Japan's Castles

Oleg Benesch is Senior Lecturer in East Asian History at the University of York. He is the author of Inventing the Way of the Samurai: Nationalism, Internationalism, and Bushido in Modern Japan (2014). Ran Zwigenberg is Assistant Professor at Pennsylvania State University. His first book, Hiroshima: The Origins of Global Memory Culture (Cambridge, 2014), won the Association for Asian Studies John W. Hall Book Award in 2016.

• Introduction; Part I. From Feudalism to Empire: 1. Castles and the transition to the imperial state; 2. The discovery of castles, 1877–1912; 3. Castles, civil society, and the paradoxes of 'Taisho militarism'; 4. Castles in war and peace: celebrating modernity, empire, and war; Part II. From Feudalism to the Edge of Space: 5. Castles in war and peace II: Kokura, Kanazawa, and the rehabilitation of the nation; 6. 'Fukkō': Hiroshima Castle rises from the ashes; 7. Escape from the center: castles and the search for local identity; 8. Japan's new castle builders: recapturing tradition and culture; Conclusions.

'An exciting history of Japan from the Tokugawa period to the present, as seen through the lens of its castles. The book explores their shifting meaning within the context of Japan's drive to modernize, its militarism, construction of empire, wartime devastation, postwar recovery, and search for meaning in a postmodern world.' Constantine N. Vaporis, University of Maryland, Baltimore County