China in the Tokugawa World

This engaging book challenges the traditional notion that Japan was an isolated nation cut off from the outside world in the modern era. This familiar story of seclusion, argues master historian Marius B. Jansen, results from viewing the period soley in terms of Japan's ties with the West, at the expense of its relationship with closer Asian neighbors. Taking as his focus the port of Nagasaki and its thriving trade with China in the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries, Jansen not only corrects this misperception but offers an important analysis of the impact of the China trade on Japan's cultural, economic, and political life.

Jansen Marius B. :

Marius B. Jansen was Professor of Japanese History at Princeton University. He was the author of Sakamoto Ryoma and the Meiji Restoration.

This is a fascinating and informative study full of delightful vignettes that provide us with a highly textured profile of Tokugawa Japan...[It] is filled with important insights, good humor, and good sense.

Jansen, a leading authority in the field, skillfully offers a concise overview of Japan as an integral part of the cultural milieu of Chinese civilization. His masterly prose style adds to the enjoyment of the work.

[China in the Tokugawa World] constitutes the only specific survey in English of the Japanese contacts with, and images of, China from the late 16th to the late 19th century and is written by a scholar who here, not for the first time, proves that he possesses a rare ability to present in a highly accessible style and within a broad historical framework the most interesting findings of recent Japanese and Western research.