Part I. Landmarks, eras, and appellation in Japanese history. Japan's natural setting / Gina L. Barnes
Sorting the past / Karl F. Friday
Defining "ancient" and "classical" / Joan R. Piggott
Defining "medieval" / Andrew Edmund Goble
Defining "early modern" / Mary Elizabeth Berry
Part II. Immigrants, chieftains, and kings in ancient times. Origins of the Japanese people / C. Melvin Aikens
What used to be called shinto : the question of Japan's indigenous religion / Mark Teeuwen
The emergence of political rulership and the state in early Japan / Gina L. Barnes
Early Japan and the continent / Bruce L. Batten
Centralization and state formation in sixth- and seventh-century Japan / Douglas Fuqua
Part III. Court, capital, and countryside in the classical age. Emperor, aristocracy, and the Ritsuryō state : court politics in Nara / Ross Bender
Oligarchy, shared rulership, and power blocs / Mikael S. Adolphson
Aristocratic Buddhism / Mikael S. Adolphson
The canons of courtly taste / Robert Borgen and Joseph T. Sorensen
The provinces and public economy, 700-1100 / Charlotte von Verschuer
The shōen system / Ethan Segal
The dawn of the samurai / Karl F. Friday
The Kamakura Shogunate and the beginnings of warrior power / Andrew Edmund Goble
Part IV. Demesne, dominion, and diffusion in the medieval age. Kamakura and the challenge of governance / Ethan Segal
Go-Daigō, Takauji, and the Muromachi Shogunate / Andrew Edmund Goble
Medieval religion / William M. Bodiford
Warriors, warlords, and domains / David Eason
Medieval warfare / Thomas D. Conlan
Medieval arts and aesthetics / Linda H. Chance
Gender relations in the age of violence / Hitomi Tonomura
The rise of the peasantry / Thomas Keirstead
The medieval economy / Ethan Segal
Diplomacy, piracy, and the space between : Japan and East Asia in the medieval period / Michel Laver
Part V. Bureaucrats, burghers, and bailiwicks in the early modern age. The sixteenth-century reunification / Lee Butler
The political order / Philip Brown
A whole new world (order) : early modern Japanese foreign relations, 1550-1850 / Michael Laver
The new warriors : Samurai in early modern Japan / Denis Gainty
Urbanization, trade, and merchants / David L. Howell
Ukiyo asobi : urban arts and entertainments in early modern Japan / Frank Chance
Religion in early modern Japan / Barbara Ambros
Peace dividend : agrarian developments in Tokugawa Japan / Anne Walthall
Family, gender, and sex in early modern Japan / Denis Gainty
Thought, education, and popular literacies in early modern Japan / Richard Rubinger.