Modern Japan A History in Documents

The civilization of Japan is an ancient one, and by the time the firstWestern visitors arrived in 1542, the Japanese people were as highly educated asany in the world and enjoyed a sophisticated culture. From the sixteenth centuryon, the country's history was shaped by a tension between its people's thirst tounderstand foreign institutions and customs and their determination to assertand preserve its native traditions. In Modern Japan, James Huffman tells therich and dynamic story of this history through a fascinating range of primarysource documents.A picture essay is dedicated to the tumultuous decade and a half following thearrival of Commodore Matthew Perry and the U.S. Navy in 1853, which led to anunprecedented opening of Japan to the West and accompanying turmoil. While manyJapanese welcomed the strangers, "men of zeal" signed blood oaths to drive outthe barbarians. The picture essay explores this cultural clash, with Americanand Japanese portraits of Perry pointing up the differences in attitude towardthis divisive figure, and a photograph of a Japanese diplomatic mission toWashington dramatically underlining the cultural differences between theJapanese and the Westerners. The essay also demonstrates the new mixture ofcultures, as traditional Japanese art forms depict the lively foreign businessdistrict in Yokohama. This cultural clash led to peasant uprisings and a coup,illustrated in ink and paint, that brought an end to the stable, introvertedTokugawa rule and signaled the beginning of a new era for Japan.Other primary sources in this collection include memoirs, school textbooks, theprison diary of a woman involved in a plot to assassinate the emperor, politicalspeeches, a chilling eyewitness account of the dropping of the atomic bomb onHiroshima, and a comic book description of Adam Smith's economic theories. Takenwith the author's illuminating commentary, these diverse voices trace Japan'shistory from its first uneasy interactions with the Western world to the pointwhere Japanese culture, goods, and people-from sushi, ramen noodles, karaoke,videos, anime, and automobiles to major-league baseball players-have come topervade the world as a part of the common international heritage.Huffman, James L. is the author of 'Modern Japan A History in Documents', published 2004 under ISBN 9780195147421 and ISBN 0195147421.