Sources of Japanese Tradition, Volume One: From Earliest Times to 1600

Sources of Japanese Tradition is a best-selling classic, unrivaled for its wide selection of source readings on history, society, politics, education, philosophy, and religion in the Land of the Rising Sun. In this long-awaited second edition, the editors have revised or retranslated most of the texts in the original 1958 edition, and added a great many selections not included or translated before. They have also restructured volume 1 to span the period from the early Japanese chronicles to the end of the sixteenth century. New additions include:

* readings on early and medieval Shinto and on the tea ceremony,

* readings on state Buddhism and Chinese political thought influential in Japan, and

* sections on women's education, medieval innovations in the uses of history, and laws and precepts of the medieval warrior houses.

Together, the selections shed light on the development of Japanese civilization in its own terms, without reference to Western parallels, and will continue to assist generations of students and lay readers in understanding Japanese culture.

Wm. Theodore de Bary (1919–2017) was John Mitchell Mason Professor Emeritus and provost emeritus of Columbia University. His many books include Waiting for the Dawn, Message of the Mind, and Learning for One’s Self, as well as Sources of Japanese Tradition and Sources of Korean Tradition, all published by Columbia University Press.

Carol Gluck is the George Sansom Professor of History at Columbia University. She is the author of Japan's Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period.

Arthur Tiedemann is a member of the Society of Senior Scholars at the Heyman Centre for the Humanities, Columbia University. He is the author of Modern Japan: A Brief History.