An excellent, readable history of a fascinating period; I confess, this is precisely what I was looking for at the time, so I'm not entirely unbiased, but I still feel free to recommend this to anyone other than scholars of this exact thing (who will probably take exception to all sorts of details, as scholars ought to do). Harding covers a lot of territory, and does an exceptionable job of balancing various aspects of history: there's enough high-politics to give context, but not so much that you get bogged down in it; there's great, great stuff on culture; and, most importantly, there's no attempt to offer ludicrous definitions of 'the' Japanese soul or whatever. It's a populous country. There are lots of different people there. Harding focuses on unexpected protagonists--psychoanalysts, novelists, victims of oppression, feminists, socialists. But he doesn't act as if everyone was an analyst, novelist, victim, feminist, or socialist. There are plenty of gangsters, conservatives and so on, as well. My only complaint is that the last few chapters felt more ripped-right-from-the-headlines than the rest of the book. That's what happens when you write history of present, though. Also: his goodreads profile is adorable. ( )