Inventing Japan: 1853-1964

For those not inclined to read Marius Jansen's well-nigh definitive 800-page masterwork "The Making of Modern Japan," this very readable short book gives the neophyte an excellent overview of modern Japanese history. Buruma does as good a job as can be done in such a slim volume (a few trivial factual errors aside).

Buruma sets out with the ambitious task of summarising a century of Japanese history - and a turbulent century at that - in less than 150 pages. Covering the Meiji restoration, the militarism of the 1930s, war, defeat and reconstruction could (and for many authors has) take volumes, but Buruma manages his challenge extremely well. This is not necessarily a book for a Japan expert - in so short a work, necessarily the discussion... Read Full Review

It's difficult enough to write a comprehensive and readable modern history of a large nation-state like Japan, but it's a far more onerous task to attempt to do so in less than 200 pages. Ian Buruma's 177-page book manages to do so with an excellence rarely found in volumes three or four times the size."Inventing Japan" traces the history of Japan from the landing of Commodore Perry's black ships in 1853 to the 1964 Olympics,... Read Full Review

In contrast to Dr. Noguchi, I think Mr. Buruma has, again, shone some well-needed light into those recesses of Japan's past many here would rather forget.His ability to weave the cultural, intellectual, and political threads of Japan's modern history into a lucid text is nonpareil, particularly in such a brief work.Rather than bemoan the recent revelatory books by Blix, Dower & Co., Dr. Noguchi might be wiser to re-think... Read Full Review

The Modern Library Chronicles series has struck again and have come up with another winner. Ian Buruma's Inventing Japan (1853 - 1964) is a valuable edition to this marvelous series. The author uses the short format effectively and efficiently as he demonstrates Japan's growing and changing sense of self since violently being pulled out of isolation in the middle of the nineteenth century. He even provides a brief look... Read Full Review