One of the major transformations in world history during the twentieth century has been the slow shift of world economic and political power from the Atlantic to the Pacific Rim. Japan has played a key role in spurring this transformation.
The Nineteenth Century provides the most comprehensive account available in any Western language of Japan's transformation from a feudal society to a modern nation state.
This is the fourth of six volumes designed to explore the history of Japan from prehistoric to modern times. Volume 4 covers the years from 1550 to 1800, a short but surprisingly eventful period in Japanese history commonly referred to as Japan's Early Modern Age.
This third volume of the History of Japan is devoted to the three and a half centuries spanning the final decades of the twelfth century when the Kamakura bakufu was founded to the mid-sixteenth century when civil wars raged following the demise of the Muromachi bakufu.