Irokawa Daikichi’s work The Culture of the Meiji Period (Amazon) dissects its subject in a much more negative light than others who have studied the same period. While Irokawa understood the benefits of modernization and the Restoration, he also comprehended the cultural sacrifices required for the sake of “bettering Japan.” Unlike studies Keene and Kikue, Irokawa’s is a bottom-up history. He observed the Samurai classes placed his emphasis on the lower classes, the farmers and artisans, whose lives were most completely changed. Irokawa questioned the integrity of the “Restoration” and showed the hardships created Japan’s by governmental changes. He saw the...

Pat Barr’s The Coming of the Barbarians: A Story of Western Settlement in Japan, 1853-1870 (Amazon) tells the coming of Westerners to Japan over a seventeen-year span. Barr’s account begins with the coming of Commodore Matthew Perry and leaves off with Tokyo being opened to foreign trade and residence. Barr concentrates almost completely on the Americans and British. The Dutch are acknowledged only to a small degree, while the French, Prussians, and others are almost completely neglected. The Coming of the Barbarians looks at the political, cultural, and economic ramifications of the increasingly present Westerners. Most of Barr’s characters are British and...

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...