Need help? See the "How to Search JSTOR" guide.
History Today The Christopher Brennan Library has an online subscription to History Today. Use the Passwords Libguide to access login details. The latest issue (not for loan) and past issues are available in print form in the library.
ClickView Library Search through the College Clickview collection for relevant videos.
Hirohito: Behind the Myth by
This superbly documented, revisionist biography of Emperor Hirohito, the longest reigning monarch of the twentieth century, clearly establishes Hirohito as a war criminal.
Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize "A startling work -- awesomely ambitious, faultlessly researched, daring in its thesis, and profound in its implications." -- Business Week "Magnificent. . . . everything a political biography should be." -- Richmond Times-Dispatch This rich and powerful biography is now given fresh relevance with a new introduction by the author that explores how Hirohito's legacy persists in Japan to this day, and how US foreign policy in the region in the last ten years is informed by our troubled past with Japan and with Hirohito as a ruler specifically. Trained since childhood to lead his nation as a living deity, Japan's Emperor Hirohito cultivated the image of a reluctant, detached monarch, a façade which masked a fierce cunning and powerful ambition. Historian Herbert P. Bix has unearned hundreds of previously untapped documents including the unpublished letters and diaries of Hirohito's royal court, tracing the key events of his sixty-three-year reign (1926 - 1989), and shedding light on his uniquely active yet self-effacing stewardship. Debunking the common image of Hirohito as a pawn in the hands of the military, Bix exposes the emperor's personal involvement in every stage of the Pacific War. With rare insight, he shows how Hirohito avoided punishment for his nation's defeat and how the Japanese people have struggled to come to terms with this dark chapter in their history.
A History of Japan by
A classic of Japanese history, this book is the preeminent work on the history of Japan. Newly revised and updated, A History of Japan is a single-volume, complete history of the nation of Japan. Starting in ancient Japan during its early pre-history period A History of Japan covers every important aspect of history and culture through feudal Japan to the post-cold War period and collapse of the Bubble Economy in the early 1990's. Recent findings shed additional light on the origins of Japanese civilization and the birth of Japanese culture. Also included is an in-depth analysis of the Japanese religion, Japanese arts, Japanese culture and the Japanese People from the 6th century B.C.E. to the present. This contemporary classic, now updated and revised, continues to be an essential text in Japanese studies. Classic illustrations and unique pictures are dispersed throughout the book. A History of Japan, Revised Edition includes: Archaic Japan--including Yamato, the creation of a unified state, the Nana Period, and the Heian period. Medieval Japan-- including rule by the military houses, the failure of Ashikaga Rule, Buddhism, and the Kamakura and Muroachi Periods periods. Ealy Modern Japan--including Japanese feudalism, administration under the Tokugawa, and society and culture in early modern Japan. Modern Japan--including The Meiji Era and policies for modernization, from consensus to crisis (1912-1937), and solutions through force. This contemporary classic continues to be a central book in Japanese studies and is a vital addition to the collection of any student or enthusiast of Japanese history, Japanese culture, or the Japanese Language.
Japan 1904 -1937 by 
The Wars for Asia, 1911-1949 by
The Wars for Asia, 1911-1949 shows that the Western treatment of World War II, the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War as separate events misrepresents their overlapping connections and causes. The Chinese Civil War precipitated a long regional war between China and Japan that went global in 1941 when the Chinese found themselves fighting a civil war within a regional war within an overarching global war. The global war that consumed Western attentions resulted from Japan's peripheral strategy to cut foreign aid to China by attacking Pearl Harbour and Western interests throughout the Pacific in 1941. S. C. M. Paine emphasizes the fears and ambitions of Japan, China and Russia, and the pivotal decisions that set them on a collision course in the 1920s and 1930s. The resulting wars together yielded a viscerally anti-Japanese and unified Communist China, the still-angry rising power of the early twenty-first century.
This podcast covers Japanese foreign policy from the end of the Sino-Japanese War in 1895 to the middle of the war against Nationalist China in 1940. We will cover the Russo-Japanese War, the steady split of the military away from the rest of the government, and the radicalisation of Japanese policy towards China, culminating in the decision to launch a foolish and counterproductive war in 1937
This podcast discusses domestic developments in Japan, and the path by which a reasonably (if not totally) liberal democracy in the 1910s and 1920s morphed into a military dictatorship in the 1930s. We'll talk about the various means by which the military grew its influence, and how it was able to use violence to cow the civilian government.
In this final segment on the rise of the imperial military to power, we'll discuss the process by which the military hijacked Japan's foreign policy and shut down the democratic process. After this was done, the army briefly turned on itself before taking the final plunge into a war with China.