A History of Japan,
1615-1867 - Sir George Sansom
This is the final volume of the magisterial trilogy by
the distinguished British historian. The first volume covered to 1334 (reviewed
here) the second from 1334 to 1615 (reviewed
here).
The book opens with an examination the creation of the Tokugawa
regime under the three Shoguns after Tokugawa Ieyasu: Hidetada, Iemitsu, and
Ietsuna. Sansom is sympathetic to the next one, Tsunayoshi, though he is
notorious as the Dog Shogun who ordered everybody to address dogs politely as “O
Inu Sama.”
In seven additional chapters, Sansom describes conditions
in the second half of the seventeenth century in terms of political shifts, urban
and rural conditions, economic expansion and the problems which it posed. He briefly
– that is, tantalizingly - touches on how the philosophy of Neo-Confucian Wang
Yang-ming influenced Japanese reformers running up the end of Tokugawa rule. The
response to the Black Ships is handled cursorily.
I highly recommend this set to serious students of traditional
Japan. These books focus mainly on topics in social science. For the humanities,
see Sansom’s excellent Japan: A Short
Cultural History.
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