Cultural Atlas of Japan

The story of modern Japan is one of dramatic recovery and unparalleled prosperity, which is often described as miraculous.

Japan has one of the most productive economies in the world, contributing 10 per cent of the world’s total goods and services. Modern Japanese society is overwhelmingly urban, middle-class and salaried, with a life expectancy that is the highest in the world.
Contrasting with, but also complementary to, this emphasis on Western values and material success are the enduring traditions of Japanese culture.
Asian mainland, Japan has evolved its own distinct and homogeneous culture, fostered by its insular isolation but frequently subject to penetrating Chinese influence.
The Cultural Atlas of Japan tells the story of that culture, beginning with its debt to geography and its earliest surviving traces as revealed by archaeology. Early chapters cover the introduction of rice-farming and metalworking techniques, the age of the great tombs and the arrival of Buddhism and its assimilation with Shinto. A central section carries the discussion of Japanese culture from ancient times through the aristocratic and feudal ages to the eve of the Meiji restoration in 1868.
The final part is devoted to Japan’s modern century, from the Meiji restoration to the present.
Sections within it examine the experience of Meiji nation-building, industrialization and Westernization, imperialism and colonization, world war, atomic destruction and postwar economic recovery.