Kikue Yamakawa’s Women of the Mito Domain: Recollections of Samurai Family Life (Amazon) is very informative about the social and cultural lives of the residents, especially the women, of the Mito domain prior to the Meiji Restoration. The book relies primarily on testimony from Yamakawa’s mother about her childhood. The work takes the reader from the experiences of young girls to life during marriage and into later adulthood. Yamakawa has also done extensive work on the period, gathering information or situations her mother could not have experienced or had access to. Some of the sections added to this addition of the...

The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa (Amazon) is both engaging and interesting throughout the work. Fukuzawa’s determination for the betterment of both himself and Japan is pervasive. This drive and his goals are especially evident in his “Encouragement of Learning” and can be summed up in the following excerpt: “The important thing for everyone for the present is that he should regulate his conduct according to humanity, and apply himself earnestly to learning in order to absorb a wide knowledge and to develop abilities worthy of his position.” At times one finds it difficult to tell how much influence Yukichi Fukuzawa had...

John Brewer's A Sentimental Murder: Love and Madness in the Eighteenth Century (Amazon) discusses the brutal public murder of Martha Ray by her admirer James Hackman in April 1779. The truth behind the story is hard to decipher. Some correspondence existed between Ray and Hackman, but the depth of their relationship must be left to speculation. Martha Ray was the constant mistress and companion of Lord Sandwich (after whom the snack is named); over the sixteen years of their relationship, Ray bore sandwich nine children, of whom five were living at the time of her death. On the night of her death Martha...