Sources of Japanese Tradition is a best-selling classic, unrivaled for its wide selection of source readings on history, society, politics, education, philosophy, and religion in the Land of the Rising Sun. In this long-awaited second edition, the editors have revised or retranslated most of the texts in the original 1958 edition, and added a great many selections not included or translated before. They have also restructured volume 1 to span the period from the early Japanese chronicles to the end of the sixteenth century. New additions include:* readings on early and medieval Shinto and on the tea ceremony,* readings on state Buddhism and Chinese political thought influential in Japan, and * sections on women's education, medieval innovations in the uses of history, and laws and precepts of the medieval warrior houses. Together, the selections shed light on the development of Japanese civilization in its own terms, without reference to Western parallels, and will continue to assist generations of students and lay readers in understanding Japanese culture.

Part 1: Early Japan 1. The Earliest Records of Japan2. Early Shinto3. Prince Shotoku and His Constitution4. Chinese Thought and Institutions in Early Japan5. Nara BuddhismPart 2: Mahayana Universalism and the Sense of Hierarchy 6. Saicho and Mt. Hiei (Ryusaku Tsunoda and Paul Groner)7. Kukai and Esoteric Buddhism8. The Spread of Esoteric Buddhism9. The Vocabulary of Japanese Aesthetics I10. Amida, the Pure Land, and the Response of the Old Buddhism to the New11. New Voices of History (Paul Varley)12. The Way of the Warrior (Paul Varley)13. Nichiren: The Sun and the Lotus (Philip Yampolsky)14. Zen Buddhism (William Bodiford)15. Shinto in Medieval Japan16. The Vocabulary of Japanese Aesthetics II17. Women's Education18. Law and Precepts for the Warrior Houses (Paul Varley)19. The Regime of the Unifiers (Jurgis S. A. Elisonas)