Description:
This volume, edited by Joan Piggott (University of Southern California, Los Angeles), includes fourteen essays, originally written in Japanese and here interpreted in English. It introduces readers to a broader array of historical and archaeological research on center-periphery relations than has ever before been available to English readers. Each essay has been translated, annotated, and introduced by a specialist who selected it for its invaluable contribution to his or her own work, and who here renders it into English for a non-specialist audience. The book features thirteen newly created maps, and also includes an exhaustive list of sources (including Chinese characters). Together with its readable and well-annotated text, extensive glossary, rich bibliography, and comprehensive index, these combined tools make for a valuable resource to scholars and students interested in premodern Japan. Researchers whose work has been interpreted include Tsude Hiroshi, Kobayashi Yukio, Hara Hidesaburō, Inoue Tatsuo, Takahashi Tomio, Takeda Sachiko, Hotate Michihisa, Morita Tei, Sasaki Muneo, Toda Yoshimi, Miyazaki Yasumitsu, Motoki Yasuo, Ishimoda Shō, and Koyama Yasunori. Scholar-interpreters include Mikael Adolphson, Michiko Aoki, Bruce Batten, Walter Edwards, Karl Friday, Jan Goodwin, Gustav Heldt, and Joan Piggott.
Brief description: Joan R. Piggott is Gordon L. MacDonald Professor of History and director of the Project for Premodern Japan Studies at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
Review Quotes:
Particularly for those interested in the complex and often inaccessible world of Japanese historiography for what the translators label "the classical age." This volume will prove a handy guide.... [It] will allow Anglophone historians a look at the assumptions, methods, and interpretations of our Japanese colleagues in all their intricacy.
-- "Monumenta Nipponica"