Book Description
Our GLOBAL STUDIES Series provides students with comprehensive background and current information shaping regional cultures and countries of the world today. Each volume features country report essays and maps as well as relevant articles from world-wide publications.

Visit our website for more information and a complete listing of titles: www.mhcls.com/globalstudies/ ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Great overview of the Pacific Rim
The Global Studies series is a great way to get a general overview about a region of the world and its quick history.Each country is divided up into a quick overview of demographics, trade, economics, population and other pertinent data similar to a scaled down CIA world fact book.There is then a general overview of each country and how it has played its part in the region with a particular focus on World War II to the present.Finally there are about 24 articles in this one that focus on all sorts of different aspects from the region.They address everything from gambling opportunities in Macau to population control in Japan.Overall this book does an excellent job of capturing the Pacific Rim and the countries that reside there. It is a great start to learning about the region and provides an overview that will give you a focus to direct further investigations.If you are just getting started on this area of the world as I am you will find it an invaluable resource.

Good buy for international business enthusiast
Book was new and just as described.Good information regarding Japan's history and economy as well as good information on countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is a journal article from Journal of Historical Geography, published by Elsevier in 2006. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
In both the US and Japan, popular narratives recounting the story of Commodore Perry's 1853-1854 US naval expedition to Japan have played a key role in the textual negotiation of commonsense understandings of space, place, history, and geopolitics. We use the textual analysis of a range of US and Japanese popular narratives of Perry/'black ships' stories to read this negotiation in terms of concepts of proximity and distance. Discussing different ways in which the vastness of the Pacific Ocean has been dealt with textually, we comment on the ways in which narrative histories of these events relate to differing understandings of national identity and US-Japan relations. We argue that the history of US popular narratives displays a steady reduction of transpacific distance, with the story's focus shifting away from details of the ocean voyage and towards the creation of a metaphorical setting for US-Japan relations, a setting identified with a Japanese location but framed within a US point of view. Japanese narratives, meanwhile, have displayed two contrasting trends, both of which could be read as forms of resistance to US rhetorical appropriations of Japanese national space and history. On the one hand, narratives dealing with Japanese history in the context of a US-Japan rivalry have tended to remove the ocean and shorten transpacific distance, thereby reducing the significance of the Perry initiative; on the other hand, narratives setting Japanese history on the broader global stage have tended to highlight the ocean as a vast space of distances and opportunities. ... Read more

Book Description
A Traveller's History of Japan not only offers the reader a chronological outline of the nation's development but also provides an invaluable introduction to its language, literature and arts, from kabuki to karaoke.This clearly written history explains how a country embedded in the traditions of Shinto, Shoguns and Samurai has achieved stupendous economic growth and dominance in the twentieth century. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Good but needs supplemental texts or maps.
This is certainly an ambitious book. It attempts to cover thousands of years of Japanese history, as well as explain various aspects of Japanese culture and religion. It is highly readable however the cast of historic characters can become overwhelming.

I will first list the strengths of the book. The book does a very good job of explaining the centralization of Japan under a single Emperor and then the process by which the royal family was relegated (and overwhelmed) to court formality and ritual. A very curious tradition began whereby the Emperor would abdicate to a son or grandson who would then take on the all the responsibilities of court rituals and ceremonies. The abdicating emperor would then become a monk and live in a reclusive palace beside the main ceremonial palace. However, the former emperor would actually control the government while the 'official' emperor would be stuck with hours upon hours of court formality and ritual. A very wise system was thus developed that divided governing from the rituals of governing. The slow movement of power from Kyoto to Tokyo is also well documented. This period is marked by the rise of military dictators, Shoguns, who shared power with the royal family and frequently intermarried with the royal family so that eventually Shogun families had claims to the throne.

The book does a very good job of explaining the differences and similarities between Shinto and Buddhist religions and their combined influence on Japanese culture and spirituality.

The book has a weakness however that should be mentioned. The book does not discriminate well between landmarks and shrines that no longer exists and landmarks and shrines that are open to the public. The book does not tell the travel how to find significant historic sites or how to navigate within the sites once they are found. In this regard I found I needed a second book to help me. I used the Eyewitness Guide to Japan which offered many photographs and clear directions and between the two books I was able to identify significant sites and then locate them and reach them using the Eyewitness book.

If you wish to learn far more about Samurai, the Pillow Book, the Book of Genji, the rise and expulsion of Christian missionaries, and the bloody internal wars - this is certainly a good book. If you wish to then use some of this knowledge to see actual sites within Japan, you need more information.

Concise history, but I wish it would tie in with the sights.
I read this book while travelling around in Japan.It is a very concise, readable history of Japan, but the title is misleading.It actually has nothing whatever to say about linking travel in Japan with Japanese history.I was hoping to find a book which could relate the many sites one visits in Japan with its history.If you want to get a feel for the history behind the tourist traps, you will be disappainted in this book, as I was.If you want a straightforward, easy-to-read general history of Japan, this book is for you.

A Great Book for Starters!
Contrary to the popular opinion here, I enjoyed this book. For some one who does not really know much about Japan, or Japanese history, for that matter, the book is great. It starts off with a short prehistory, followed by the first Yamato state in Japan, followed by the Heian era, and the different shogunal dynasties, such as the Tokugawa and the Kamakura Shogunates. Then, it gives information about the Meiji Period, Japan's time as a power, and its defeat in World War II. It ends with a description of Modern Japan politically, socially, and economically.

One person said that Buddhism gets no treatment. Actually, it does. All of the important Buddhist sects (Tendai, Shingon, Nichiren, Pure Land, and Zen) are mentioned and information given about them. I do have to say, however, that Shintoism gets hardly any treatment.

And I do wisht hat the book gave more pictures and more information about the imperial family. But apart from that, I would get it!

Missing the most important aspect of Japan
Any visitor to a foreign country is well advised to get to know its religion, not only because it's practiced by most inhabitants of the country, but also it illuminates many cultural and social parculiarities of the locale.This book claims to be a travellers' book on Japan, yet Buddism, which informs most of Japan's architectures, art, literature, is relegated to an a few index pages in the back of the book.More distressingly, Christianity is treated with a whole chapter, "The Christian Century", which should be appropriately titled "Encounters with the West".The Christian Century implies somehow that Japan was almost Christianized, when in fact the reader will find that at most 50,000 Japanese converted during that time.Too much emphasis is put on how these converts were persecuted, without putting these incidents into historical context.In 16th century Japan, the Emperors saw Christianity as a threat and meddling to their affairs, due in part to the missionaries' arrogant dissimal of Buddism as idolatry.In the index, Buddism is said to be a religion that "conceives salvation as extinction, rather than redemption."This is a serious misunderstanding of Buddism.

Great, quick, and well-balanced general history
By title, this book, indeed this series, may put fear into the reader of being a too-general and non-scholarly vast account of a subject matter too complex for any quality to come from the short format.Tames proves these fears wrong almost from the beginning in this indeed scholarly, engaging, and very well-balanced account of the history of one of the most misunderstood nations among today's world leaders.Tames does write a very general account, but "general" can be better understood as "broad" and "far-reaching" in this narritive.Regardless of the period discussed, his approach is rarely too single-tracked.This is a developmental history, and as such, properly includes development of Japanese government, culture, arts and literature, and the cumulative effects of this development onto the subsequent generations of Japanese.Tames does an excellent though suggestive job of relating the development of the Japanese nation to that of its people, and vice-versa.Throughout, except for the beginning, where it is often difficult to make any pre- and early histories come to life, the narritive flows freely with a purpose, and Tames' clear interest in his subject shines through the pages to take the reader with him on the easy, air-conditioned, and quick monorail tour through the safari of Japanese history, which is exactly what it is meant to be.In addition to the narritive is an excellent bibliography with commentary, as well as an entire reference section on everything Japanese from language to food and drink to holidays and their meanings.Especially for ex-pats living in Japan who don't want to be bogged down with anything dry or without connection to their experience, this is a quick, excellent read.It does a great job of subtly explaining the oft-seemingly unexplainables of Japan today. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Geographical Review, published by American Geographical Society on April 1, 1999. The length of the article is 8061 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: MAPS AND METAPHORS OF THE "SMALL EASTERN SEA" IN TOKUGAWA JAPAN (1603-1868) [*].
Author: Marcia Yonemoto
Publication: The Geographical Review (Refereed)
Date: April 1, 1999
Publisher: American Geographical Society
Volume: 89Issue: 2Page: 169

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Book Description
This distinctive blend of traditional and modern traits in the daily livesof the Japanese are revealed as they are seen at home, work, school, and play. ... Read more

Book Description
Quoting from a reader's report "this is an original and compelling synthesis of the environmental history of Korea and Japan".

Taking the history of Japan and Korea and their environmental interactions from late Pleistocene down to about 1870 AD, the author makes a convincing case for viewing the two countries together, as a history, particularly when looking at their pre-industrial experiences. Drawing from a rare combination of knowledge of both countries, Conrad Totman reveals the extent of shared timing, substance, and dynamics in the political, social, and economic development of the two countries, and in their relationship to the ecosystem.

With extensive bibliography, chronology, glossary, maps and graphs.

A real must. ... Read more

Book Description

Based on the most up-to-date sources, as well as extensive research and direct observation, Japan as Number One analyzes the island nation's development into one of the world's most effective industrial powers, in terms of not only economic productivity but also its ability to govern efficiently, to eduate its citizens, to control crime, to alleviate energy shortages, and to lessen pollution. Ezra Vogel employs criteria that America has traditionally used to measure success in his thoughtful demonstration of how and why Japanese institutions have coped far more effectively than their American counterparts. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

True Foresight: The jury is still out
Written in 1979 before the world new just how big that little country on the edge of Asia was going to be, this book prefigured the realisation if not the reality of Japan's rise to economic power by a decade. In that decade many more 'Japan Hype' books came out, and a decade or two later the "Japanese miracle" is seen as a debacle. But Japanese economy remains the second largest in the world and there are still lessons to be learned from the Japanese in various areas such as education (still doing far better than the US despite the lack of inter-school competition), public safety (still way up at the top of the OECD tables), and manufacturing technology and management. Japan has its problems, and so does the US, but who would have thought, when this book was written, that the Japanese economy and Japanese way, would compare almost on a par with that of the USA some thirty years later? Which economy will turn out to be 'number one' is still open to debate, but as a book that started the debate, it deserves to be read for its insight.

Furthermore, despite the initial postwar success of the Japanese economy the Japanese have and continue to import Western economic, educational and management systems wholesale, with decreasing sucess. Who knows, perhaps if this book had been read *more* in Japan, and the Japanese had more confidence in their own convictions, the Japanese way might even still be flourishing. The Japanese themselves, increasingly nationalist and increasingly self-confident, are starting to think so.

Closer to Fiction than Non-Fiction
This was the book that launched a thousand other efforts in the "Japan Hyping" that marked the Bubble Economy of the 1980s. The very same qualities that Vogel pointed out as key to Japan's success, and thoroughly worthy of emulation, are now attributed as being the cause of the country's post-bubble stagnation, and it is laughable to think that the Japanese edition of this book was an all-time bestseller on the country's non-fiction list. Who still advocates taking lessons from Japan on education, finance or corporate governance today?

Ezra Vogel deserves a place of honor alongside Paul Ehrlich and other would-be prophets of the future whose prophecies ended up being egregiously far off the mark. His book should
be read, if at all, as a caution against buying into journalistic hype, a problem those susceptible to today's China-boosting would do well to take heed of; the future is rarely a straightforward extrapolation of the past. ... Read more

Book Description

From his birth in the lowest stratum of the samurai class to his assassination at the hands of right-wing militarists, Takahashi Korekiyo (1854-1936) lived through tumultuous times that shaped the course of modern Japanese history. Takahashi is considered "Japan's Keynes" in many circles because of the forward-thinking (and controversial) fiscal and monetary policies--including deficit financing, currency devaluation, and lower interest rates--that he implemented to help Japan rebound from the Great Depression and move toward a modern economy.

Richard J. Smethurst's engaging biography underscores the profound influence of the seven-time finance minister on the political and economic development of Japan by casting new light on Takahashi's unusual background, unique talents, and singular experiences as a charismatic and cosmopolitan financial statesman.

Along with the many fascinating personal episodes--such as working as a houseboy in California and running a silver mine in the Andes--that molded Takahashi and his thinking, the book also highlights four major aspects of Takahashi's life: his unorthodox self-education, his two decades of service at the highest levels of government, his pathbreaking economic and political policies before and during the Depression, and his efforts to stem the rising tide of militarism in the 1930s. Deftly weaving together archival sources, personal correspondence, and historical analysis, Smethurst's study paints an intimate portrait of a key figure in the history of modern Japan.

Book Description
In the 1990s a Japanese conservationist group, inspired by North American examples, launched a campaign for the reintroduction of the wolf in Japan. In addition to restoring Japan's natural heritage, the main reason offered for its reintroduction is that the wolf would be the saviour of upland areas of Japan suffering from wildlife pestilence. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on the Kii Peninsula in western Japan, one of the areas nominated for reintroduction, this book critically examines the problem of people-wildlife conflicts in Japan from a social anthropological perspective. Focusing on wild boar, monkeys, deer, serow, and bears, it describes the relationship to these animals on the part of farmers, foresters, hunters, and tourists. This detailed case study shows that conflicts with wildlife are inextricably bound up with social conflict among people, and that wildlife pestilence must therefore be understood in terms of its symbolic, as well as material dimensions. ... Read more

Book Description

Historical demography is the study of patterns and changes in a society's population before the collection of data through modern censuses. For Japan, data on family size and structure, fertility and infant mortality, marriage patterns, urban and rural populations, and migration from one region of the country to another have been preserved for several centuries in temple registration documents, population and cadastral surveys conducted by the Tokugawa government from the17th to 19th centuries, and other sources of information. In this volume, Akira Hayami, one of the pioneers of historical demography in Japan, reports on the findings of researchers who are working with these rich sources of data. He explains the importance of their conclusions not only for historical studies but also for understanding the demography of contemporary Japan and its foreseeable future.