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Japan Examined: Perspectives on Modern Japanese History
A collection of 46 essays that trace the course of democracy in Japan from 1868 to 1952.
- GenresJapan
411 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1983
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 5, 2016
Posing its 12 parts with 46 essays by eminent Japanese and American professors and scholars on modern Japanese history, this book seems not to be a page-turner since they look highly academic and thus problematic to me for its review, that is, what should I do so that my Goodreads friends would understand what I want to say? I don’t hope they would agree with me but I hope they think it’s worth reading and find one to read in detail. My solution is that I think I’ve written my reviews to amuse myself to share ideas and understanding and leave it at that.
This isn’t a recently-published book because of its copyright in 1983, in other words, we would read those analyses, interpretations, predictions and so on as described some three decades ago. However, I’ve found reading Jackson H. Bailey’s “The Meiji Leadership: Matsukata Masayoshi” and Victor Carpenter’s “Tanaka Shozo: Champion of Local Autonomy” interestingly informative and inspiring due to these two outstanding Japanese leaders in the fields of economics and community autonomy; one of the reasons is that I’ve never heard/known their expertise/leadership before. Moreover, Harry Wray’s “The Lesson of the Textbooks” is wonderful to read and realize the amazingly unimaginable power and impact of education by means of 1903-1945 elementary textbooks.
Again, this is not an easy reading, especially some parts related to applied economics, politics, military science, etc. have admirably been written/rendered by those renowned intellectuals (The two Japanese essays in the original being Kisaka Junichiro’s “The 1930s: A Logical Outcome of Meiji Policy” and Hata Ikuhiko’s “From Mukden to Pearl Harbor”); therefore, possibly as part of any degree course in Japanese studies these texts might best be assigned as group work to be read, debated and discussed in class under the advice/comments/conclusion by some stimulating, unbiased experts/professors.
This isn’t a recently-published book because of its copyright in 1983, in other words, we would read those analyses, interpretations, predictions and so on as described some three decades ago. However, I’ve found reading Jackson H. Bailey’s “The Meiji Leadership: Matsukata Masayoshi” and Victor Carpenter’s “Tanaka Shozo: Champion of Local Autonomy” interestingly informative and inspiring due to these two outstanding Japanese leaders in the fields of economics and community autonomy; one of the reasons is that I’ve never heard/known their expertise/leadership before. Moreover, Harry Wray’s “The Lesson of the Textbooks” is wonderful to read and realize the amazingly unimaginable power and impact of education by means of 1903-1945 elementary textbooks.
Again, this is not an easy reading, especially some parts related to applied economics, politics, military science, etc. have admirably been written/rendered by those renowned intellectuals (The two Japanese essays in the original being Kisaka Junichiro’s “The 1930s: A Logical Outcome of Meiji Policy” and Hata Ikuhiko’s “From Mukden to Pearl Harbor”); therefore, possibly as part of any degree course in Japanese studies these texts might best be assigned as group work to be read, debated and discussed in class under the advice/comments/conclusion by some stimulating, unbiased experts/professors.
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November 12, 2014Some of the essays were quite good.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews