History of Japan in Manga: Samurai, Shoguns and World War II

This book covers a massive scope of information and provides a start toward understanding its subject.It would be useful for the publisher to revisit their proofreading of this Kindle version. There are too many cases where dates are incorrect, words misspelt and information is not accurate.

Japanese history spans long periods of time, and I had suspected that it would not be possible to cover it in under 350 pages in manga form and I was right. The explanations pages are as many as the manga pages.

I saw the one-star review by Sherlock Fan and figured it couldn't be right. Doesn't work on the Kindle app? But it says that it's "Available on these devices..." and there's Kindle for Mac and Kindle Cloud Reader. Well, when I tried to open it in my Kindle for Mac, it said I needed an update. But there's no update. When I open it in Kindle Cloud Reader, it says it can only be opened in the Kindle app. I did open it on my Fire Tablet. It doesn't work on my Kindle for iPad. It doesn't open on my Kindle Oasis. It does open on my Kindle for Android. Buyer beware.

Ditto the other reviews.I preordered this book expecting a good laugh because Zecharia Davisson generally does an amusing job when translating historical and literary texts ("Taiwan" -> "institutional", "mountain-dwellers" -> "mountain-warriors", "Often comes over to Kushami's house" -> "Brings shochu over to drink", etc.), but thus far I haven't even been unable to open the book.EDIT: Bought a paper copy from Maruzen. I can't change my star rating though, as typos like "Kobyoku" and "Kogyku" (both referring to Empress-regnant Kogyoku) appear on nearly every page with more than 100 words of text. Perhaps the worst "typo" is in a column title where the Jinshin War is referred to as the "Jinshu War" (人種 [jinshu] is the Japanese for "race"). Murasaki Shikibu is repeatedly referred to as "Shikibu" as though that were her name and not her dad's job. The text at one point refers to someone called "Narihira no Ariwara", and elsewhere confuses the Izu Peninsula with the Bōsō Peninsula. Because I returned both my Kindle copies of this book and the original, and don't know how to repurchase the latter under the circumstances (I want to use my store credit rather than buying with one click using my credit card...), I don't know how many of these errors can be attributed to the source text rather than Davisson and Tuttle's editorial team (do they have one?), but I cannot recommend this book as written to anyone who wants a recounting of Japanese history that is accurate in more than just the very broadest of outlines.

Okay, so this book has essentially gotten flak for being unreadable on the Kindle app. I have an actual Kindle, but image heavy books take up a lot of space. So I got a hardcopy edition.The book is pretty ambitious. We're talking a brief overview of Japanese history, with manga pages, charts, and text. A LOT of text. Is it worth looking into? Depends on what you're interested in, and how familiar you are with the subject matter. It's a decent addition to your library, in my opinion. Shunichiro Kanaya, the author, does a pretty good job putting things together.Main problem? Several typos. To be fair to translator Zac Davisson, there is, as previously mentioned, a lot of text here. So a lot of names get bungled, my favorite being the Date clan being referred to as the Data clan at one point.Maybe Tuttle will release a revised edition at some point in the future. Until then, I recommend this with some caution.