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Michael Wert's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Michael Wert recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Michael Wert's favorite book recommendations of all time.

1

Lust, Commerce, and Corruption

An Account of What I Have Seen and Heard, by an Edo Samurai

By 1816, Japan had recovered from the famines of the 1780s and moved beyond the political reforms of the 1790s. Despite persistent economic and social stresses, the country seemed to be approaching a new period of growth. The idea that the shogunate would not last forever was far from anyone's mind.

Yet, in that year, an anonymous samurai author completed one of the most detailed critiques of Edo society known today. Writing as Buyo Inshi, "a retired gentleman of Edo," he expresses a profound despair with the state of the realm and with people's behavior and attitudes. He sees...
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Recommended by Michael Wert, and 1 others.

Michael WertThis is a book that was very, very famous in Japanese for a long time. Everyone and their brother cited it as an example of warriors observing society around them, the changes that were happening, and bemoaning those changes. But for the longest time, if you didn’t read Japanese, you couldn’t use it. Now, finally, a group of scholars has translated it and it came out a few years ago. Again, it’s... (Source)

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2
A series of picaresque adventures set against the backdrop of a Japan still closed off from the rest of the world, Musui's Story recounts the escapades of samurai Katsu Kokichi. As it depicts Katsu stealing, brawling, indulging in the pleasure quarters, and getting the better of authorities, it also provides a refreshing perspective on Japanese society, customs, economy, and human relationships. From childhood Katsu was given to mischief. He ran away from home, once at thirteen, making his way as a beggar on the great trunk road between Edo and Kyoto, and again at twenty, posing... more
Recommended by Michael Wert, and 1 others.

Michael WertThis is a wonderful autobiography from the 19th century of a really low-ranking, dirty warrior. He’s essentially recording his ne’er do well ways for his son—getting into fights, partying, being arrested. Sometimes he’s a sword seller—non-warriors sometimes liked to imitate the image of the samurai so he would appraise swords for commoners and buy and sell for them—sometimes he’s scamming people... (Source)

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3
Alternate attendance (sankin kotai) was one of the central institutions of Edo-period (1603-1868) Japan and one of the most unusual examples of a system of enforced elite mobility in world history. It required the daimyo to divide their time between their domains and the city of Edo, where they waited upon the Tokugawa shogun. Based on a prodigious amount of research in both published and archival primary sources, Tour of Duty renders alternate attendance as a lived experience, for not only the daimyo but also the samurai retainers who accompanied them. Beyond exploring the nature of travel... more
Recommended by Michael Wert, and 1 others.

Michael WertSpecialists, students—in fact anyone who has passing knowledge of Tokugawa Japan—knows about the tour of duty, this alternate attendance system, but no one had really gotten into the details of how it actually functioned. This is a book that gets into those details and again, for me, it’s a book where I can never go back. (Source)

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4
Modern Japan offers us a view of a highly developed society with its own internal logic. Eiko Ikegami makes this logic accessible to us through a sweeping investigation into the roots of Japanese organizational structures. She accomplishes this by focusing on the diverse roles that the samurai have played in Japanese history. From their rise in ancient Japan, through their dominance as warrior lords in the medieval period, and their subsequent transformation to quasi-bureaucrats at the beginning of the Tokugawa era, the samurai held center stage in Japan until their abolishment after the... more
Recommended by Michael Wert, and 1 others.

Michael WertShe’s looking at the Tokugawa period from the 17th through the 19th centuries and asking, how does the warrior regime function? What does it mean to be a warrior? And how do we go from having warriors who were very violent in warfare during the Warring States period of the 16th century into the not-so-violent types of this later period? How do we tame them, essentially? (Source)

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5
Performing the Great Peace offers a cultural approach to understanding the politics of the Tokugawa period, at the same time deconstructing some of the assumptions of modern national historiographies. Deploying the political terms uchi (inside), omote (ritual interface), and naisho (informal negotiation)--all commonly used in the Tokugawa period--Luke Roberts explores how daimyo and the Tokugawa government understood political relations and managed politics in terms of spatial autonomy, ritual submission, and informal negotiation.



Roberts suggests as well that a layered...
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Recommended by Michael Wert, and 1 others.

Michael WertIt’s the Tokugawa period, which is the last warrior regime in Japan and lasts from the 17th through the 19th centuries. It’s about how the warrior regime is able to maintain relative peace in Japan, despite the fact that there’s some 260 relatively autonomous mini-domains throughout the country. (Source)

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