Abstract

CONTEMPORARY JAPAN 2022, VOL. 34, NO. 1, 106–124 BOOK REVIEWS by Kitaoka Shinichi. Translated by Robert D. Eldridge with Graham Leonard, London, Routledge, 2018, 274 Pages, 32.99 GBP (Paperback), ISBN 9781138337671 This is a cogent political history of modern Japan written by Kitaoka Shinichi, a leading Japanese diplomatic and political historian and Professor Emeritus of The University of Tokyo and Rikkyo University. The book dates back to a textbook Kitaoka originally produced in 1989 for the Open University of Japan. It was published by Yūhikaku Publishing in 2011 as Nihon Seijishi: Gaikō to Kenryoku, was reprinted and expanded in 2017, and is now available in English thanks to the skillful and lucid translation by Robert D. Eldridge and Graham Leonard. The Political History of Modern Japan is everything we have come to expect of Kitaoka’s work – a careful, judicious, and well-organized analysis of Japan’s modern history. It dives much deeper into political history than other English-language textbooks on modern Japan and is replete with insights the author has gained from his long years of study. The Political History of Modern Japan explores the period from the end of the Tokugawa era until the end of the Cold War.