Students should select a topic from the list below (or alternatively, they may determine their own with the professor's permission). After reading the books, please complete a comparative book review of 6-7 pages (no more and no less) in length, typed, double-spaced, with standard one-inch margins and 11 or 12 pitch font. You should spend about two pages (one page each) describing the books (what are they about?), two pages analyzing the books as historical sources, and two pages comparing the two books. The comparison should deal with how the authors each treat the subject, the types of sources they use, and their interpretations.

Grading will take into effect: 1) composition (clarity, style, spelling, punctuation, use of accepted English grammar); 2) depth of analysis.

Please type your name in the top right-hand corner of page 1 of your review, double space space, and then type the topic and sources used.
For example:

                                                                                                                                                UMBC Student NameTopic #1 [Village Society]
Author of book #1. Title. Place of publication: Publisher, date of publication.
Author of book #2. Title. Place of publication: Publisher, date of publication.

Some important reminders:
1) underline all foreign words except proper nouns not found.in Webster's Dictionary (e.g., no need to underline "shogun")
2) AVOID the use of colloquialisms, slang, or contractions
3) AVOID excessive use of quotations--use only when necessary to make a point, not as "filler." When you use a quote (especially an extended one) be sure to explain its meaning. In most cases, you cannot expect the quote to speak for itself. Remember, "to avoid charges of plagiarism, you must footnote any direct quotation, any paraphrase, and any idea, interpretation, or analytical point that you get from a primary or secondary source. You should also footnote any information that is not 'common knowledge.'" (from University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Department of History Style Sheet--if you would like to read this document  in its entirety, it is available from the History department office or on the History Department web page . Since this written exercise, in most cases, asks you to analyze only two sources, you may use abbreviated textual references: e.g., (Totman, EMJ, 52) or (Katsu, Musui's Story, 43).
 
 

1. Village society (select 2):
William Chambliss. Chiaraijima Village: Land Tenure, Taxation, and Local Trade, 1811-1884.
Thomas C. Smith. The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan.
Herman Ooms. Tokugawa Village Practice. Class, Status, Power, Law.

2. Economic change:
William B. Hauser. Economic Institutional Change in Tokugawa Japan: Osaka and the Kinai Cotton Trade.
AND
Susan B. Hanley and Kozo Yamamura. Economic and Demographic Change in Preindustrial Japan.
or
Susan B. Hanley. Everyday Things in Premodern Japan. The Hidden Legacy of Material Culture.

3. Foreign trade and diplomacy:
Ronald P. Toby. State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan.
Etsuko Hai-jin Kang, Diplomacy and Ideology in Japanese-Korean Relations (1997)

4. The Yoshiwara (Edo pleasure quarters):
Cecelia Segawa Seigle. Yoshiwara. The Glittering World of the Japanese Courtesan.
Elisabeth de Sabato Swinton. The Women of the Pleasure Quarter. Japanese Paintings and Prints of the Floating World.

5. Cities and Urban Life (select 2):
James McClain. Kanazawa: A Seventeenth-Century Japanese Castle Town.
Gary Leupp. Servants, Shophands, and Laborers in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan.
Jinnai Hidenobu. Tokyo. A Shapial Anthopology.
James McClain, ed. Osaka.
Tetsuo Najita. Visions of Virtue in Tokugawa Japan. The Kaitokudo Merchant Academy of Osaka.

6. Education:
Ronald P. Dore. Education in Tokugawa Japan.
Richard Rubinger. Private Academies of the Tokugawa Period.

7. Confucian and Other Scholars (select two):
Joseph J. Spae. Ito Jinsai: A Philosopher, Educator and Sinologist of the Tokugawa Period.
Olof G. Lidin. The Life of Ogyû Sorai, A Tokugawa Confucian Philosopher.
Mary Evelyn Tucker. Moral and Spiritual Cultivation in Japanese Neo Confucianism. The Life and Thought of Kaibara Ekken (1630-1714).
Shigeru Matsumoto. Motoori Norinaga, 1730-1801.

8. The Domain:
Luke Roberts, Mercantilism in a Japanese Domain: The Merchant Origins of Economic Nationalism in 18th-Century Tosa (1998).
Mark Ravina, Land and Lordship in Early Modern Japan (1999)
 

9. Tokugawa Ideology and Thought (select 2):
J. Victor Koschmann. The Mito Ideology: Discourse, Reform, and Insurrection in Late Tokugawa Japan.
Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi. Anti-foreignism and Western Learning in Early Modern Japan.
Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi. Japanese Loyalism Reconstructed.
Harry D. Harootunian. Toward Restoration: The Growth of Political Consciousness in Tokugawa Japan.

10. Samurai Autobiographies and Biographies
Joyce Ackroyd, trans. Told Round A Brushwood Fire: The Autobiography of Arai Hakuseki.
Fukuzawa Yukichi. The Autobiography of Fukuzawa Yukichi.
 

11. The Dutch Presence (select two):
Grant Goodman. The Dutch Impact on Japan, 1600-1853 (1967) or his revised version as Japan: The Dutch Experience (1986, amazingly republished without revision under a new title, Japan and the Dutch) (2000)
Donald Keene. The Japanese Discovery of Europe: Honda Toshiaki and Other Discoverers, 1720-1830.
Charles Boxer. Jan Compaigne in Japan. An Essay on the Cultural, Artistic and Scientific Influences Exercised by the Hollanders in Japan From the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Centuries.

12. Christianity
George Elison. Deus Destroyed: The Image of Christianity in Early Modern Japan.
Andrew C. Ross. A Vision Betrayed. The Jesuits in Japan and China, 1542-1742.
or
Charles Boxer. The Christian Century in Japan.
or
Neil S. Fujita's, Japan's Encounter with Christianity (1991)

13. Wood-block Prints and Artists (select 2):
James Michener. The Floating World: The Story of Japanese Prints.
Richard Lane. Masters of the Japanese Print: Their World and Their Work.
Timon Screech. Sex and the Floating World. Erotic Images in Japan, 1700 1820.

15. Kabuki Theater:
James R. Brandon, William P. Malm, and Donald Shively. Studies in Kabuki: Its Acting, Music and Historical Context.
James R. Brandon, ed. Chushingura: Studies in Kabuki and the Puppet Theater.

16. Late-Tokugawa Figures and the Meiji Restoration (pick 2):
H. Van Straelen. Yoshida Shoin: Forerunner of the Meiji Restoration.
Marius Jansen. Sakamoto Ryoma and the Meiji Restoration.
Anne Walthall. The Weak Body of a Useless Woman. Matsuo Taseko and the Meiji Restoration.
Charles Yates. Saigo Takamori.

17. Choshu and the Meiji Restoration:
Albert Craig. Choshu in the Meiji Restoration, 1853-1868.
Thomas M. Huber. The Revolutionary Origins of Modern Japan.

18. The Meiji Restoration:
W.G. Beasley. The Meiji Restoration.
Conrad Totman. The Collapse of the Tokugawa Bakufu, 1862-1868.
or
Paul Akamatsu. Meiji 1868: Revolution and Counterrevolution in Japan.
 

19. Saikaku's Views of Samurai:
Tales of Samurai Honor. (trans. C.A. Callahan)
The Great Mirror of Male Love (trans. Paul Gordon Schalow) (sections 1-4 only)

20. Way of the Samurai (shidô):
Tsunemoto Yamamoto. Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai.
or
William Scott Wilson, ed., Ideals of the Samurai: Writings of Japanese Warriors.
and
Eiko Ikegami. The Taming of the Samurai. Honorific Individualism and the Making of Modern Japan.
Arthur Braverman. Warrior of Zen. The Diamong-hard Wisdom Mind of Suzuki Sh®san.

21. Peasant Protest:
Herbert Bix. Peasant Protest in Feudal Japan, 1590-1884.
Anne Walthall. Social Conflict and Popular Culture in Eighteenth Century Japan.
or
William Kelly. Deference and Defiance in Nineteenth Century Japan.

22. The Opening of Japan:
Roger Pineau, ed. The Japan Expedition 1852-1854. The Personal Journal of Commodore Matthew C. Perry.
George Henry Preble. The Opening of Japan: A Diary of Discovery in the Far East, 1853-1856.
 

23. Foreign Accounts of Late Tokugawa Japan (select two):
Henry C. J. Heusken. Japan Journal, 1855-1861.
Sir Rutherford Alcock. The Capital of the Tycoon: A Narrative of Three Years' Residence in Japan (2 vols.)
Sir Ernest Satow. A Diplomat in Japan.
Townsend Harris. The Complete Journal of Townsend Harris.

24. Foreign Accounts of Mid-Tokugawa Japan:
Englebert Kaempfer. A History of Japan...1690-1692 (vols. 2-3)
AND
Philipp Franz von Siebold. Manners and Customs of the Japanese.
or
V. M. Golovnin. Memoirs of a Captivity in Japan (3 vols.).

25. Tokugawa political reformers:
John W. Hall. Tanuma Okitsugu, 1719-1788: Forerunner of Modern Japan.
Herman Ooms. Charismatic Bureaucrat: A Political Biography of Matsudaira Sadanobu.

26. Tokugawa Ieyasu
Conrad Totman. Tokugawa Ieyasu: Shogun.
Arthur L. Sadler. The Maker of Modern Japan: The Life of Tokugawa Ieyasu.

27. Sexuality (select 2)
Gary Leupp. Male Colors. The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan .
Timon Screech. Sex and the Floating World. Erotic Images in Japan, 1700 1820.
Sumie Jones, ed., Sexuality and Edo Culture.

28. "Dutch Studies" (Rangaku)
Donald Keene, The Japanese Discovery of Europe
Timon Screech, The Western Scientific Gaze