Cambridge History of Japan: Volume 1, Ancient Japan Book

This is an excellent survey of ancient Japanese history, which both lays a groundwork of understanding for further study, and proposes a few useful thoughts of it's own-this is especially true of the last chapter, which makes a fairly convincing arguement for development of linealism, vitalism and optimism as driving forces in early Japanese development, and shows how contrary they are to the typical themes of mainland East Asia, especially China. There seem to be few factual misteps, if any, the only noteworthy one which I came accross was a claim in the chapter on music and art which stated the Chinese zither that came over in the 7th century differed from Japanese Koto in that a Koto had either 4 or 5 strings, as opposed to the Chinese zither's 7 strings-the Chinese zither originally had 5 as well, representing the five elements, the other two were added to commemorate the deaths of a pair of heroic figures who's names escape me at the moment. This is only relevant because the zither has ties to pagan, shamanistic, practices in both Japan and China, and the Shantung penninsula was one of the last holdouts of commonly practiced forms of that sort of shamanism, which suggests a possibility of early transfer. To be honest though, it was probably overlooked as being irrelevant, rather than a true oversight.

More importantly, the book does an excellent job of avoiding the two greatest pitfalls of ancient history-assuming ancient sources are incorrect without verifying it to be true, and stating things which are theories as though they are proven. It will probably be a little dry for an average history buff, but if you want it either as a reference, or if you intend to put serious effort into studying the subject, this is an excellent choice.