The text’s well-written and comprehensive narrative is interspersed throughout with direct sources, allowing high school students to formulate sound generalizations about the Japanese experience and to test those currently popular in Western society.

Table of Contents

1. The Land and the People: An Overview
2. From Prehistoric Times to Early Yamato
3. Adaption of Things Korean and Chinese
4. The Heian Age
5. A Military-Feudal Age: Kamakura Period
6. The Muromachi Age
7. From Warring States to Unification
8. Tokugawa Era: The First Two Centuries
9. The Opening of Japan
10. Meiji Restoration
11. The Meiji Era, 1868-1912: Change and Growth
12. Emergence as a World Power
13. The Fifteen Year War, 1931-1945: From Mukden to Hiroshima
14. Eighty Months: The American Occupation, 1945-1952
15. Recovery, Prosperity, and Economic Leadership