Japan: A Short Cultural History, Revised Edition [Paperback]

G. B. Sansom (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Charles E. Tuttle Company (1981)
• ASIN: B000PHSHDU
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 4.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,391,324 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Historical Jewel, May 8, 2005

By 

Robert E. Morrell (St. Louis, MO USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Western World and Japan: A Study in the Interaction of European and Asiatic Cultures (Paperback)

Among several thousand books in my home library, including, of course, the Short Cultural History and 3-volume A History of Japan by George B. Sansom (1883-1965), perhaps the last great comprehensive historian of Japan writing in English, his The Western World of Japan: A Study in the Interaction of European and Asiatic Cultures is one of my all-time favorites. Part of the reason is surely because I can think of no other work quite like it on the subject. I cannot describe it any more eloquently or accurately than the flyleaf blurb of my 1965 Fifth Printing edition:

.....This masterwork is not only an account of the cultural influence of the West upon Japan; it is also a study of the way in which cultures interact. It reveals the process by which the intrusive civilizations of the West, since even before the Christian era, have affected the Asiatic peoples in general and the Japanese in particular, first only slightly and spasmodically, and then with increasing power.

.....The first part of the book traces the early cultural relations between Europe and Asia. Against this historical background the second part shows how Japan reacted to Western influence from the days of her first contact with Europeans down to the time of her entry into international life in the nineteenth century.

.....Historians will recognize instantly in this method the challenge both to Japan's own mystical and myth-ridden historiography, and to the West's narrow and self-centered preconceptions, which have prevented its historians from seeing that the institutions finally adopted were, if Western in shape, thoroughly Japanese in color and substance.

.....And philosophers will recognize instantly the challenge thrown at Toynbee and Spengler when the author offers evidence of the way in which a society can decay and renew itself without changing its essence. He questions whether any of the chief civilizations of Asia will, even if they voluntarily follow a Western economic pattern, submit to Western precept in political, social, or religious life.

*** This is a great book by a great scholar and you will enjoy it. Trust me!