Synopses & Reviews
Miles of shelf space in contemporary Japanese bookstores and libraries are devoted to travel guides, walking maps, and topical atlases. Young Japanese children are taught how to properly map their classrooms and schoolgrounds. Elderly retirees pore over old castle plans and village cadasters. Pioneering surveyors are featured in popular television shows, and avid collectors covet exquisite scrolls depicting sea and land routes. Today, Japanese people are zealous producers and consumers of cartography, and maps are an integral part of daily life.
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But this was not always the case: a thousand years ago, maps were solely a privilege of the ruling elite in Japan. Only in the past four hundred years has Japanese cartography truly taken off, and between the dawn of Japanandrsquo;s cartographic explosion and today, the nationandrsquo;s society and landscape have undergone major transformations. At every point, maps have documented those monumental changes. Cartographic Japan offers a rich introduction to the resulting treasure trove, with close analysis of one hundred maps from the late 1500s to the present day, each one treated as a distinctive window onto Japanandrsquo;s tumultuous history.
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Forty-seven distinguished contributorsandmdash;hailing from Japan, North America, Europe, and Australiaandmdash;uncover the meanings behind a key selection of these maps, situating them in historical context and explaining how they were made, read, and used at the time. With more than one hundred gorgeous full-color illustrations, Cartographic Japan offers an enlightening tour of Japanandrsquo;s magnificent cartographic archive.
Review
"Gordon is able to tell a story of modern Japan without reducing the history to stereotypes or platitudes, and leaving enough room for other tellings of Japan's history. It is not dogmatic or locked down. This is the best survey on Modern Japanese history available."--Lori Watt, Washington University in St. Louis
"A Modern History of Japan is the best textbook available for courses on Modern Japan and Imperial Japan. As a leading scholar on Japanese labor history, Gordon provides insightful details from the perspective of ordinary Japanese, particularly the hardships, opportunities and resistance from workers and other non-elites during Japan's industrial revolution and beyond."--George Kallander, Syracuse University
"Beautifully written and argued by one of the eminent minds and stylists in the field. Gordon convincingly situates Japan on the stage of international history as a nation whose past must be understood to comprehend the history of the modern world."--Noell Wilson, University of Mississippi
"A Modern History of Japan remains the best text for an introductory course on modern Japanese history. It has the perfect combination of top-rate scholarship, readability, and length. The new final chapter is just as well-written and engaging as the rest of the book. And it greatly adds to the strength of the book to bring the history as closely up to the present as possible, as well as to point to what may lie ahead in the future."--Sean Kim, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Review
andldquo;A treasure trove of short essays on the history of mapping, Cartographic Japan offers a rich range of insights in the mapping of Japanese history across a remarkable range of scales. Among them are neighborhoods, markets, workplaces, cities, regions, colonies and empire, cosmology and religion, and of course various apprehensions of the nation-state.andnbsp; This book belongs on the shelf of anyone who teaches about Japan or who is fascinated by its history, as well as all those fascinated by the search for meaning in maps.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Cartographic Japan revels in how deeply maps have been embedded in organizing Japanese society and its literal and figurative boundaries, shaping knowledge and policies, and even saving lives, for the past fifteen hundred years. andnbsp;Whether carefully describing original mapmaking traditions or explaining why historical maps reprinted in the 1960s unleashed controversy,andnbsp;the fifty-eight short chapters and accompanying illustrations bring Japanese history to life in stories spanning space and time. The authors of this important and ambitious contribution offer scholars, students, and map buffs alike a privileged seat at the banquet table of cartographic history, with access to the plans, hopes, and dreams of an impressive range of Japanese leaders, intellectuals, merchants, and citizens and a handful of the foreigners who made maps matter.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;If a picture paints a thousand words, this book shows how maps tell countless stories of Japanandrsquo;s past. Not only do the fifty-eight short essays and multitude of illustrations in Cartographic Japan offer windows into particular moments in Japanandrsquo;s history, but they also form fascinating visualized narratives. It is an innovative and enjoyable approach to imagining Japanandrsquo;s past beyond simply the pragmatic function of these maps.andrdquo;
Synopsis
A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present, Third Edition, paints a richly nuanced and strikingly original portrait of the last two centuries of Japanese history. It takes students from the days of the shogunate--the feudal overlordship of the Tokugawa family--through the modernizing revolution launched by midlevel samurai in the late nineteenth century; the adoption of Western hairstyles, clothing, and military organization; and the nation's first experiments with mass democracy after World War I. Author Andrew Gordon offers the finest synthesis to date of Japan's passage through militarism, World War II, the American occupation, and the subsequent economic rollercoaster.
New to the Third Edition
* The previous edition's final chapter has been extensively revised for the third edition. Retitled "Japan's 'Lost Decades", it now covers the timespan from 1989 through 2008.
* An entirely new final chapter examines Japan's tumultuous recent history in a global context. Beginning with the financial crisis of 2008, it takes readers up to the traumatic events of 3/11/11, and through the aftermath of this disaster. The chapter includes a color insert with maps and photographs that document the cataclysm.
* More "voices" of ordinary people integrated into the narrative
* Increased coverage of cultural history topics, such as anime and manga
About the Author
Kandauml;ren Wigenandnbsp;is the Frances and Charles Field Professor of history at Stanford University.Sugimoto Fumiko is professor of history at the University of Tokyoandrsquo;s Historiographical Institute.Cary Karacas is associate professor of geography at the College of Staten Island, CUNY.
Table of Contents
A Note on Japanese Names and Terms
Introduction
Kandauml;ren Wigen
I. Visualizing the Realm: Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries
Introduction to Part I
Sugimoto Fumiko
Japan in the World
1. Japan in a New-Found World
Joseph Loh
2. The World from the Waterline
Peter D. Shapinsky
3. Elusive Islands of Silver: Japan in the Early European Geographic Imagination
Oka Mihoko
4. Mapping the Margins of Japan
Ronald P. Toby
5. The Creators and Historical Context of the Oldest Maps of the Ryukyu Kingdom
Watanabe Miki
6. The Introduction of Dutch Surveying Instruments in Japan
Satoh Kenandrsquo;ichi
7. The European Career of Ishikawa Ryusenandrsquo;s Map of Japan
Marcia Yonemoto
8. A New Map of Japan and Its Acceptance in Europe
Matsui Yoko
Domestic Space
9. The Arms and Legs of the Realm
Constantine N. Vaporis
10. Visualizing the Political World through Provincial Maps
Sugimoto Fumiko
11. Fixing Sacred Borders: Villagers, Monks, and Their Two Sovereign Masters
Sugimoto Fumiko
12. Self-Portrait of a Village
Komeie Taisaku
II. Mapping for the Market
Introduction to Part II
Kandauml;ren Wigen
Mapping the City
13. Characteristics of Premodern Urban Space
Tamai Tetsuo
14. Evolving Cartography of an Ancient Capital
Uesugi Kazuhiro
15. Historical Landscapes of Osaka
Uesugi Kazuhiro
16. The Urban Landscape of Early Edo in an East Asian Context
Tamai Tetsuo
17. Spatial Visions of Status
Ronald P. Toby
18. The Social Landscape of Edo
Paul Waley
19. What Is a Street?
Mary Elizabeth Berry
Sacred Sites and Cosmic Visions
20. Locating Japan in a Buddhist World
D. Max Moerman
21. Picturing Maps: The andldquo;Rare and Wondrousandrdquo; Birdandrsquo;s-Eye Views of Kuwagata Keisai
Henry D. Smith II
22. An Artistandrsquo;s Rendering of the Divine Mount Fuji
Miyazaki Fumiko
23. Rock of Ages: Traces of the Gods in Akita
Anne Walthall
24. Cosmology and Science in Japanandrsquo;s Last Buddhist World Map
Sayoko Sakakibara
Travelscapes
25. Fun with Moral Mapping in the Mid-Nineteenth Century
Robert Goree
26. A Travel Map Adjusted to Urgent Circumstances
Kandauml;ren Wigen and Sayoko Sakakibara
27. Legendary Landscape at the Kitayama Palace
Nicolas Fiandeacute;vandeacute;
28. New Routes through Old Japan
Roderick Wilson
III. Modern Maps for Imperial Japan
Introduction to Part III
Cary Karacas
Defining the Borders
29. Seeking Accuracy: The First Modern Survey of Japanandrsquo;s Coast
Suzuki Junko
30. No Foreigners Allowed: The Shogunateandrsquo;s Hydrographic Chart of the andldquo;Holyandrdquo; Ise Bay
Suzuki Junko
31. Indigenous Knowledge in the Mapping of the Northern Frontier Regions
Tessa Morris-Suzuki
32. Mamiya Rinzo and the Cartography of Empire
Brett L. Walker
33. Outcastes and Peasants on the Edge of Modernity
Daniel Botsman
Transforming the Cityscape
34. Converging Lines: Yamakawa Kenjiroandrsquo;s Fire Map of Tokyo
Steven Wills
35. Mapping Death and Destruction in 1923
J. Charles Schencking
36. Rebuilding Tokyo after the Great Kanto Earthquake
Andrandeacute; Sorensen
37. Shinjuku 1931: A New Type of Urban Space
Henry D. Smith II
Managing an Empire
38. Mapping the Hojo Colliery Explosion of 1914
Brett L. Walker
39. Cultivating Progress in Colonial Taiwan
Philip C. Brown
40. Showcase Thoroughfares, Wretched Alleys: The Uneven Development of Colonial Seoul (Keijo)
Todd A. Henry
41. Imperial Expansion and City Planning: Visions for Datong in the 1930s
Carola Hein
42. A Two-Timing Map
Catherine L. Phipps
43. Visions of a New Order in the Asia-Pacific
David Fedman
IV. Still under Construction: Cartography and Technology since 1945
Introduction to Part IV
Kandauml;ren Wigen
Up from the Ashes
44. Blackened Cities, Blackened Maps
Cary Karacas and David Fedman
45. The Occupied City
Cary Karacas
46. Sacred Space on Postwar Fuji
Andrew Bernstein
47. Tange Kenzoand#39;s Proposal for Rebuilding Hiroshima
Carola Hein
48. Visions of the Good City in the Rapid Growth Period
Andrandeacute; Sorensen
Growing Pains in a Global Metropolis
49. On the Road in Olympic-Era Tokyo
Bruce Suttmeier
50. Traversing Tokyo by Subway
Alisa Freedman
51. The Uses of a Free Paper Map in the Internet Age
Susan Paige Taylor
52. Tsukiji at the End of an Era
Theodore C. Bestor
New Directions in the Digital Age
53. Probabilistic Earthquake Hazard Maps
Gregory Smits
54. Citizensandrsquo; Radiation Maps after the Tsunami
Jilly Traganou
55. Run and Escape!
Satoh Kenandrsquo;ichi
56. Postmortem Cartography: andldquo;Stillbirthsandrdquo; and the Meiji State
Fabian Drixler
57. Reconstructing Provincial Maps
Nakamura Yusuke
58. The Art of Making Oversize Graphic Maps
Arai Kei
Epilogue
Sugimoto Fumiko
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Index