'STATE OF WAR'

I pulled this off the PMJS list, thought people here might be
interested:

STATE OF WAR: THE VIOLENT ORDER OF FOURTEENTH-CENTURY JAPAN
by Thomas Donald Conlan
A John Whitney Hall Book

ISBN 1-929280-16-5 (cloth, $65.00), 1-9292890-23-8 (paper, $24.00)
xviii + 282 pp., 35 illustrations, 5 tables, and 22 color plates

"Outstanding ... Tom Conlan has written an extraordinarily detailed
and thorough history of warfare in the fourteenth century from a wide
variety of perspectives, including the function of the individual
warrior in everyday battle, the number and character of casualties,
the logistics of warfare, loyalty among warriors, and fighting as a
sacred pursuit. STATE OF WAR makes a powerful contention that
militarization was the principal force in the molding of fourteenth-
century Japan."
Paul Varley Sen Soshitsu XV Professor of Japanese Cultural History
University of Hawaii at Manoa

"This exciting book is a landmark in the study of premodern Japanese
history. Informed by easy mastery of a wide range of largely untapped
primary sources and thoughtful conceptualization, Professor Conlan has
produced the most comprehensive study of warfare for any period of
Japanese history. It is the first serious study of how warriors
actually engaged in battle, and of the full range of logistic,
intellectual, and religious factors that surround their lives; to his
credit, the author conveys well the human side of the story. The
author's attention to issues of social change and technology is
particularly welcome and should inspire others to address these
matters in other periods of Japanese history. Readers will also
appreciate the fluid writing style."

Andrew Goble
Associate Professor of History
University of Oregon

STATE OF WAR, a path-breaking study of the transformative power of
war and its profound influence on fourteenth-century Japan, presents
a fundamental revision of Japanese history. By illuminating Japan
through the lens of war, Thomas Conlan provides insight into how
state and society functioned, as opposed to how they were portrayed
in ideal. Conlan recreates the experience of war from the perspective
of one warrior, and then reconstructs how war was fought through
statistical analysis of surviving casualty records.
STATE OF WAR also shows that the battles of the fourteenth century
mark a watershed in Japanese history. The fiscal exigencies of waging
war led to a devolution of political power to the provinces.
Furthermore, the outbreak of war caused social status to become
performative, based upon the ability to fight autonomously, rather
than being prescriptive, or determined by edicts of investiture.
This work bridges the intellectual gulf between the fourteenth and
twentieth centuries by exploring how the seemingly contradictory
categories of religion and war were integrally related. The
fourteenth-century belief that the outcome of battle was determined
by the gods meant that religious institutions warred both ritually and
physically, and that religious attitudes frequently underpinned
warrior behavior.
Based on diverse sources, including documents, picture scrolls,
medical and religious texts, and chronicles, STATE OF WAR
rehabilitates warfare as a focal point of historical inquiry and
provides a fascinating new overview of premodern Japanese history.

I've been waiting for this book for almost a year, and still Amazon doesn't
have it as available

pulled this off the PMJS list, thought people here might be
interested:

STATE OF WAR: THE VIOLENT ORDER OF FOURTEENTH-CENTURY JAPAN
by Thomas Donald Conlan
A John Whitney Hall Book

ISBN 1-929280-16-5 (cloth, $65.00), 1-9292890-23-8 (paper, $24.00)
xviii + 282 pp., 35 illustrations, 5 tables, and 22 color plates

Though it will likely be a bit more expensive, rather than waiting any
longer, you could always just order the book from the University press
(Michigan if I'm not mistaken). I have always gotten books in a timely
fashion from the university presses (Stanford, Yale, Michigan) that I have
ordered from.

Shannon

William wrote:

I've been waiting for this book for almost a year, and still Amazon doesn't
have it as available



STATE OF WAR: THE VIOLENT ORDER OF FOURTEENTH-CENTURY JAPAN
by Thomas Donald Conlan
A John Whitney Hall Book



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