| Pt. I | | Japan before 1600 | | 11 |
| 1 | | Japanese beginnings by Mark J. Hudson | | 13 |
| 2 | | The Heian period by G. Cameron Hurst III | | 30 |
| 3 | | Medieval Japan by Andrew Edmund Goble | | 47 |
| Pt. II | | Early modern Japan | | 67 |
| 4 | | Unification, consolidation, and Tokugawa rule by Philip C. Brown | | 69 |
| 5 | | Social and economic change in Tokugawa Japan by Edward E. Pratt | | 86 |
| 6 | | Intellectual change in Tokugawa Japan by Peter Nosco | | 101 |
| 7 | | Cultural developments in Tokugawa Japan by Lawrence E. Marceau | | 117 |
| Pt. III | | Modern Japan : from Meiji restoration through World War II | | 137 |
| 8 | | Restoration and revolution by James L. Huffman | | 139 |
| 9 | | Oligarchy, democracy, and fascism by Stephen S. Large | | 156 |
| 10 | | Social and economic change in prewar Japan by Mark Jones and Steven Ericson | | 172 |
| 11 | | Intellectual life, culture, and the challenge of modernity by Elise K. Tipton | | 189 |
| 12 | | External relations by Frederick R. Dickinson | | 207 |
| 13 | | The Japanese empire by Y. Tak Matsusaka | | 224 |
| 14 | | The Fifteen-Year War by W. Miles Fletcher III | | 241 |
| Pt. IV | | Japan since 1945 | | 263 |
| 15 | | The occupation by Mark Metzler | | 265 |
| 16 | | Postwar politics by Ray Christensen | | 281 |
| 17 | | The postwar Japanese economy by Bai Gao | | 299 |
| 18 | | Postwar society and culture by Wesley Sasaki-Uemura | | 315 |
| 19 | | Japan in the world by Glenn D. Hook | | 333 |
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