FWSeal - Best Sengoku history books?

[monkeydan]

Hi FWSeal (and everyone else!)

I was wondering what you would suggest for history books covering the Sengoku Jidai period. If you have suggestions for any other excellent books which deal with feudal Japan, I would love to have them as well.

Thanks

[Hosakawa Tito]

One book that I just picked up at Nobles is
"The Samurai Source Book"by Steven Turnbull.This seems to be an excellent information source that covers everything about the Samurai.I have only scratched the surface of this book,but I'm having a hard time putting it down.I highly recommend it.

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Diplomacy is the art of telling someone to go to hell so that they look forward to making the trip.

[NOLA_Jay]

A good list of book can be found at the following:
http://www.sengoku.com.bibl.html

Most of the Osprey books, are well worth getting. Osprey publishes books on military history and has a few that deal specifically with feudal Japan.

[NOLA_Jay]

Opps made a typo in that site it is actually as follows.
http://www.sengoku.com/bibl.html

[FwSeal]

This is a bit of a tough one, and I could ramble on for ages about it...

Since there has never been a complete and fully-rounded one-volume history of the Sengoku period in English (and may never be, for that matter), the English reader is forced to play the role of amateur scholar and cobble together the story from numerous works.
So, here are some good books to look at based on certain elements of the 16th Century in Japan...


General overviews...

The Cambridge History of Japan (vols. 3,4)

The Samurai - A Military History (Turnbull)

A History of Japan 1334-1615 (Sansom; be careful with this one - it is very dated, though a good read...)


Political, legal, and economic issues...

Japan before Tokugawa (Hall, Keiji, ect...)

Studies in the Institutional History of Early Modern Japan (Hall, et al...)

Sources of Japanese History (Lu)


Culture...

Artists, Warlords, and Commoners (Elison, et al...)


Western involvement in Japan...

They Came to Japan (Cooper)

Deus Destroyed (Elison)


The Three Unifiers...

Hideyoshi (Berry)

The Maker of Modern Japan (Sadler)


Early Sengoku Period...

The Culture of Civil War in Kyoto (Berry)

The Medieval Japanese Daimyo (Arnesen)


Battles...

Battles of the Samurai (Turnbull)

Sekigahara (Bryant)