A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present

New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Third edition. Octavo with glossy blue, red and orange pictorial wraps; xiv, 417 pages: illustrations, maps; index; 24 cm As new; very fine. Paperback. ISBN: 9780199930159

A Modern History of Japan paints a 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. Andrew Gordon offers a synthesis of Japan's passage through militarism, World War II, the American occupation, and the subsequent economic rollercoaster. Contents: Introduction: Enduring imprints of the longer past. Crisis of the Tokugawa Regime. Tokugawa polity. Social and economic transformations. Intellectual world of late Tokugawa. Overthrow of the Tokugawa. Modern Revolution, 1868-1905. Samurai revolution. Participation and protest. Social, economic, and cultural transformations. Empire and domestic order. Imperial Japan from ascendance to ashes. Economy and society. Democracy and empire between the World Wars. The depression crisis and responses. Japan in wartime. Occupied Japan: New departures and durable structures. Postwar and contemporary Japan, 1952-2012. Economic and social transformations. Political struggles and settlements of the high-growth era. Global power in a polarized world: Japan in the 1980s. Japan's "lost decades": 1989-2008. Shock, disaster, and aftermath: Japan since 2008. Appendix: Prime ministers of Japan, 1885-2012.