Marius B. Jansen

A sweeping history of modern Japan begins in 1600 and retraces the three major upheavals in Japanese history that have helped shape it into a modern Asian nation.

The Making of Modern Japan

Michael Camilleri

A deep, insightful and—let's face it—long history of Japan from the beginnings of the Tokugawa Era to the turn of the millennium. The book is stronger in its first half where Jansen takes us through the establishment of the Tokugawa state and how it functioned. Jansen avoids the mistake of losing you in a long list of chronologically ordered events and instead chooses to focus on specific elements, with the chronological flow of history sitting atop to loosely guide things forward. 

Once the book moves into the Meiji Period, there's less of the insight and detail but the book still does an overall admirable job sketching out the way in which Japan rebuilt itself as a modern state and then descended into militarism and war. The period after the surrender is dealt with in even more cursory detail but given the thesis that the origins of much of modern day Japan can be understood as coming out of the history of the past 500 years (as opposed to just the Occupation or the Meiji Restoration), this shouldn't really come as a surprise.

While I consider these shortcomings, the book is still an incredible work of synthesis, giving the reader a rich understanding of Japanese society, both historical and contemporary.

The Making of Modern Japan

Reviews