The Century of Black Ships Format: Paperback

For nearly a century, Japanese writers gave voice to the anxieties of a nation headed inexorably toward war. Not just any war, but one that in the minds of many would eventually--and inevitably--take place with Japan's neighbor across the Pacific, the United States.

In the wake of U.S. Navy Commodore Matthew C. Perry's first visit to Japan with his Black Ships in 1853, Japanese novelists and military analysts, along with a few foreign counterparts, produced a dizzying array of prophetic visions of this coming conflict, creating a massive body of popular works through which Japan would debate its own passage, however violent, into the modern, globalized era. Painstakingly researched by one of Japan's preeminent men of letters, Tokyo Prefecture Vice Governor Naoki Inose, The Century of the Black Ships is a landmark study of a literary tradition that anticipated the defining moment in the lives of a nation and its people.

Born in Nagano Prefecture in 1946. A well-known writer in Japan, Naoki Inose was awarded the prestigious Lya Prize for non-fiction in 1987 for his book on the Emperor’s image, The Mikado’s Portrait. Writing on a wide range of topics from literature to economy, he has become a specialist in fact-finding studies. His work centers on Japan’s modernity. In 1996, he won the Bungei Shunju Reader’s Prize for his A Study of Japan, a richly documented examination of Japan’s Public Corporations and the need for structural reforms. Since 2000, Inose has been a member of the Tax Commission. Known as an advisor to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, Inose became a member of the Committee for the Privatization of the Four Highway Public Corporations in 2002. In April 2007, Inose became one of the members of the Decentralization Reform Committee, and in June he was appointed as a vice governor of Tokyo by Governor Ishihara. Inose is now teaching at the Tokyo Institute of Technology as an adjunct professor.