Hi everyone, can anyone recommend any Japanese history books that are in Japanese? I’m struggling to find a book (not manga) that’s written in relatively simple language and gives a general overview of Japanese history from (say) 2000 years ago to today.
What I would hope for is a Japanese equivalent to Manfred Mai’s Deutsche Geschichte, which is a book that I read when learning German, and goes over history from Tacitus’ accounts of Germania, through to the fall of the Berlin wall. Imo it’s not explicitly for children and is appropriate for adults, as an introduction to history but not at an academic level.
For Japanese history an overview is probably something like Ancient times → through the Middle Ages to the 1400s or whenever → Sengoku → Bakufu → Black Ships arriving → Modernisation → Russo-Japanese war(s?) → Fascism → Today/Future. Maybe. I simply don’t know much about Japanese history at all.
I had a go at 網野善彦’ｓ 日本の歴史をよみなおす which has, I think, a more-or-less appropriate language level (I think I’m around N2 and N1, idk), but it turned out to be really focused on medieval times and challenging common Japanese perceptions like that 百姓＝農民, which is alright to read about but not really what I wanted. I don’t really know where to find proper book recommendations except asking ChatGPT, lol.
I looked around in the forum already and couldn’t find anything, I hope someone can come up with some recommendations, よろしくお願いします！
This kind of falls at the first hurdle for not being a book, but since I don’t have any better ideas I figured I’d mention the NHK 高校講座 日本史 series which is the NHK educational programme for schools that does a strictly chronological run through from the Jomon period to the Tokyo Olympics. The online videos are freely watchable from anywhere in the world (or at any rate, they work here in the UK).
It is written in a simple way, geared towards elementary school kids. The drawback is that the usage of kanji is rather limited. The first volume covers the time until ~1200 iirc.
Thank you I will check out the first one if I can find a way to look at it online. I looked through the second book and unfortunately it’s about world history, meaning that the book goes over basically all world history except for Japanese history
There is a whole series of manga by 集英社 called 学習漫画 日本の歴史 which even my Japanese friend knows. Well, she is highly educated so maybe it’s a bias. Anyway, this will be the first reading materials I will work on after my textbooks. It should tell me everything I need to know about Japan while practicing my reading.
Thank you for this! I randomly checked it out and studied one whole chapter for 3 hours because of the kanji lmao. I like that they give a PDF explanation as well as a video with big subtitles for better understanding.
Funny you started this topic. I recently started reading an English translation of this Japanese high school Japanese history textbook. I had planned to buy the Japanese version of the textbook, but want to get it cheap from a textbook store vs Amazon (i.e., I’m lazy and haven’t had the chance to go visit a textbook store).
Since it’s aimed at high schooler, I’m assuming the text won’t be as simple as you’d like them though, but posting it anyway in case it’s helpful.
there’s this, i read the bakumatsu book in this series and liked it, and i know someone else on the forums regularly recommends it. covers jomon up through to the 1960s
The difficulty of the reference book – it’s not so easy and the text isn’t selectable as an e-book, but it seems detailed enough and has a lot of diagrams. Still not sure if it can be expected to tell everything you are expected to know about Japanese history.
For a book with selectable text, 一度読んだら絶対に忘れない日本史の教科書 | L31 (suggested by Nicole above). My impression with one, is that it’s discussing various topics of history from past to present, considering that all may be debatable. Paced book club would be interesting.
There are a number of series aimed at schoolchildren that are blocked on Bookwalker - no idea why actually
But like the description says, you can buy it using a VPN (I use Tunnelbear which comes with some monthly free data) and then you can download it to the app just like any other book, without the need for a VPN. (I think you need a VPN to read it in the browser but not sure.)
Somebody even mentioned putting the book into the shopping cart using a VPN and then performing the checkout without VPN to avoid paying VAT, but I‘m not sure whether this (still) works.
This is extra funny to me as up til now I thought their only region locked content was 18+. I suppose I should always browse them with a VPN to make sure random tame things aren’t being blocked from me.
The first volume covers the time until ~1200 iirc.
I will check out the first one if I can find a way to look at it online. I looked through the second book and unfortunately it’s about world history, meaning that the book goes over basically all world history except for Japanese history 
