This accessible text offers a comprehensive history of China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, including coverage of everyday life, women and gender-related issues, and the environment-topics often neglected in other texts. Throughout his distinguished career, author Rhoads Murphey has inspired within students an appreciation for the rich and unique history of Asia. The Fifth Edition of this text on East Asia is certain to bring this fascinating region to life for many of today's students.

Maps Preface Note on the Spelling of Asian Names and Words Wade-Giles/Pinyin Equivalents About the Author Regional Map Time Chart 1. East Asia: Common Ground and Regional Differences 2. Prehistory, Beginnings in China, and the Shang Dynasty 3. The Zhou: Its Decline and the Age of the Philosophers 4. Qin and Han: The Making of Empire 5. Buddhism and the Cosmopolitan Tang Dynasty 6. Achievement and Disaster: The Song and Yuan Dynasties, 960-1368 7. New Imperial Splendor in China: The Ming Dynasty 8. The Qing in Prosperity and Decline 9. Early Korea 10. Premodern Vietnam 11. Beginnings in Japan: Patterns and Origins 12. Warriors, Monks, and Conflict: Medieval Japan 13. The West Arrives in Asia 14. Tokugawa Japan 15. China's Nineteenth-Century Crises 16. Japan Remakes Itself 17. Imperialism in Korea and Vietnam 18. China, 1901-1925: End of Empire and Search for a New Order 19. China and Japan: The Road to War 20. The Second World War in Asia 21. China since 1945 22. Japan since 1945 23. Korea and Vietnam since 1945 Index