The Human Tradition in Modern Japan is a collection of short biographies of ordinary Japanese men and women, most of them unknown outside their family and locality, whose lives collectively span the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Their stories present a counterweight to the prevailing stereotypes, providing students with depictions of real people through the records they have left-records that detail experiences and aspirations. The Human Tradition in Modern Japan offers a human-scale perspective that focuses on individuals, reconstitutes the meaning of people's experiences as they lived through them, and puts a human face on history. It skillfully bridges the divides between the sexes, between the local and the national, and between rural and urban, as well as spanning crucial moments in the history of modern Japan. The Human Tradition in Modern Japan is an excellent resource for courses on Japanese history, East Asian history, and peoples and cultures of Japan.

"This book will be a valuable supplementary text for introductory courses on modern Japan." - The Historian

"A fascinating work that unearths the lives of twelve diverse men and women who lived in Japan between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries. . . . Walthall has done an excellent job in unifying the twelve authorial voices into one, as each chapter flows effortlessly into the next. . . . One of the many strengths of this work is that most of the essays elucidate larger social, cultural, and political issues that transcend Japan. . . . By focusing on the rich texture of the collective human experience, The Human Tradition in Modern Japan becomes a book valuable not just to students of Japanese history but to all students of history." - Journal of World History