Greetings! Whilst I highly recommend that you check out the AH Booklist on Japan (linked here) for some more great reading tips by flairs and mods who have far more experience with other periods of Japan's interesting and fascinating history, here are a few entry-level works to get you started on **Modern Japanese History (**roughly the period from the 1860s - 1990s). I will sadly not be getting any of those bonus points, but feel free to pm me for pdf copies of the first three books (if that's any compensation):
- A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present by Andrew Gordon (2003, ISBN 978-0195110617) - An overview of the social, economic, political, and cultural history of Japan from the Tokugawa shogunate in the 1600s up to the beginning of the 21st century. Gordon's work is organised chronologically and has sub-chapters for each of the various aspects of Japan during the respective time period; it also helps that the book includes illustrations and later photographs of Japanese society, politics, art, and economic charts throughout the centuries of change that he explores. Gordon never proceeds faster than the reader can take in information, and each of his chapters is always wrapped up with a summary of its contents and a link to the following timespan or aspect. A 350 page overview which gives a thorough look at the scenery of Japanese progress in the past two centuries, but doesn't lose the reader in a mess of historiographical arguments.
- Modern Japan: A Very Short Introduction by Christopher Goto-Jones (2009, ISBN 978-0199235698) - If I had to recommend any single book on this list to pick up, it would be this one. That is mostly down to the fact that Goto-Jones' work is the most succinct of the lot, whilst at the same time giving great insight into the larger historiographical "threads" of concepts which have developed over Japan's history from the Meiji Restoration onwards. Like Gordon's work, Goto-Jones covers the period in Japan from the final years of the Tokugawa Shogunate, to the tumultuous decades of the twentieth century, to the bursting of the economic miracle's bubble in 1990. Along the way, the book poses some great questions and leaves them hanging in the air for the reader to pick up at later times, and bonus points (for me at least) here because it includes a great "further reading" section at the back as well.
- A History of Japan: From Stone Age to Superpower by Kenneth Henshall (2012, 978-0230346628) - There are...mixed reviews of this work that some of the other flairs have shared with me in the past. Basically, this book should not be your end-all, be-all guide to Japanese history, but it should instead serve as a starting point for further reading on the period(s) which interest you the most. One major thing this book has going for it is that Henshall does not shy away from the numbers at all, and handily summarises each chapter in bullet-point form at the end of each bit. Its main downsides however are a general lack of depth (owing obviously to the timeframe of the historical narrative), and a somewhat obvious lack of any substantial historiographical discussions such as those included in Jones' and Gordon's work.
- The Making of Modern Japan by Marius Jansen (2002, 978-0674009912) - This is the longest work on this list, clocking in at an impressive 930 or so pages worth of deep historiographical discussions, engaging narratives, and genuinely fascinating explorations of how the myth and reality of Modern Japan came to be constructed from the 17th century onwards. Other flairs have recommended this book to...other flairs and also on AH in general, so that ought to add some more reason to read this thorough account which goes significantly further than any of the other works here.
Hope this list helps, and feel free to pm me for more specific guidance on which of the four books to pick up first, or even in what order to read them!