Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Abbreviations
Introduction

PART ONE: BACKGROUND
1. Geography and Climate
2. The Human Legacy
3. Early Modern Japan: An Overview

PART TWO: THE ERA OF PACIFICATION,
1570-1630
4. The Politics of Pacification
5. The Economics of Pacification
6. Culture and Pacification

PART THREE: THE TOKUGAWA HEYDAY,
1630-1710
7. The Politics of Order
8. Economic Growth and Change
9. The Blossoming of Political Thought
10. Aesthetics and the Rise of U kiyo
11. Ecological Trends: The Period of Growth

PART FOUR: STRUGGLING TO STAND STILL,
1710-1790
12. Ecological Trends: The Period of Stasis (I)
13. Ecological Trends: The Period of Stasis (II)
14. Yoshimune and the Kyoho Reform
15. The Politics of Stasis, 17 51-1790
16. Thought and Society: The Eighteenth Century
17. The Later Years of Early Tokugawa
Arts and Letters

PART FIVE: THE EROSION OF STABILITY,
1790-1850
18. Later Tokugawa Arts and Letters
19. Thought and Society, 1790-1850
20. The Best of Times, 1790-1825
21. The Worst of Times, 1825-1850

Epilogue: Breaking Up and Breaking Out,
1850-1870

Appendixes
A. Year Periods (Nengo), 1570-1868
B. Dates of Tokugawa Shogun
c. Early Modern Emperors
Mentioned in the Text

Glossary of Japanese Terms
Suggestions for Further Reading in English
Index

About the Author

Conrad Totman is Professor of History at Yale University and the author of Japan Before Perry: A Short History (California, 1981) and The Green Archipelago: Forestry in Pre-Industrial Japan (California, 1989).

Reviews

"Indispensable. . . . Beginning with the reunification of the country in the mid-16th century and continuing to the final disintegration of the Tokugawa order in the second half of the 19th century, Totman reviews all the major elements of Japanese historical development, offering a tremendous wealth of information in language that is clear, concise, and easy to comprehend."--C. L. Yates, "Choice"