Even in the “Irokawa age” of Japanese historical scholarship, the writers have not yet toppled the academic establishment, nor are they likely to. Most historians of all generations remain squarely in the tradition of Japanese Marxist historiography, and a smaller number of scholars employ the methods of contemporary social science, often to examine the traditional subjects of political history. And yet it is the still smaller number of popular historians who ha lately captured the imagination of Japanese, both within and without academic circles. Their approach seems to many to have created the stirrings of a new historiography and, more important perhaps, its application to Japan’s modern experience has produced some new history as well.
