Great re pre 19th century, but

Great re pre 19th century, but weak after that. strong on art, religion, literature etc

8 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Toe-koo-guh-wuh

I like how it’s constructed but it took me multiple repeated rewinds to understand he was mispronouncing Tokugawa so painfully it made my teeth ache

5 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Underwhelming?

A trove of interesting facts, but it feels incomplete. The narrator has a good cadence, but his Japanese seems severely lacking. I listened to the Great Courses series of lectures on Japan before this, and I feel I was much better able to pay attention to that.

4 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Content great - pronunciation not so much

The narrator’s erratic japanese word pronunciation - and complete lack of a director or production guidance on the matter - didn’t destroy the book for me. It definitely detracted.
Words like Tokugawa were read as “To-KUU-ga-wa”.
Ka-bu-KEEEY. There are countless other examples.
It led me to distrust his pronunciation of words I didn’t know and question words I did know when his pronunciation actually matched.
Good in depth writing. Perspectives I hadn’t considered. Loved the writing. Narration was great EXCEPT for erratic Japanese word/place name/etc pronunciation. And it’s such an easy fix.
It’s as irksome as listening to a book on George Washington and hearing it said over and over and over as “Wa-SHEENG-tun.

17 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Dull and uninformative

The problem with this book is the author clearly cares more about japanese art and poetry than he
does about Japanese history. Japanese civil wars, nobunaga who seemed to be their version of Julius Ceasar, their wars with korea? He will spend less time on any of these subjects than he will on explaining Japanese kabuki theater. You won't learn anymore about Japanesee history than if you go read about it on Wikipedia and it will be done in a tenth of the time.

The narrator was fine, but couldn't do much as the content itself read like a textbook going by the numbers with little actual interest or passion. Which based of the introduction that is exactly what it is

2 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Good Synopsis on Japan’s History.

I have been studying the history and culture of Japan quite extensively for about two years now, and this book is a great start for anyone curious about the history of Japan. This audiobook hits all of the key points in Japanese history from the Jomon era, to the modern era. Anyone interested in garnering a greater understanding of the history of this unique and wonderful nation should add this audiobook to their library.

2 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

'A Cultural History of Japan' is more accurate

Voice actor was amazing, and if you wanted to know about the culture in...alot of detail I highly recommend it. But that's already half the problem.
If he/she had been honest and just called it 'A Cultural History' I wouldn't be writing this. Because that would've been perfectly accurate.
It constantly fell into 'you know'-isms for everything historical after the 1400s. And if you wanted to really learn about that, I wouldn't recommend it.
Honestly I'm less disappointed they didn't talk about the Onin war and that really interesting history, much more that no one seems to want to.

great book

Derek Perkins is an awesome reader. The story stays interesting. This is a great book.

More a reference volume than an audio book.

The book is useful as a broad introductory overview of Japanese history, and would help newcomers identify specific topics for further study. Despite my interest in the subject, I struggled through this book. Originally published in 1979, the language is unnecessarily wordy and awkward. The book comes to an abrupt close after the post war reconstruction. I think this book would make a very handy reference volume for would-be students of Japanese history and culture. As an audio book, it can be challenging to follow.

Very good

Informativo as history books are supposed to be. Good way of showing the múltiples aspects of Japan.