Japan: The Story of a Nation

In this major revision of his classic history of Japan—from the tribally divided state under the leadership of Yamato in the fifth century through centuries of dynastic rule to the death of Emperor Hirohito in 1989—the eminent Harvard historian and former U.S. Ambassador to Japan Edwin O. Reischauer incorporates nearly a decade's worth of new scholarship.

His book is divided into three parts: the first part examines traditional Japan from the early Chinese influences to the flowering of a n...