The Cambridge History of Japan, volume 2: Heian Japan.

• Author: Borgen, Robert
• Position: Book Review

Edited by DONALD H. SHIVELY and WILLIAM H. MCCULLOUGH. Cambridge: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1999. Pp. xxxv + 754, maps, figs., tables. $120.

I must begin this review on a personal note, for I cannot claim to be completely disinterested. At the request of my late colleague Marian Ury, I completed the final revisions of he contribution to this volume. Furthermore, two other contributors, now deceased, Wiliam H. and Helen Craig McCullough, were personal friends. And, although I never met the late Takeuchi Rizo, another of the contributors, I often consult his extensive publications and once met his son, a distinguished economist, who asked if I knew when his father's chapter would finally be published. Those of us acquainted with these four scholars will not be able to escape a feeling of sadness when reading this volume. They wrote half the ten essays in it. Another chapter is by Dana Morris, a promising scholar who left the academic world some years ago for want of suitable employment, and yet another is by the distinguished Buddhologist Stanley Weinstein, now retired. Only three of the authors, Cornelius J. Kiley, Allan G. Grapard, and G. Cameron Hurst are still active members of their universities' faculties. This book defines "long awaited."

Under these circumstances, readers will not be surprised to discover that some of the essays are dated. For example, Morris's dissertation, completed in 1980, is the most recent item cited in his footnotes. Having acknowledged this problem, I must confess that I did not find it as disturbing as I expected it to be. The quality of the research is high and most readers will surely find an abundance of ideas and information that is new and interesting, although when specialists come to the chapters treating their own area of research, they will discover room to quibble. Personally, I found surprisingly little that was offensively outdated. One reason may be that, contrary to a claim in the preface, the Heian period has received rather less attention from historians than one might expect. This is the case in Japan as well as in the English-speaking world. Although the age produced internationally admired and studied literary classics, it has proven less attractive to historians. Among Japanese even earlier periods seem more popular, whereas Western historians have preferred to focus on modern times, relinquishing the study of ancient Japan largely to scholars of literature, religion, or art. Thus, a scholarly overview of Heian history is a most...