Japan ― History and Culture from Classical to Cool

Japan: History and Culture from Classical to Cool provides a historical account of Japan’s elite and popular cultures from premodern to modern periods. Drawing on the most up-to-date scholarship across numerous disciplines, Nancy K. Stalker presents the key historical themes, cultural trends, and religious developments throughout Japanese history. Focusing on everyday life and ordinary consumption, this is the first textbook of its kind to explore both imperial and colonial culture and offer expanded content on issues pertaining to gender and sexuality. Organized into fourteen chronological and thematic chapters, this text explores some of the most notable and engaging aspects of Japanese life and is well suited for undergraduate classroom use.

Nancy K. Stalker is the Soshitsu Sen XV Distinguished Professor of Traditional Japanese Culture and History in the Department of History at the University of Hawai?i at Manoa. She is the author of Prophet Motive: Deguchi Onisaburo, Oomoto, and the Rise of a New Religion in Imperial Japan and the editor of Devouring Japan: Global Perspectives on Japanese Culinary Identity.