Rise Of Modern Japan - Tapa dura

This book covers the history of Japan from the mid-19th century up to the present day. It charts the spectacular rise of a society which leapt in little more than a generation from late feudal to early industrial forms of organisation ¿ an exceptionally disturbing experience for the Japanese as they left behind the traditional and Asian and moved towards the modern and Western. It examines the violent thirties and an Empire won and lost between 1937 and 1945, and investigates the major changes after 1945, including the astonishing economic growth achieved since the 1950s.

Born in 1919, W.G. Beasley learnt Japanese at the U.S. Navy Language School, Boulder, Colorado, and first visited Japan as a naval officer in 1945, serving in the British mission in Tokyo during the following winter. He returned many times to Japan to carry out research at Tokyo University. From 1954 to 1983 he was Professor of the History of the Far East at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He is a former vice-president of the British Academy and one of the very few non-Japanese members of the Japan Academy. He was given the CBE in 1980 and the Order of the Rising Sun in 1983. The Modern History of Japan was published in 1963 and went through three editions before being retitled The Rise of Modern Japan in 1990.