Smits Gregory. Seismic Japan. The Long History and Continuing Legacy of the Ansei Edo Earthquake

University of Hawai‘i Press, 2013. — 272 р. — ISBN 978-0-8248-3817-1T h e primary purpose of this book is to contribute to the study of Japanese history. My intended audience is scholars of Japan, especially historians.
Th e topic of earthquakes will also appeal to readers with little or no knowl-edge of Japan. It is my intention that readers unfamiliar with Japan but who possess an interest in earthquakes, the history of science, the social history of catastrophes, and related topics will benef i t from this book and be able to comprehend it without excessive struggle. For these readers I have made a point of def i ning or translating all Japanese terms and preferring translated English titles of Japanese works in the main text.
Popular culture in early modern Japan relied heavily on plays on words.
Such wordplay was possible because of the many homonyms in Japanese and because of fl exibility in the writing system. Writers could deploy com-binations of Chinese characters and native syllabic scripts (essentially an alphabet) to facilitate wordplay or to add additional levels of nuance or humor. When discussing such matters, extensive use of Japanese terms is inevitable. Nevertheless, even in such discussions, attentive readers who do not know Japanese should be able to grasp the main points.
Many of the sources for this study are visual in nature. I have tried to write about prints and other visual images as richly as possible to convey a sense of their contents through words. Some essential material is repro-duced within the book as fi gures. To moderate production costs, however, many images discussed can be accessed by typing into a browser the URL (universal resource locator) found in the notes. In selecting these URLs, I have favored well-established, large digital archives whose Web addresses are unlikely to change. Moreover, all other factors being similar, I have favored the shortest URL. Even if a URL does become inoperative over time, it is a simple task to search for a print using its Japanese name.