The Shortest History of Japan - Shortest Histories 15

Zen, haiku, sushi, anime, manga over the past 150 years, Japanese culture has enriched Western life, but for centuries the shoguns closed the country to the West. After Japan opened, it embraced Western culture wholesale. Both these strategies enabled it to avoid colonisation and to retain its traditions.

With a novelists eye for colour, Lesley Downer takes the reader through the great sweep of Japanese history, focusing on the dramatic stories of larger-than-life individuals from emperors descended from the Sun Goddess to warlords, samurai, merchants, court ladies, women warriors, geisha, and businessmen who shaped this extraordinary modern society.