Every foreign traveler in Japan is delighted by the verdant forest-shrouded mountains that thrust skyward from one end of the island chain to the other. The Japanese themselves are conscious of the lush green of their homeland, which they sometimes refer to as 'the green archipelago'. Yet, based on [...]

By 1853 Japan had been transformed from a sparsely populated land of nonliterate tribal peoples into an elaborately structured commercial society sustaining massive cities and a varied array of sophisticated cultural production. In this authoritative survey, Conrad Totman examines the origins of Jap[...]

This is an updated edition of Conrad Totman's authoritative history of Japan from c.8000 BC to the present day. The first edition was widely praised for combining sophistication and accessibility. This title covers a wide range of subjects, including geology, climate, agriculture, government and pol[...]