A History of Japan I-III

Taken as a whole, the projected history represents the culmination of the life work of perhaps the most distinguished historian now writing on Japan. Unlike the renowned Short Cultural History, it is concerned mainly with political and social phenomena and only incidentally touches on religion, literature, and the arts. The treatment is primarily descriptive and factual, but the author offers some pragmatic interpretations and suggests comparisons with the history of other peoples. A History of Japan to 1334 describes the growth from tribal origins of an organized state on a Chinese model, gives a picture of the life of the Royal Court, and examines the conflict between a polished urban nobility and a warlike rural gentry. It traces the evolution of an efficient system of feudal government which deprived the sovereign of all but his ritual functions and the prestige of his ancestry. The structure of Japanese feudal society is depicted in some detail and explained in terms of its internal stresses and its behavior in peace and war, especially during the period of the Mongol attacks in the last decades of the thirteenth century. The volume ends with the collapse of the feudal government at Kamakura under the attack of ambitious rivals. A History of Japan: 1334-1615 describes the growth of a new feudal hierarchy, the ebb and flow of civil war, the rise and fall of great families, and the development amidst extreme political disorder of remarkable new features in institutional and economic life. This is the period of expanding relations with other parts of Asia and of the arrival of traders and missionaries from European countries—the first contact of Japan with the West. The volume ends with an account of the abortive invasion of Korea and the last outburst of the civil war that was terminated in 1615 by the victory of the first of the Tokugawa Shoguns, Ieyasu. A History of Japan: 1615-1867 describes the political and social development of Japan during the two and half centuries of rule by the Tokugawa Shoguns, a period of remarkable development in almost ever aspects of the national life. Under Ieyasu, the first Tokugawa Shogun, a system of checks and balances to keep the great feudatories in order began to be devised. His successors continued this policy, and indeed the essential features of government by the Tokugawa Shoguns was a determination to keep the peace. Freed from civil war, the energies of the nation were devoted to increasing production of goods in agriculture, manufacturers, and mining. Breaches in the traditional policy of isolation began to occur with the arrival of foreign ships in Japanese waters, the first intruders being the Russian in the 1790s. Thereafter, the government struggled to keep foreign ships away from Japanese ports, but before long the pressure of the Western powers, strengthened by the arrival of warships under the command of Commodore Perry in 1853, forced Japan to take part in international affairs.

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