Japan: History and Culture from Classical to Cool provides a historical account of Japan’s elite and popular cultures from premodern to modern periods. Drawing on the most up-to-date scholarship across numerous disciplines, Nancy K. Stalker presents the key historical themes, cultural trends, and religious developments throughout Japanese history. Focusing on everyday life and ordinary consumption, this is the first textbook of its kind to explore both imperial and colonial culture and offer expanded content on issues pertaining to gender and sexuality. Organized into fourteen chronological and thematic chapters, this text explores some of the most notable and engaging aspects of Japanese life and is well suited for undergraduate classroom use.

About the Author

Nancy K. Stalker is the Soshitsu Sen XV Distinguished Professor of Traditional Japanese Culture and History in the Department of History at the University of Hawai?i at Manoa. She is the author of Prophet Motive: Deguchi Onisaburo, Oomoto, and the Rise of a New Religion in Imperial Japan and the editor of Devouring Japan: Global Perspectives on Japanese Culinary Identity.

Preface

1. Early Japan
2. Forging a Centralized State (550–794)
3. The Rule of Taste: Lives of Heian Aristocrats (794–1185)
4. The Rise and Rule of the Warrior Class (12th–15th centuries)
5. Disintegration and Reunification (1460s–early 1600s)
6. Maintaining Control: Tokugawa Official Culture (1603–1850s)
7. Edo Popular Culture: The Floating World and Beyond (late 17th to mid-19th centuries)
8. Facing and Embracing the West (1850s–1900s)
9. Modernity and its Discontents (1900s–1930s)
10. Cultures of Empire and War (1900s–1940s)
11. Defeat and Reconstruction (1945–1970s)
12. “Cool” Japan as Cultural Superpower (1980s–2010s)

Notes
Index

Reviews

"Whereas many history textbooks tend to treat culture, gender and aesthetics as an afterthought, the author of Japan: History and Culture asserts their integral importance to Japanese history . . . an entertaining and concise textbook for university undergraduate and postgraduate history teachers or senior high school students."
— New Voices in Japanese Studies

"A welcome companion for anyone wanting to start learning about Japanese cultural tradition and practices throughout the centuries."
— H-Soz-Kult

“Written in a lively, engaging, undergraduate-friendly style, Stalker’s impressive text deftly weaves elements of society, gender, religion, politics, culture, environment, and minority relations into a relatable, well-conceived narrative tapestry.” —Norman Rothschild, Professor of Asian History, University of North Florida

“Stalker has succeeded in producing a comprehensive, timely, and eminently readable account of Japanese history and culture. Her book is a most welcome addition to Japanese studies and will surely appeal to those wishing for a balance of the classical and the contemporary, the elite and the popular.”—Marvin Marcus, Professor of Japanese Language and Literature, Washington University in St. Louis

About the Book

About the Author

Table of Contents

Reviews