'The SAGE Handbook of Modern Japanese Studies' examines when modern Japan began

The first chapter in this dense collection of Anglophone academia asks, "How and when did modern Japan begin?" Editor James D. Babb, a lecturer in politics at the University of Newcastle, has collated a selection of texts that address this question, many of which grapple with the ostensibly inscrutable state of present-day Japan.

The tectonic shifts the country has experienced since the 1990s — more than two decades of economic stagnation alongside geographic, political and cultural tumult — are thrown into relief from researchers across the globe.

In any collection there will be unavoidable omissions, but the ones here don't diminish the bedrock of knowledge this "Handbook" offers.