Japan through American eyes: the journal of Francis Hall, Kanagawa and Yokohama, 1859–1866. Edited and annotated by F. G. Notehelfer. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. Pp. 652. £39.00.

Sabotaging the shogun: Western diplomats open Japan, 1859–69. By John McMaster. New York: Vantage Press, 1992. Pp. 201. $16.95.

Japan and the world since 1868. By Michael A. Barnhart. London: Edward Arnold, 1995. Pp. 198. £40.00 hbk: £13.99 pbk.

The abacus and the sword: the Japanese penetration of Korea, 1895–1910. By Peter Duus. Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1995. Pp. 480. £37.50.

Race and migration in Imperial Japan. By Michael Weiner. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. Pp. 278. £37.50.

Voluntary death in Japan. By Maurice Pinguet. Oxford: Polity Press, 1993. Pp. 365. £45.00.

Shōwa: the Japan of Hirohito. Edited by Carol Gluck and Stephen R. Graubard. London and New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1992. Pp. 315. £8.95.

Arming Japan: defence production, alliance politics, and the postwar search for autonomy. By Michael J. Green. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. Pp. 206. £30.00.

The technological transformation of Japan: from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century. By Tessa Morris-Suzuki. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. 304. £35.00.

The emptiness of Japanese affluence. By Gavan McCormack. Armonk, New York and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1996. Pp. 311. £16.95.