An Ecological View of History: Japanese Civilization in the World Context

This is the first English version of the author’s classic published first in Japanese in 1957, with a full description of his ecological theory of civilizations of Eurasia. Dividing the Eurasian continent into three major ecological zones, consisting of Western Europe, Japan, and the region in between, he shows how the first two are basically similar and demonstrates fundamental differences between Japan and China. In 1998, when an influential monthly, BUNGEI SHUNJU, solicited the ten most powerful books in the twentieth century from more than 170 intellectuals in Japan, this book won the third highest voting among 67 books that were nominated.