Japanese Culture / Edition 4

by Paul Varley

Overview

For nearly three decades Japanese Culture has garnered high praise as an accurate and well-written introduction to Japanese history and culture. This widely used undergraduate text is now available in a new edition. Thoroughly updated, the fourth edition includes expanded sections on numerous topics, among which are samurai values, Zen Buddhism, the tea ceremony, Confucianism in the Tokugawa period, the story of the forty-seven ronin, Mito scholarship in the early nineteenth century, and mass culture and comics in contemporary times.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780824821524
Publisher:	University of Hawaii Press, The
Publication date:	03/01/2000
Series:	Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia Un
Edition description:	REVISED
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	398,803
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.00(d)
Lexile:	1550L (what's this?)

About the Author

Author: Varley, Paul;
Paul Varley is emeritus professor at Columbia University and Sen Soshitsu XV Professor of Japanese Cultural History at the University of Hawai'i.

Editorial Reviews

Though many books on Japanese culture have appeared in recent years, none has yet matched Varley's for the combined breadth and depth of detail and for his skill at conjuring up the zeitgeist of each period of Japanese history.

New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies

This is a masterpiece of much in little space. It neatly surveys over 2,000 years of the arts, religion, and cultural peculiarities (e.g., the tea ceremony) of one of the most cultivated of nations. It leaves virtually no major individual, religious sect, genre and style of visual art, form of literary expression, variety of theater, or influence of extra-Japanese origin unconsidered. It nonetheless admirably retains its focus, ignoring the temptation to relate history that doesn't impinge on cultural developments. What's more, Varley writes superbly lucid prose. . . . A superior one-volume introduction to Japanese culture.

Booklist

This is a masterpiece of much in little space. It neatly surveys over 2,000 years of the arts, religion, and cultural peculiarities (e.g., the tea ceremony) of one of the most cultivated of nations. It leaves virtually no major individual, religious sect, genre and style of visual art, form of literary expression, variety of theater, or influence of extra-Japanese origin unconsidered. It nonetheless admirably retains its focus, ignoring the temptation to relate history that doesn't impinge on cultural developments. What's more, Varley writes superbly lucid prose. . . . A superior one-volume introduction to Japanese culture.

Booklist