Introduction11 Joan R. Piggott, “Defining ‘Ancient’ and ‘Classical’.” At the same time, the political and economic
structures of the seventh to twelfth centuries were hardly of an unwavering piece. By the tenth century,
governance and land- holding practices had evolved a considerable bit away from the letter—and even
the spirit—of the Chinese- inspired legal codes, although they still remained well within the framework
of the court- centered imperial state. For this reason, most specialists also break the classical era into
imperial state (ritsuryō) and oligarchic (ōchō kokka or kenmon taisei) phases, lasting from the mid- 600s until
the late 800s, and from the mid- ninth through the mid- fourteenth century, respectively. For details, see
Chapters 6 and 7 of this volume.
12 The court histories are examined at length in Sakamoto Tarō, The Six National Histories of Japan. English
translations of these texts include: Basil Hall Chamberlain, trans., Kojiki, or Records of Ancient Matters;
Donald Philippi, Kojiki; Gustave Heldt, Kojiki: An Account of Ancient Matters; W.G. Aston, Nihongi:
Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to 697 AD; Ross Bender, Nara Japan, 749–757: A Translation from
Shoku Nihongi; Bender, Nara Japan, 758–763: A Translation from Shoku Nihongi; Bender, Nara Japan,
767–770: A Translation from Shoku Nihongi; Bender, The Edicts of the Last Empress, 749–770: A Translation
from Shoku Nihongi; and Shimizu Osamu, “Nihon Montoku Tenno Jitsuroku: An Annotated Trans-
lation, with a Survey of the Early Ninth Century.”
13 Important English studies and translations include: William and Helen C. McCullough, A Tale of Flow-
ering Fortunes: Annals of Japanese Aristocratic Life in the Heian Period; Joseph K. Yamagiwa, The Ōkagami: A
Japanese Historical Tale; Giuliana Stramigioli, “Masakadoki”; Judith N. Rabinovitch, Shomonki: The
Story of Masakado’s Rebellion; Helen McCullough, “A Tale of Mutsu”; Helen McCullough, The Tale of
the Heike; Kitagawa Hiroshi and Bruce Tsuchida, The Tale of the Heike; and Royall Tyler, The Tale of the
Heike. The historiography of the wartales is discussed in detail by H. Paul Varley, in Warriors of Japan as
Portrayed in the War Tales.
14 Delmer Brown and Ishida Ichirō, The Future and the Past: A Translation and Study of the Gukansho, an
Interpretive History of Japan Written in 1219; H. Paul Varley, A Chronicle of Gods and Sovereigns. On koku-
gaku, see Joyce Ackroyd, Lessons from History: Arai Hakuseki’s Tokushi Yoron; Harry Harootunian, Things
Seen and Unseen: Discourse and Ideology in Tokugawa Nativism; Mark McNally, Proving the Way: Conflict and
Practice in the History of Japanese Nativism; Peter Nosco, Remembering Paradise: Nativism and Nostalgia in
Eighteenth Century Japan; and Michael Wachutka, Kokugaku in Meiji- period Japan: The Modern Transforma-
tion of ‘National Learning’ and the Formation of Scholarly Societies.
15 The full (English) title of Kaempfer’s study was, The History of Japan Together with a Description of the
Kingdom of Siam 1690–92. Beatrice Bodart- Bailey’s retranslation of the original manuscript, Kaempfer’s
Japan: Tokugawa Culture Observed, is the most accessible version of the text. Dening’s study appeared in
1888, while Murdoch’s was published sequentially between 1910 and 1926.
16 George Sansom, Japan: A Short Cultural History, 300.
17 Jeffrey P. Mass, “Changing Western Views of Kamakura History,” 179.
18 Collingwood, The Idea of History, 247–248.
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Becker, Carl. “Everyman His Own Historian.” The Amer ican Historical Review 37, no. 2 (1932): 221–236.
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