Origins of Modern Japanese Sta

by E.H. Norman, John W. Dower, E. Herbert Norman

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0394709276
• ISBN13: 9780394709277
• Release Date: April 1975
• Publisher: Pantheon Books
• Length: 497 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.

Customer Reviews

somebody get the number of that truck

E.H. Norman's seminal work, , is now available in other places, but when John W. Dower issued this volume, Norman's work was difficult to find in print, and so this collection was as welcome as it was valuable, especially for rising PhD hopefuls who wanted to read Norman but had trouble getting their hands on his stuff. In the end, though, it was Dower's long introductory essay that really caught everyone's attention, with its discussion of Norman's adventures in McCarthy's red scare America, and its innuendoes about other prominent Asia scholars. It set off a flurry of reviews in the scholarly journals, reviews noteworthy for their vituperative attacks on Norman's scholarship, more than for their implied criticisms of a young colleague who would presume to dignify Norman's scholarly accomplishments by editing a reissue of his work. Now at the other end of a long and distinguished career as scholar and teacher, Dower can look back on this volume as an achievement that still merits careful attention, not only by students of Japanese history, but equally by anyone interested in the politics of scholarship. Likewise, anyone interested in the historiography of modern Japan needs to come to grips not only with Norman's work but also with the political controversies that came to surround it as a result of American Cold War culture.

Origins of the Modern Japanese State

Before his premature death in 1957, the Canadian scholar-diplomat E. Herbert Norman had established himself as the pre-eminent Western interpreter of early modern and modern Japan. This present edition includes the classic Japan's Emergence as a Modern State. It also introduces materials by Norman never before made widely available in the West, including an essay on the role of the historian and chapters from an unpublished book, Feudal Background of Japanese Politics. --- from book's back cover.