Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 264
•
Trim: 6 x 8¾
978-0-8420-2911-7 • Hardback • January 2002 • $140.00 • (£108.00)
978-0-8420-2912-4 • Paperback • January 2002 • $47.00 • (£36.00)
978-1-4616-6551-9 • eBook • January 2002 • $44.50 • (£35.00)
Anne Walthall teaches Japanese history at the University of California, Irvine.
Chapter 1 Introduction: On the Trail of People in the Past
Part 2 I: The World of Shogun, Samurai, and Court, 1600-1868
Chapter 3 Shinanomiya Tsuneko: Portrait of a Court Lady
Chapter 4 Mori Yoshiki: Samurai Government Officer
Part 5 II: The Meiji Restoration and the Transformation of State and Society
Chapter 6 Nishimiya Hide: Turning Palace Arts into Marketable Skills
Chapter 7 The Ishizaka of Notsuda: A family in Transition
Part 8 III: Building the Modern State
Chapter 9 Hatoyama Haruko (1861-1938): Ambitious Woman
Chapter 10 Jahana Noboru: Okinawan Activist and Scholar
Chapter 11 Kinoshita Yoshio: Revolutionizing Service on Japan's National Railroads
Part 12 IV: Twentieth-Century Vicissitudes
Chapter 13 Matsuura Isami (1880-1962): A Modern Patriarch in Rural Japan
Chapter 14 Yoshiya Nobuko: Out and Outspoken in Practice and Prose
Chapter 15 Takahashi Masao (1901-1995): Flexible Marxist
Part 16 V: World War II and the Postwar World
Chapter 17 Yokoi Shoichi: When a Soldier Finally Returns Home
Chapter 18 Misora Hibari: The Postwar Myth of Mournful Tears and Sake
Chapter 19 Index
The Human Tradition in Modern Japan illustrates the themes of 'big history' through the flesh-and-blood experiences of real people: a pop star, a feudal administrator, an Okinawan peasant-turned-official, a lesbian novelist, a princess, an economist, the mother of a prime minister. It beautifully enriches our understanding of Japan's last 350 years by humanizing, and thus complicating, it. The writing is lively and accessible.
— James L. Huffman, Wittenberg University
This book will be a valuable supplementary text for introductory courses on modern Japan.
— The Historian
This book demonstrates that by exploring the experiences of everyday Japanese we can often learn more about the history and peole of Japan than by concentrating on the powerful, wealthy, and influential. It is often in the lives of the ordinary that we glimpse the extraordinary. It is also here that we sense most clearly the ties that unite us all as human beings.
— F. G. Notehelfer, University of California, Los Angeles
A fascinating work that unearths the lives of twelve diverse men and women who lived in Japan between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries. . . . Walthall has done an excellent job in unifying the twelve authorial voices into one, as each chapter flows effortlessly into the next. . . . One of the many strengths of this work is that most of the essays elucidate larger social, cultural, and political issues that transcend Japan. . . . By focusing on the rich texture of the collective human experience, The Human Tradition in Modern Japan becomes a book valuable not just to students of Japanese history but to all students of history.
— Journal of World History
The Human Tradition in Modern Japan is a splendid antidote to those tedious tomes that perpetuate the myth of 'the Japanese' as a peculiarly homogenous, harmonious, and culture-bound people. These essays sparkle with individuality and personality, dreams and disappointments, the varied and unpredictable dramas of 'ordinary' lives and experiences.
— John W. Dower, MIT, author of Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II