Local Historys Challenge to National Narratives

Local history’s Post-war boom in Japan has produced a tremendous volume of publications, hundreds of volumes that provide materials for Japanese historians of all stripes, local sophisticated amateurs and professional university historians alike. As Gary Allinson noted years ago, these materials also provide a rich trove of materials for scholars outside of Japan: the best include not only surveys of prefecture, county, city, town and village history – surveys that often assume one of a rather limited number of patterns – but also volumes of transcribed primary source materials. American and Western historians have made some use of these materials, but often in the context of writing analyses of ostensibly national developments.