This important study brings together some of the best current research on Kaempfer (author of the History of Japan, also published by Curzon) for the first time and includes a close analysis of 6 key topics from the writing of the History to an interpretation of the interpreter himself.

Kaempfer's "The History of Japan" was the result of two years' research in Japan in the early 1690s and was published in London in 1727; it appeared in a total of ten editions of translations and reprints in the decade that followed - an extraordinary achievement for a work of this kind. It became required reading for all serious students of Japan for over a century, and was even on board Commodore Perry's ship in 1852. Today, it remains compulsory reading for anyone studying the Tokugawa period. Yet, little has been published about the author, his personal encounter with late-17th-century Japan and the way this experience came to reach the public in the form of his three-volume history. This volume, therefore, brings together some of the best current research on Kaempfer and includes a close analysis of six key topics - from the writing of the History to an interpretation of the interpreter.

Tsunayoshi (1646-1709), the fifth Tokugawa shogun, is one of the most notorious figures in Japanese history. Viewed by many as a tyrant, his policies were deemed eccentric, extreme, and unorthodox. His Laws of Compassion, which made the maltreatment of dogs an offense punishable by death, earned him the nickname Dog Shogun, by which he is still popularly known today. However, Tsunayoshi's rule coincides with the famed Genroku era, a period of unprecedented cultural growth and prosperity that Japan would not experience again until the mid-twentieth century. It was under Tsunayoshi that for the first time in Japanese history considerable numbers of ordinary townspeople were in a financial position to acquire an education and enjoy many of the amusements previously reserved for the ruling elite. Based on a masterful re-examination of primary sources, this exciting new work by a senior scholar of the Tokugawa period maintains that Tsunayoshi's notoriety stems largely from the work of samurai historians and officials who saw their privileges challenged by a ruler sympathetic to commoners. Beatrice Bodart-Bailey's insightful analysis of Tsunayoshi's background sheds new light on his personality and the policies associated with his shogunate. "The Dog Shogun" is a thoroughly revisionist work of Japanese political history that touches on many social, intellectual, and economic developments as well. As such it promises to become a standard text on late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth-century Japan.