The Light of Asia

'A history that somehow manages to be at once succinct and sweeping: essential reading for anyone interested in this most fascinating of countries' - Tom Holland<BR><BR>'The perfect introduction to [Japan's] intriguing society is Christopher Harding's lively new A Short History of Japan... The book is short, yes - but its scope is long, deep and rich' - Rana Mitter, History Extra, History Books of the Year 2025 <BR><BR>In this enormously enjoyable introduction to a remarkable country, Christopher Harding traces Japan's rich history over several millennia. Beginning with its earliest coastal communities through to the spread of Buddhism, the rise of the warlords, the promise and menace of the West and Japan's own empire-building, Harding explores how a distinctly Japanese society and culture was forged.<BR><BR>Drawing on the latest scholarship, A Short History of Japan moves beyond traditional tourist-board clichés to consider Japan's own view of its past, values and culture, from ceramics and theatre to food and architecture. The result is a sensory, tactile history conveying to the reader much about Japan's special nature. Harding skilfully shows how these everyday details are intimately bound up with the bigger historical picture, as an expression of the values that have been extraordinarily successful in helping the country to cope with centuries of radical change.

A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020<BR><BR>'Mightily impressive ... a marvellous read' Sunday Times<BR><BR>From the acclaimed author of Japan Story, this is the history of Japan, distilled into the stories of twenty remarkable individuals. <BR><BR> The vivid and entertaining portraits in Chris Harding's enormously enjoyable new book take the reader from the earliest written accounts of Japan right through to the life of the current empress, Masako. We encounter shamans and warlords, poets and revolutionaries, scientists, artists and adventurers - each offering insights of their own into this extraordinary place. <BR><BR> For anyone new to Japan, this book is the ideal introduction. For anyone already deeply involved with it, this is a book filled with surprises and pleasures.

Japan verstehen leicht gemachtIn dieser äußerst unterhaltsamen Einführung zeichnet der Historiker Christopher Harding Japans reiche Geschichte über mehrere Jahrtausende hinweg nach. Angefangen bei den ersten Küstengemeinden über die Verbreitung des Buddhismus, den Aufstieg der Kriegsherren und Samurai, die Verheißungen und die Bedrohung durch den Westen bis hin zum Aufbau des japanischen Imperiums untersucht Harding, wie sich eine distinkte japanische Gesellschaft und Kultur herausbildete. Auf Basis neuester Forschung räumt das Buch mit Klischees auf und eröffnet einen lebendigen, sinnlichen Zugang zu Japans Geschichte, Werten und Kultur - so eindrücklich, als würde man selbst durch das Land reisen, Seide berühren, Tatami riechen oder eine Schüssel Ramen genießen.'Eine Geschichte, die es schafft, prägnant und umfassend zugleich zu sein: eine unverzichtbare Lektüre für jeden, der sich für dieses faszinierende Land interessiert.' Tom Holland, Bestsellerautor und Historiker

In the last decades of the nineteenth century, urgent and unprecedented demands among oppressed peoples in colonial India drove what came to be called 'mass conversion movements' towards a range of Christian denominations, launching a revolution in South Asia's two thousand-year Christian history. For all the scale, drama, and lasting controversy of a movement that approached half a million members in Punjab alone by the end of the 1930s, much actually depended upon a varied range of tempestuous local relationships between converts and mission personnel, based upon uncertain and constantly evolving terms. Making extensive use of Protestant Evangelical and newly-uncovered Catholic mission sources, Religious Transformation in South Asia explores those relationships to reveal what lay behind the great diversity of social and religious aspirations of converts and mission personnel.In this highly accessible study, Christopher Harding overturns the one-dimensional Christian missions of popular imagination by analysing the way that social class, theological training, culture, motivation, and personality produced an extraordinary range of presentations of 'Christianity' in late colonial Punjab. Punjabi converts themselves were animated by a similarly broad spectrum of expectations and pressures, communicated through informal social networks and representing a brand of subaltern consciousness and resistance rarely considered by mainstream Indian historiography. These internal dynamics produced a first generation of rural Punjabi Christianity that was locally variable, highly fluid, and conflict-ridden-testament to the ways in which the meanings of conversion were contested by all sides in an encounter with far-reaching implications for the future of Christianity and religious identity in India and Pakistan.