A Limited Book Review Part II: A Concise History of Japan

 

Walker, Brett L. A Concise History of Japan. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

This is the second book review that I have posted on this blog, so it is only appropriate I call it “A Limited Book Review Part II,” for obvious reasons. If you are interested in my first Weaving Chronicle Book Review here is the link https://theweavingchronicle.blogspot.com/2017/01/a-limited-book-review-last-founding.html. Shameless self-promotion finished, here is my limited book review.

A Concise History of Japan is a fairly easy read, Brett Walker moves the narrative along at a good clip. If you are looking for an easy history to pad your book count. The pagination is only 304 pages and 15 chapters so it is a really easy read (chapter lengths average only about 20 pages per chapter).

The following quote sums up the philosophy of the book. Focusing on the big picture of history or as the French say Longue Duree (literally Long duration). This term Longue Duree is also a historical term coined in the 1960s to describe the long view of history, attempting to see all the complexities of history. The perspective has gained favor again in the 21^st century especially in the context of environmental history.

"...context of the historical longue duree, one lesson of environmental history is that the physical stage on which our past unfolds is unstable and dynamic, just like the human societies it supports and sustains. But climate change threatens to amplify that transformative process several fold.

That being said, this book is not an environmental history per say. Rather, this book is what I imagine history should look like in the twenty-first century, as ice sheets and glaciers melt and sea levels and storm intensities rise." - Brett L. Walker, A Concise History of Japan (xvii)

It's “not an environmental history”, but you can tell that is what he wanted to write. My biggest complaint of the book is with its organization of the book. The author will be going through the Empire and Imperial Democracy, 1905-1931 (Chapter 12) and then BAM! He gives three whole paragraphs on the "legacy" of over fishing and whale hunting into the 21^st century (227-229). Call me old fashioned but if the chapter title says “1905-1931” than you should focus on “1905-1931.” This bit would have been better suited later in the book or maybe a complete reorganization to incorporate more environmental history themes.  As the book reads now, it is as if the author copied and pasted some last minute additions into the original manuscript. There are other instances where the organization goes askew but this was by far the most noticeable.

There are some redundancies and I wish the author had given more definitions, even if it was only in the glossary. I suppose defining everything would have made it less concise and more introductory. These are my only gripes about the book, I found it interesting and helpful. I was looking for a quick history to bolster my understanding of Japanese history and this was a good choice.

Adventures in Herodotus

My goal was to read a list of classic and famous historians in chronological order. I called this list my practice grad-school (I’ll have to write a blog post about). What better historian to start with, than the Father of History himself, Herodotus!  I love history and have really enjoyed reading Herodotus’ The Histories but I didn’t know what I was getting myself into.  I did not have any background in Greek history, and Herodotus can be a little disorienting, so here is a post of what I did to help get through one of the greatest works in history.

First off, Herodotus doesn't write like we write today so get ready! Herodotus will frequently interrupt himself with background narrative or geographical/ethnographical info, all of it is super interesting but a bit jarring. Classicists call these interruptions “digressions.” In Book IV, Herodotus describes Dareios’ campaign against the Scythians from paragraph 1-4 then Herodotus interrupts himself and from paragraphs 5-82 he talks of Scythian culture. Then in paragraph 83 he starts talking of Dareios preparing his campaign again. There are more jarring examples but this is the longest if you don’t count book II.

He also gives a lot of names, people, people's fathers, places, places fathers. Here is what I mean...

“Moreover of the Persians there fell here, besides many others of note, especially two sons of Dareios, Abrocomes and Hyperanthes, born to Dareios of Phratagune the daughter in marriage to Dareios gave also with her all his substance, because she was his only child. 7.224b”

Now if you can read that sentence once and get what the heck he is talking about, you’re a whole lot smarter than I. Granted it was written 2400 years ago and then translated into English. Perhaps I shouldn’t criticize too harshly.

Chronology can also be hard to keep track of if you are not familiar with ancient Greece. Herodotus seems unworried about providing regular dates, of course he didn't know that Christ would be born some 400 years in the future so BC wouldn’t have made any sense to him.  Nor did he realize that he wasn’t living in the “common era,” so “Before the Common Era (BCE)” wouldn’t have occurred to him.  His timelines are all over the place and kind of vague, most coffee table tomes would help keep the chronology strait.  I used "Empires that Shook the World" by Andrew Taylor, it is a typical coffee table book. It has sections on the Athenian Empire (or Delian league) and the Achaimenid Empire (or the Persian Empire), it isn’t a spectacular work but it does have plenty of pictures, timelines, graphs and maps to help guide you through ancient Greece.

I also took advantage of two audio resources, the Open Yale Courses (https://oyc.yale.edu/) they can be found wherever you get your podcasts as well as from the website provided. I listened to Professor Donald Kagan’s Ancient Greece class. I highly recommend it for general knowledge of Greek history. Here is a full bio provided by Yale (https://history.yale.edu/people/donald-kagan).  I also took advantage of my public libraries resources which included The Great Courses’ presentation on “Herodotus.” It is taught by Professor Elizabeth Vandiver. Here is a full bio provided by The Great Courses (https://www.thegreatcourses.com/professors/elizabeth-vandiver/). This has been a great resource for more specific context for The Histories itself.

I hope you enjoy your journey through The Histories.  And when you know your Perses from your Persians, you can go to your friend’s party and when they start praising that 300 movie! You can pull out book VII and say “well Herodotus actually said…,” that may be only my fantasy.

P.S.

If you are interested, my next book on my list is Thucydides! Go figure.

Herodotus. Herodotus: The Histories. New York: Barnes & Nobles Books, 2004.

Taylor, Andrew. Empires That Shook the World. New York: Metro Books, 2008.

Chronicling COVID

Just as the World Wars and the Great Depression defined the 20^th century as we know it; The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the defining events of the 21^st century. Stay at home orders are lightening up and questions about what the pandemic means for policy and personal decisions are coming to the forefront. It is important to chronicle and remember some of the images of the pandemic.

Caution tape to close the playground

The pandemic is not over by any means and here is some pictures that reminded me of that fact today as I took a walk in my neighborhood.