A modern history of Japan : from Tokugawa times to the present

Gordon, Andrew 1952- (Author).

Summary: Overview: A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present paints a richly nuanced and strikingly original portrait of the last two centuries of Japanese history. It takes students from the days of the shogunate-the overlordship of the Tokugawa family-through the modernizing revolution launched by midlevel samurai in the late nineteenth century; the adoption of Western hairstyles, clothing, and military organization; and the nation's first experiments with mass democracy after World War I. Author Andrew Gordon offers the finest synthesis to date of Japan's passage through militarism, World War II, the American occupation, and the subsequent economic rollercoaster.

Record details

ISBN: 9780199930159 (acid-free paper)
ISBN: 0199930155 (acid-free paper)
Physical Description: print
xiv, 417 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm
Edition: Third edition.
Publisher: New York : Oxford University Press, [2014]

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 379-388) and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

Maps, tables, and figures -- Preface -- Introduction: Enduring imprints of the longer past -- Part 1: Crisis Of The Tokugawa Regime: -- 1: Tokugawa polity: -- Unification -- Tokugawa political settlements: -- Daimyo -- Imperial institution -- Samurai -- Villagers and city-dwellers -- Margins of the Japanese and Japan -- 2: Social and economic transformations: -- Seventeenth-century boom -- Riddles of stagnation and vitality -- 3: Intellectual world of late Tokugawa: -- Ideological foundations of the Tokugawa regime -- Cultural diversity and contradictions -- Reform, critiques, and insurgent ideas -- 4: Overthrow of the Tokugawa: -- Western powers and the unequal treaties -- Crumbling of Tokugawa rule -- Politics of terror and accommodation -- Bakufu revival, the Satsuma-Choshu insurgency, and domestic unrest -- Part 2: Modern Revolution, 1868-1905: -- 5: Samurai revolution: -- Programs of nationalist revolution: -- Political unification and central bureaucracy -- Eliminating the status system -- Conscript army -- Compulsory education -- Monarch at the center -- Building a rich country -- Stances toward the world -- 6: Participation and protest: -- Political discourse and contention -- Movement for freedom and people's rights -- Samurai rebellions, peasant uprisings, and new religions -- Participation for women -- Treaty revision and domestic politics -- Meiji constitution -- 7: Social, economic, and cultural transformations: -- Landlords and tenants -- Industrial revolution -- Workforce and labor conditions -- Spread of mass and higher education -- Culture and religion -- Affirming Japanese identity and destiny -- 8: Empire and domestic order: -- Trajectory to empire -- Contexts of empire, capitalism, and nation-building -- Turbulent world of diet politics -- Era of popular protest -- Engineering nationalism.