Japan: Its History and Culture

There's no way you can expect a book of this length (about 300 pages) to fully cover the history of a civilization as ancient, rich, and varied as Japan, but this book does a good job of providing a fairly comprehensive introduction into the main trends in Japanese culture from prehistory to the modern day. As might be expected, the events of the 19th and 20th centuries occupy a considerable amount of the book, and a substantial percentage of the end of the book, which covers post-World War II Japan, was written by Olenik, who Morton specifically brought on to cover parts of modern Japanese culture which Morton is not an expert in. (The change in style is noticeable.) Because this book is covering so much history in such a small number of pages, very few events are written about in detail. There is considerable discussion about the historical evolution of the cultural aspects of Japanese civilization (as opposed to the political or military), and the authors do a good job of emphasizing the particular nature of the shogunate and why the military used to hold so much power in Japan. By the end of the book, the authors also discuss the economic and pop culture aspects of Japan, which is appropriate in light of their status in the modern world. If you're already reasonably well-versed in Japanese history, then this book isn't for you. The intended audience is probably students in an introduction to Japanese or East Asian history class, or perhaps the reasonably educated layperson who is ignorant about the main trends of Japanese history but is interested in learning more. As other reviewers have mentioned, this book provides a good foundation from which to start learning more about Japan.

This books seeks to give the reader a broad grasp of the space of Japan's cultural history. Important names and dates are mentioned in connection with their cultural accomplishments. More than simply telling who killed whom in what war and when, this book gives the reader a vague understanding of how Japan's customs, architecture, art, and prose evolved into the form they are today. This book is best for those who know next to nothing about the history of Japan and would like an outline with which to proceed to learn more.

This book is perfect for anyone who knows nothing about Japanese history (as I did). It is short and easily readable (less than 250 pages for Japanese history to WWII). As an introduction to Japanese history it does just what it should.....inspire you to learn more....

Morton has made an effort to impart understanding of Japanese heritage and culture. For the most part, he succeeds; the historical survey has about the right amount of depth for this type of book, and cultural issues are discussed.What would have made it better would have been a section on specifically Japanese concepts that are hard for non-Japanese to grasp accurately. Many are touched on throughout the book, but words such as 'wa' and 'giri' really deserve a page or two each to go into full descriptiveness, and that doesn't happen. It is clear that Morton has the understanding of them to share; I wish he'd done so.