Praise for the first edition:
Edwin Reischauer displays a novelist's sensitivity in this thorough overview, managing to explain the paradoxes of Japan without diminishing the sense of mystery...The Japanese Today offers the broadest available overview of the world's third greatest economic power, sagaciously exploring politics, history, religion, and education.
   --Los Angeles Times

[Reischauer] is one of few Westerners who knows so well the social, cultural, political, and economic developments of Japanese society.
   --Badar A. Iqbal, Japan Times

For many years Americans headed for careers in Japan have been preparing themselves with the books of Edwin O. Reischauer. Few people know the subject better than he.
   --John Burgess, Washington Post Book World

Born and brought up in Japan and, in the 1960s, American ambassador to Tokyo, [Reischauer] is well placed to analyze the special qualities of a people who down the years have fluctuated between self-deprecation and an almost cosmic arrogance, and who now seem poised to achieve dominance over the global economy.
   --Alexander MacLeod, London Sunday Times

Marius B. Jansen was Professor of Japanese History at Princeton University. He was the author of Sakamoto Ryoma and the Meiji Restoration.

Read More by Edwin O. Reischauer:

• Russia: The Roots of Confrontation

Read More by Marius B. Jansen:

• The Making of Modern Japan