Rethinking Japanese History (Volume 74)

Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies #74

by Yoshihiko Amino

In this fascinating journey across centuries, Amino Yoshihiko, the premier historian of medieval Japan, invites us to rethink everything we thought we knew about Japanese history. From reconsidering the roles of outcastes and outlaws, to the provenance of "Japan (Nihon)," to the very meaning of writing, Amino offers a powerful critique of the conventional wisdom about Japan's past. Instead of depicting Japan as an isolated island country full of immobile peasants dominated by swaggering warriors and an unbroken line of sacred emperors, he unveils a dynamic history of an archipelago driven by the competition to control trade and movement, in which warlords and aristocrats share the main stage with pirates, courtesans, beggars, and dancing monks.
Written for a nonspecialist audience and standing on a foundation of fifty years of research in a vast and eclectic range of primary sources, Rethinking Japanese History introduces the English reader to one of Japan's most original and provocative historians. Since the 1970s, Amino has inspired readers with his view of Japanese history "from the sea," in which the power politics of the samurai class were contrasted with the countervailing authorities of religious institutions, artisanal groups, and "lords of the sea" who enabled the movement of people and goods from the Asian continent to every harbor and village of Japan. In his portraits of an archaic and medieval past permeated with "places of freedom" and a grand struggle between ideologies of trade and agriculture, Amino challenged his contemporaries to reconsider not only their understanding of Japan's past, but also its present and future. Rethinking Japanese History calls on us to contemplate seriously the meaning of the deep past in our present day.

Genres: History, Japan, Nonfiction, Japanese History, Asia

358 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[AskHistorians]

This book reconsiders topics in premodern Japanese history like outcasts, non-agrarian production and taxation, and Japan's position in the East Asian sphere. This is a must read for anyone interested in premodern Japan but does require some background knowledge.

[Melos Han-Tani · Rating 4 out of 5]

A remarkably detailed analysis of receipts, papers, etc in Japan that show that Japan wasn't really as 'isolationist' or 'agriculture-centered' as the national narrative would like to show.

I didn't finish much of this, being a collection of what are fairly detailed academic papers. It's really nice that this was translated to english. The reason it's kind of hard for a non-scholar is that there's so many place names and terms - as a layperson I got some stuff out of it and might skim the rest of the chapters without worrying about missing the details.

On an unrelated note, it's kind of funny at times - the original writer was pretty non-mainstream when he was writing, as the field Japanese history (at least how he portrays it) was very nationalist/myth-building.

[Kate Shanahan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned so much from this book. The roles that women could hold, the origin of hinin and what that really meant (it’s not what you might think!), currency, agriculture- so many challenges to traditional assumptions of Japanese history. The translation is excellent as well.