The chronicle of Lord Nobunaga /

Experts on early modern Japanese history will welcome this book, while more casual readers may find it a bit dense for their passing entertainment. Nobunaga is very probably the least well known of the three giant figures (with Hideyoshi and Tokugawa) of later-16th-century Japan who set in motion the events that produced a unified country under the Tokugawa family's leadership after 1600. It is tempting to skip ahead to the early-18th-century flowering of Japanese culture (Kabuki, ukiyo-e paintings, and the writings of Saikaku, to name the most famous), but the chaos of the Japanese middle ages never would have fostered that economic and cultural growth that made Japan so fascinating to Europeans in the years after 1638, when the country was somewhat closed to outsiders for two centuries. Nobunaga's contribution was to carry out a suppression of dissident and divisive principalities, and his methods were stunningly brutal as often as not. Helpful scholarly aids and refinements fill the volume. The translation is clear, the footnotes are substantive, and the supporting text analyses are often fascinating. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students and scholars. R. B. Lyman Jr. emeritus, Simmons College