History of Japan (History of the World)

Rating:
Summary: Close, yet so far.
Review: Although compact and covering a broad range of subjects, Totman's book carries with it several key flaws which a person should be aware of.

First, the almost complete reliance upon English sources. A quick browse through citations and quotes reveals rather quickly that virtually no Japanese sources have been used (if any) in the making of this book. This doesn't make the book "bad" or one sided so much as it makes it woefully incomplete. Many of the English language sources cited are from around 1997, which makes them very recent, but one further problem lingers. That is, the sources for Totman's sources. Generally speaking research on Japan is generally speaking 20 years behind research in the US. New "breakthroughs" by US researchers don't get much press in Japan simply because the "breakthrough" is already common knowledge by the time it gets here. As result, although the views expressed in the book reflect new thinking in American or European circles they do not neccisarily reflect those in Japan at the present.

Another "flaw", although not as fatal as the one listed above, is the division he seems to employ in (or rather impose upon) Japanese history. This is an old argument (in Japan, anyway), but deserves attention. The book is divided up into 4 major parts: prehistory (Japan up until the Nara period), Classical (Nara-Heian), Medieval (Kamakura-Edo), and Modern (Meiji- ). The modern era is then devided into pre and post-war Japan. The Major problem here comes in this heavy-handed lumping of eras based upon the European version of (European) history. For perhaps the past two or three decades in Japan the validity of this lumping has been debated and challenged, which has led to the breaking down of paradigms associated with the "classical" age or the "medieval" age. What this in effect did inside Totman's work was create an oversimplification of areas of history which deserve far more attention (for example the Kamakura period hardly gets notice, and the split in to the Northern and Southern Courts and the subsequent 70 years of war, are virtually ignored). This, I fear, is a fairly typical bias seen in Western writing regarding Japanese history, with only Sansom breaking the mold over 40 years ago.

To meantion this books strengths, it gives quickly and easily (although at times oversimplified) readable views of the many aspects of Japanese political, cultural, and societal history, and takes a slightly different stance on modern Japanese history which begins to reflect the views developed in Japan by people such as Ito Takashi. A more candid view based on factual rather than ideological of Japanese history on the whole can be seen emerging, however the shortened pen with which things are written can lead to misundertanding of facts and events.

This volume will serve as a good general guide to Japanese history on the whole, but is oversimplified in many important areas. This book may, however, serve as a good springboard in to more detailed histories, such as Cambridge's or Sansoms, and may even serve in the reverse to give new insight into the problems sighted in these older works.

Rating:
Summary: An outstanding history.
Review: Conrad Totman's A History Of Japan conceptualizes four major "ages" grounded in the material resources that sustained Japanese society: the age of foragers, dispersed agriculturalists, intensive agriculture, and industrialism. Totman beings with Stone Age society in Japan, and then moves through developments in agriculture, state-building, the blossoming of classical arts and letters, socioeconomic growth and change, domestic and diplomatic politics, social issues of class, gender and ethnicity, cultural production and the environmental effects of agricultural activity. A History Of Japan provides detailed coverage of the twentieth century when Japan grew into a much larger society and its role on the international science became militarily, economically, and culturally influential. A History Of Japan is a highly recommended, informative, scholarly, comprehensive, and "reader friendly" introduction and historical survey that will be much appreciated by students of Japanese history and culture, and has a wealth of material for the non-specialist general reader seeking to understand the Japan of antiquity as well as a contemporary and influential society.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting approach, chaotic results
Review: Conrad Totman's A History Of Japan conceptualizes four major "ages" grounded in the material resources that sustained Japanese society: the age of foragers, dispersed agriculturalists, intensive agriculture, and industrialism. Totman beings with Stone Age society in Japan, and then moves through developments in agriculture, state-building, the blossoming of classical arts and letters, socioeconomic growth and change, domestic and diplomatic politics, social issues of class, gender and ethnicity, cultural production and the environmental effects of agricultural activity. A History Of Japan provides detailed coverage of the twentieth century when Japan grew into a much larger society and its role on the international science became militarily, economically, and culturally influential. A History Of Japan is a highly recommended, informative, scholarly, comprehensive, and "reader friendly" introduction and historical survey that will be much appreciated by students of Japanese history and culture, and has a wealth of material for the non-specialist general reader seeking to understand the Japan of antiquity as well as a contemporary and influential society.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting approach, chaotic results
Review: Totman tries ever-so-hard to liberate his history from traditionalist binaries such as East vs. West and industrial vs. pre-industrial. He does this by examining history from an ecological perspective, examining the interaction between man and the environment. At first, this approach seems to work remarkably well. It is possible, it seems, to deduce pre-historic settlement patterns from the environmental record alone.

Yet, the novelty of his approach begins to break down when he tries to fit all of Japanese history into four distinct stages defined by the ability of the society to extract and process resources (e.g. crops, minerals, forests, etc.). This is just old-style development theory dressed in a new suit. Also, Totman conveniently abandons the ecological model when examining such items as culture, even though he vainly tells the reader that he has not forgotten his approach! When the author has to remind the reader that he hasn't strayed from his theme, it's a sure sign that he has!

The result of all this is a highly fragmented account that is difficult to read without prior knowledge of Japanese history. If I were a professor in this field, it would be an agonizing decision to go back to Sansom's venerable 1960's volume instead of turning to the current scholarship used in Totman. And yet, Totman's book is so difficult to digest that it would probably be worth it.