was associated with a New York University summer graduate program for teachers in Japan and China and remains interested in how history is taught and written. As a textbook author, he has published A BRIEF HISTORY OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE CIVILIZATIONS (Second Edition 1989), with separate volumes on China (1990) and Japan (1993), all now available from Wadsworth. Also worth mention, is his translation of CHINA'S EXAMINATION HELL by Miyazaki Ichisada (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976,1981), which he recommends to any student who feels burdened by examinations.David Lurie received a B.A. in Literature from Harvard University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Japanese Literature from Columbia University. He teaches Japanese history and literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. His research concerns the history of writing systems in Japan, and more broadly, in pre-modern East Asia; he also works on the cultural and intellectual history of Japan through the Heian period. He is currently completing a manuscript entitled "Realms of Literacy: Early Japan and the History of Writing," and is also working on a project analyzing the interconnections among biography, historiography, education, and the production and circulation of texts in Nara and Heian period Japan.Suzanne Gay is Professor of East Asian Studies at Oberlin College. Her research interests include the social and economic history of medieval Japan, with a particular emphasis on the role of commoners in history. Her monography, THE MONEYLENDERS OF LATE MEDIEVAL KYOTO, was published by University of Hawaii Press in 2001. She is currently working on the history of two merchant families of medieval Kyoto, and her next project will focus on commerce and pilgrimage in the Oyamazaki area southwest of Kyoto.
Table of Contents
Preface. Part I: BEGINNINGS AND FOUNDATIONS. 1. Early Japan. 2. The Impact of Continental Civilization. Part II: ARISTOCRATS, MONKS, AND SAMURAI. 3. The Heian Period. 4. The Kamakura Period. 5. The Ashikaga Shogunate: Integration and Disintegration. Part III: LATE TRADITIONAL JAPAN. 6. The Formation of a New Order. 7. The Tokugawa Shogunate: The Middle Years. Part IV: JAPAN IN THE MODERN WORLD. 8. Endings and Beginnings: From Tokugawa to Meiji. 9. The Emergence of Modern Japan: 1874-1894. 10. Imperial Japan 1895?1931. 11. Militarism and War. 12. The New Japan. Afterword. Suggestions for Further Reading. Index.