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Oda Nobunaga (1534-82) is one of the best-known figures in Japanese history. However, no standard biography existed on this warlord who was the prime mover behind Japan's military and political unification in the late 16th century. Japonius Tyrannus fills the gap in our knowledge about Nobunaga, and the chronological narrative providesa thorough analysis of his political and military career.
Oda Nobunaga (1534-82), one of the best-known figures in Japanese history, dominated the political scene in Japan between 1568 and 1582 as he gradually conquered the country's central region and initiated a process of military and political unification. However, no standard biography existed on this warlord. Japonius Tyrannus fills the gap in our knowledge about Nobunaga. The chronological narrative provides a thorough analysis of his political and military career. " -- a solid, richly detailed political biography." -- Conrad Totman in Monumenta Nipponica
Shinch?-K? ki<, the work translated here into English under the title “The Chronicle of Lord Nobunaga,” is the most important source on the career of one of the best known figures in all of Japanese history—Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582), the first of the “Three Heroes” who unified Japan after a century of fragmentation and internecine bloodshed. The other two of the triad, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598) and Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616), also make frequent appearances in this chronicle, playing prominent although clearly subordinate roles. So the chronicle also is an important source on their early careers, as it is on a constellation of other actors in Japan’s sixteenth-century drama. The chronicle’s author, ?ta Gy?ichi, was Nobunaga’s former retainer and an eyewitness of some of the events he describes. He completed his work about the year 1610.
A first look at gunpowder's revolutionary impact on China's role in global history The Chinese invented gunpowder and began exploring its military uses as early as the 900s, four centuries before the technology passed to the West. But by the early 1800s, China had fallen so far behind the West in gunpowder warfare that it was easily defeated by Britain in the Opium War of 1839–42. What happened? In The Gunpowder Age, Tonio Andrade offers a compelling new answer, opening a fresh perspective on a key question of world history: why did the countries of western Europe surge to global importance starting in the 1500s while China slipped behind? Historians have long argued that gunpowder weapons...
"A book about the samurai from their origins in the eighth and ninth centuries until their demise in the mid-nineteenth century. It dispels a lot of myths about the samurai one might encounter in popular culture. It describes samurai life, work, philosophy, and warfare as it changed over time. It covers what samurai were doing when they weren't fighting. For example, samurai who engaged in commerce, formed gangs, begged, and even taught samurai etiquette and martial arts to non-samurai. The first half of the book tends to focus on warriors, some of whom were essentially aristocrats; warrior families who looked to non-warrior nobles for models of behaviour, lifestyle, and politics. It traces ...
"Wm. Theodore de Bary offers a selection of essential readings from his immensely popular anthologies Sources of Chinese Tradition, Sources of Korean Tradition, and Sources of Japanese Tradition so readers can experience a concise but no less comprehensive portrait of the social, intellectual, and religious traditions of East Asia."--
In 1585, at the height of Jesuit missionary activity in Japan, which was begun by Francis Xavier in 1549, Luis Frois, a long-time missionary in Japan, drafted the earliest systematic comparison of Western and Japanese cultures. This book constitutes the first critical English-language edition of the 1585 work, the original of which was discovered in the Royal Academy of History in Madrid after the Second World War. The book provides a translation of the text, which is not a continuous narrative, but rather more than 600 distichs or brief couplets on subjects such as gender, child rearing, religion, medicine, eating, horses, writing, ships and seafaring, architecture, and music and drama. In addition, the book includes a substantive introduction and other editorial material to explain the background and also to make comparisons with present-day Japanese life. Overall, the book represents an important primary source for understanding a particularly challenging period of history and its connection to contemporary Europe and Japan.
A treasure trove of diplomatics and epistolary stylistics from late 16th- and early 17th-century Japan
The world's most comprehensive, well documented, and well illustrated book on this subject. With extensive index. 351 color photos or illustrations, Free of charge in digital format on Google Books,