Lesley downer biography of barack
&#;Downer covers a vast amount of territory… shamans and shoguns, geishas and courtesans, samurai warriors and hardheaded businessmen… This concise volume brilliantly fills the gaps in our knowledge.’ NICKRENNISON, The Mail on Sunday
Japan is a country of islands, strung like a necklace around the Asian mainland…
Ever since US Commodore Matthew Perry forced Japan to open its borders in , the culture of this remarkable and distant archipelago has enriched western life. At the same time the country has embraced foreign institutions from baseball to barber shops. Yet for centuries under the rule of the shoguns, the islands were largely sealed off from the outside world. In charting a course between openness and insularity, Japan has found a way to become ultra-modern while breathing new life into its own unique traditions.
In The Shortest History of Japan, Lesley Downer brings an expert storyteller’s eye to the sweep of Japanese history. Here are the emperors and warlords, the samurai and women warriors, the merchants and geisha who shaped this extraordinary modern society.
From the hunter-gatherers who fashioned the world’s first pots to the novel-writing ladies of the eleventh-century Heian court, from the devastation of Hiroshima to today’s economic and cultural powerhouse, this is an indispensable, riveting history of the land of the rising sun.
&#;Downer covers a vast amount of territory… shamans and shoguns, geishas and courtesans, samurai warriors and hardheaded businessmen… This concise volume brilliantly fills the gaps in our knowledge.’ NICKRENNISON, The Mail on Sunday
Japan is a country of islands, strung like a necklace around the Asian mainland…
Ever since US Commodore Matthew Perry forced Japan to open its borders in , the culture of this remarkable and distant archipelago has enriched western life. At the same time the country has embraced foreign institutions from baseball to barber shops. Yet for centuries under the rule of the shoguns, the islands were largely sealed off from the outside world. In charting a course between openness and insularity, Japan has found a way to become ultra-modern while breathing new life into its own unique traditions.
In The Shortest History of Japan, Lesley Downer brings an expert storyteller’s eye to the sweep of Japanese history. Here are the emperors and warlords, the samurai and women warriors, the merchants and geisha who shaped this extraordinary modern society.
From the hunter-gatherers who fashioned the world’s first pots to the novel-writing ladies of the eleventh-century Heian court, from the devastation of Hiroshima to today’s economic and cultural powerhouse, this is an indispensable, riveting history of the land of the rising sun.