Samurai and the Culture of Japan's Great Peace

This ambitious book sets out to chronicle the Takugawa period in Japanese history, a 250-year era of uninterrupted peace, using 150 objects housed in the Japan Collection of the Peabody Museum. Encompassing a variety of artifacts%E2%80%94arms and armor, musical instruments, religious iconography, and printed works%E2%80%94the book offers a well rounded, easy-to-understand primer on Japanese art and aesthetics. While dealing primarily with the material culture of the samurai, the authors step outside the bounds of that exclusive group and also present the ways that the samurai, who by this time were largely administrators, retained the air of a warrior class during an enduring era of peace. The book deals with a great many subjects, some of which lack depth. Buddhism, for example, gets a scant two pages. While some of the more obscure objects (a sea urchin helmet or illustrated texts prohibiting infanticide) will mostly satisfy more studied readers, this book is best suited for an audience new to the material culture of pre-modern Japan. (Mar.)