Portraits of a nation
This is an enjoyable romp through the ages across the Japanese archipelago. It’s a tall order to cover the rich tapestry of Japan’s history in one volume, and for the most part Christopher Harding pulls it off, exploring aspects of Japanese identity through 20 life stories. It’s an interesting premise, with a carefully chosen range of personalities: from playwrights, chemists and doctors to a shaman queen, a warlord and members of the imperial family
It’s impossible to cover everyone, of course, so there are conspicuous absentees as well, among them scholar Sugawara no Michizane and prominent thinker Fukuzawa Yukichi.
