Cantankerous Essays

Cantankerous Essays

Musings of a Disillusioned Japanophile

Throughout his academic career Louis Cullen’s main research interest has been foreign trade - originally that of England, Ireland and France, but from the mid-1990s, his focus turned to Japanese history resulting in his critically acclaimed A history of Japan 1582–1941: Internal and External Worlds. Subsequently, he concentrated on the analysis of archival sources and of the problems they pose for the interpretation of Japanese history: papers on some of these themes and their associated statistical dimensions have appeared in Nichibunken’s Japan Review and are republished here together with a collection of other papers including interpreting Tokugawa history and the knowledge and the use of Japanese by the Dutch on Dejima island.
  • Cover
  • Half Title
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • Dedication
  • Contents
  • Foreword by Shunsuke Katsuta
  • Acknowledgements & Transliteration of Japanese
  • Introduction: The Route to Japanese Trade
  • Part I: Interactions –Ancient and Modern
    • 1. Sakoku, Tokugawa Policy, and the Interpretation of Japanese History
    • 2. Knowledge and Use of Japanese by the Dutchon Dejima Island, Nagasaki
    • 3. Review of James W. White’s Ikki: Social Conflict and Political Protest in Early Modern Japan
    • 4. Gulliver in Japan: Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels
    • 5. Japan in a Changing Asia: Achievements and Opportunities Missed
  • Part II: Statistical Resources of and Interactions with Tokugawa Japan
    • 6. Population Tokugawa Population: The Archival Issues
    • 7. Coastal Trade: Statistics of Tokugawa Coastal Trade and Bakumatsu and Early Meiji Foreign Trade Part 1: Coastal Trade in Tokugawa Times
    • 8. Post-1859 Foreign Trade: Statistics of Tokugawa Coastal Trade and Bakumatsu and Early Meiji Foreign Trade.Part 2: Trade in Bakumatsu and Early Meiji Times.
    • 9. Archives Japanese Archives: Sources for the Study of Tokugawa Administrative and Diplomatic History
    • 10. The Nagasaki Trade of the Tokugawa Era: Archives, Statistics, and Management
  • Notes
  • Glossary
  • Index
  • Back Cover

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