Japan's International Agenda Book

Like the others in this 6 volume set, it is both informative and detailed. Not really meant for the casual reader, as the price makes pretty apparent, for those who wish to seriously study Japanese history, it is excellent.

All the volumes are set up as a series of treatises by respected scholars on specific topics such as religion, economy, culture, foreign relations, etc, with the intent of providing the reader both with an up to date framework of scholarship on the era, and suggest areas where research is still lacking.

This particular volume was quite strong in areas dealing with the development of the medieval Shoen estate, and the development if Daimyo, as well as bringing to light the cultural role of women, shamanism, and the older artistic traditions, such as the blind biwa players that were white-washed out or simply lost in the reshuffle of scholarship beginning in the Meiji era. It had no striking weaknesses, save I did not find particularly convincing the arguments made by H. Paul Varley that Zen should be removed from a prime role in considering many of the artistic developments of the day, or his associated interpretations of poems, and concepts such as wabi, sabi, or mugen.