A Companion to Japanese History provides an authoritative overview of current debates and approaches within the study of Japan’s history. Composed of 30 chapters written by an international group of scholars Combines traditional perspectives with the most recent scholarly concerns Supplements a chronological survey with targeted thematic analyses Presents stimulating interventions into individual controversies

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. Covers a wide range of subjects, including geology, climate, agriculture, government and politics, culture, literature, media, foreign relations, imperialism, and industrialism. Updated to include an epilogue on Japan today and tomorrow. Now includes more on women in history and more on international relations. Bibliographical listings have been updated and enlarged. Part of The Blackwell History of the World Series The goal of this ambitious series is to provide an accessible source of knowledge about the entire human past, for every curious person in every part of the world. It will comprise some two dozen volumes, of which some provide synoptic views of the history of particular regions while others consider the world as a whole during a particular period of time. The volumes are narrative in form, giving balanced attention to social and cultural history (in the broadest sense) as well as to institutional development and political change. Each provides a systematic account of a very large subject, but they are also both imaginative and interpretative. The Series is intended to be accessible to the widest possible readership, and the accessibility of its volumes is matched by the style of presentation and production.

This iconoclastic work on the prehistory of Japan and of South East Asia challenges entrenched views on the origins of Japanese society and identity. The social changes that took place in Japan in the time-period when the Jomon culture was replaced by the Yayoi culture were of exceptional magnitude, going far beyond those of the so-called Neolithic Revolution in other parts of the world. They included not only a new way of life based on wet-rice agriculture but also the introduction of metalworking in both bronze and iron, and furthermore a new architecture functionally and ritually linked to rice cultivation, a new religion, and a hierarchical society characterized by a belief in the divinity of the ruler. Because of its immense and enduring impact the Yayoi period has generally been seen as the very foundation of Japanese civilization and identity. In contrast to the common assumption that all the Yayoi innovations came from China and Korea, this work combines exciting new scientific evidence from such different fields as rice genetics, DNA and historical linguistics to show that the major elements of Yayoi civilization actually came, not from the north, but from the south.

This volume examines the origins, micro-evolution, diversification and adaptation of modern humans. It is based upon discrepancies between fossil evidence and molecular findings and between different investigators within each. This has given rise to much controversy that is not yet solved. The papers are presented in four methodological categories: theoretical, molecular, morphological and linguistic.

The Prehistory of Food sets subsistence in its social context by focusing on food as a cultural artefact. It brings together contributors with a scientific and biological expertise as well as those interested in the patterns of consumption and social change, and includes a wide range of case studies.

The author examines the evolution of state-level societies and their relationship to polities in Japan and China.

Humans at the End of the Ice Age chronicles and explores the significance of the variety of cultural responses to the global environmental changes at the last glacial-interglacial boundary. Contributions address the nature and consequences of the global climate changes accompanying the end of the Pleistocene epoch-detailing the nature, speed, and magnitude of the human adaptations that culminated in the development of food production in many parts of the world. The text is aided by vital maps, chronological tables, and charts.

Many Japanese people consider themselves to be part of an essentially unchanging and isolated ethnic unit in which the biological, linguistic, and cultural aspects of Japanese identity overlap almost completely with each other. In its examination of the processes of ethnogenesis (the formation of ethnic groups) in the Japanese Islands, Ruins of Identity offers an approach to ethnicity that differs fundamentally from that found in most Japanese scholarship and popular discourse. Following an extensive discussion of previous theories on the formation of Japanese language, race, and culture and the nationalistic ideologies that have affected research in these topics, Mark Hudson presents a model of a core Japanese population based on the dual origin hypothesis currently favored by physical anthropologists. According to this model, the Jomon population, which was present in Japan by at least the end of the Pleistocene, was followed by agriculturalists from the Korean peninsula during the Yayoi period (ca. 400 BC to AD 300). Hudson analyzes further evidence of migrations and agricultural colonization in an impressive summary of recent cranial, dental, and genetic studies and in a careful examination of the linguistic and archaeological records. The final sections of the book explore the cultural construction of Japanese ethnicity. Cultural aspects of ethnicity do not emerge pristine and fully formed but are the result of cumulative negotiation. Ethnic identity is continually recreated through interaction within and without the society concerned. Such a view necessitates an approach to culture change that takes into account complex interactions with a larger system. Accordingly, Hudson considers post-Yayoi ethnogenesis in Japan within the East Asian world system, examining the role of interaction between core and periphery in the formation of new ethnic identities, such as the Ainu. He argues that the defining elements of the Ainu period and culture (ca. AD 1200) can be linked directly to a dramatic expansion in Japanese trade goods flowing north as Hokkaido became increasingly exploited by core regions to the south. Highly original and at times controversial, Ruins of Identity will be essential reading for students and scholars in Japanese studies and will be of interest to anthropologists and historians working on ethnicity in other parts of the world. Text adopted at University ofChicago