A Concise History of Japan

Brett L. Walker is Regents Professor and Michael P. Malone Professor of History at Montana State University, Bozeman. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2013 for his work on global environmental history. He studies environmental history, the history of human health, and the history of science, particularly as they relate to Japan. He investigates how nature has imposed its way onto the human past, as well as how humans have sliced, burned, extracted and engineered their needs and desires onto Earth and its living organisms. He is the author of The Conquest of Ainu Lands: Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion, 1590–1800, The Lost Wolves of Japan, and Toxic Archipelago: A History of Industrial Disease in Japan. Recently, he co-edited Japan at Nature's Edge: The Environmental Context of a Global Power.

'This is the best short survey of Japanese history available today: timely in its focus on environmental issues but timeless in its sound scholarship, rich in detail but thoroughly readable and eloquent in its interpretation of Japan's complex past.' William M. Tsutsui, Hendrix College, Washington

• Preface; Chronology; Introduction; 1. The birth of the Yamato state, 14,500 BCE–710 CE; 2. The courtly age, 710–1185; 3. The rise of Samurai rule, 1185–1336; 4. Medieval Japan and the warring states period, 1336–1573; 5. Japan's encounter with Europe, 1542–1640; 6. Unifying the realm, 1560–1603; 7. Early modern Japan, 1600–1800; 8. The rise of imperial nationalism, 1770–1854; 9. Meiji enlightenment, 1868–1912; 10. Meiji's discontents, 1868–1920; 11. The birth of Japan's imperial state, 1800–1910; 12. Empire and imperial democracy, 1905–31; 13. The Pacific War, 1931–45; 14. Japan's postwar history, 1945–present; 15. Natural disasters and the edge of history; Glossary; Further reading; Index.