Richard H.P. Mason - A History of Japan: Revised Edition

Bibliography

No bibliography satisfies. Two recent general bibliographies for Japan (neither of which mentions this book) are: Richard Perren, Japanese studies from pre-history to 1990 (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1992) and Frank Joseph Shulman, Japan (vol. 103 in the World Bibliographic Series; Oxford, Clio Press, 1989). Still of value, though tending to be dated by now, are the K.B.S. (Kokusai Bunka Shinkkai) publications, notably their Catalogue of the K.B.S. Library (Tokyo, 1965); and the Select Bibliographies at the end of John Whitney Hall and Richard K. Beardsley, Twelve Doors to Japan (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1965), a book which is itself a comprehensive general introduction to Japanese culture. Also, Hall's pamphlet Japanese History: New Dimensions of Approach and Understanding (American Historical Association, Washington, 1961 and 1966) transcends time, being a gem of critical insight.

Archaic Japan

For a long time Western scholarship lagged behind Japanese research on the earliest period. J. Edward Kidder helped to bridge the gap, so far as material culture is concerned, with various publications including Prehistoric Japanese Arts: Jmon Pottery (Tokyo, Kodansha International 1968). The same author's Japan, published in 1959 by Thames and Hudson (London) in their Ancient Peoples and Places series, is still worth consulting, along with more recent works like Richard Pearson's Ancient Japan (New York, G. Braziller, 1992) and Gina L. Barnes' China, Korea and Japan: the rise of civilisation in East Asia (London, Thames and Hudson, 1993). Another book, Prehistory of Japan, written by C. Melvin

Aikens and Takayasu Higuchi and published by the Academic Press in New York in 1982, contains a section on the origins of the Japanese language. Haniwa: The Clay Sculptures of Proto-historic Japan by Miki Fumio (Tokyo, Tuttle, 1960) is a highly pictorial book with a good, informative text. Likewise, Tange Kenz and Kawagoe Noboru supply interpretative comment in the first comprehensive photographic record of the Ise Shrine, IsePrototype of Japanese Architecture (Cambridge [Mass.], M.I.T., 1965).

Quotations in the text from Japanese and Chinese have been taken from:

Aston, W.G. (translator). NihongiChronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A.D. 697 , London, Allen and Unwin, 1956.

Holtom, D.C. The National Faith of Japan, London, Kegan Paul, 1938.

Tsunoda, Ryusaku, and L. Carrington Goodrich (translators and editors). Japan in the Chinese Dynastic HistoriesLater Han Through Ming Dynasties , South Pasadena, P.D. and lone Pekins, 1951.

The two other references in this part are to:

Hall, John Whitney. Government and Local Power in Japan 500-1700A Study Based on Bizen Province , Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1966.

Hudson, Mark, and Gina Barnes. "Yoshinogari: A Yayoi Settlement in Northern Kyushu," Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 46, no. 2(1991).

Ancient Japan

G.B. Sansom, JapanA Short Cultural History , revised edition (London, The Cresset Press, 1952), and the first volume of his fuller narrative history (George Sansom, A History of Japan to 1334, London, The Cresset Press, 1958) remain the best general works. John Whitney Hall, Government and Local Power in Japan 500-1700: A Study Based on Bizen Province (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1966), is an excellent survey of local history set in a national context. A superb collection of photographs, together with a good, matching text by J. Edward Kidder, can be found in a substantial work entitled Japanese Temples: Sculpture, Paintings, Gardens, and Architecture (London, Thames and Hudson; no date, but circa 1965 or 1966).

The most comprehensive selection of readings, covering the whole of Japanese history, has been compiled by Ryusaku Tsunoda, Wm. Theodore de Bary, and Donald Keene, in Sources of Japanese Tradition (New York, Columbia University Press, 1958).

Additional books from which translations have been cited or to which reference has been made are:

Brewster, Jennifer. Sanuki no Suke Nikki: The Emperor Horikawa Diary , Canberra, Australian National University Press, 1977.

Brower, Robert H., and Earl Miner. Japanese Court Poetry , London, The Cresset Press, 1962.

Doe, Paula. A Warbler's Song in the Dusk: The Life and Work of tomo Yakamochi 718-785 , Berkeley, University of California Press, 1982.

Hurst, George Cameron. Insei: Abdicated Sovereigns in the Politics of Late Heian Japan 1086-1185 , New York, Columbia University Press, 1976.

Keene, Donald (editor). Anthology of Japanese Literature from the Earliest Era to the Mid-nineteenth Century , New York, Grove Press, 1955.

Morris, Ivan (translator and editor). The Pillow Book of Sei Shnagon , London, Oxford University Press, 1967.

Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkkai. The ManyshOne Thousand Poems , Tokyo, Iwanami, 1940.

Reischauer, Edwin O., and Joseph K. Yamagiwa. Translations from Early Japanese Literature , Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press, 1951.