Why am I passionate about this?

I am a comparative urban specialist who came to Japanese urban history through my aspiration to place Russian urban studies within a comparative context.  Several Japanese and Western Japan specialists encouraged me to advance this exploration by examining capitalist industrial urbanization in Japan.  Historians and political scientists -- particularly at Kyoto National University -- provided a platform for me to expand my engagement with Japanese urbanization; relations which have continued for some three decades.  More recently, I included Kabuki in The Muse of Urban Delirium, a collection of essays that seeks answers to the challenges of urban diversity, conflict, and creativity using various performing arts – opera, dance, theater, music – as windows onto urban life.


I wrote

Second Metropolis: Pragmatic Pluralism in Gilded Age Chicago, Silver Age Moscow, and Meiji Osaka

By Blair A. Ruble,

Book cover of Second Metropolis: Pragmatic Pluralism in Gilded Age Chicago, Silver Age Moscow, and Meiji Osaka

What is my book about?

Second Metropolis compares North America's, Russia's, and Japan's "second cities"--Chicago, Moscow, and Osaka—at the height of their capitalist industrial expansion…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of A History of Tokyo 1867-1989: From EDO to Showa: The Emergence of the World's Greatest City

Blair A. Ruble Why did I love this book?

This new edition combines under one cover Edward Seidensticker’s colossal Low City: Tokyo from Edo to the Earthquake and Tokyo Rising.  Few cities have been so fortunate as to have such erudite-yet-accessible books written about them; by an outsider, no less. A towering figure on late twentieth-century Japanese studies and letters, Seidensticker arrived in Tokyo weeks after General Douglas MacArthur had assumed control of the country. His work on major twentieth-century Japanese writers earned him graduate degrees and faculty appointments at major American universities; his freelance writing on Japanese life extended the reach of his work well beyond the halls of academia. Most strikingly, his historical works about Tokyo demonstrate a deep knowledge of, and passionate devotion to,  the city on every page.

By Edward G. Seidensticker,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A History of Tokyo 1867-1989 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This is a freaking great book and I highly recommend it... if you are passionate about the history of 'the world's greatest city,' this book is something you must have in your collection. JapanThis.com. Edward Seidensticker's A History of Tokyo 1867-1989 tells the fascinating story of Tokyo's transformation from the Shogun's capital in an isolated Japan to the largest and the most modern city in the world. With the same scholarship and sparkling style that won him admiration as the foremost translator of great works of Japanese literature, Seidensticker offers the reader his brilliant vision of an entire society suddenly…


Book cover of Neighborhood and Nation in Tokyo, 1905-1937

Blair A. Ruble Why did I love this book?

Cities often look quite different from the bottom up than from the top down. The practical demands of making cities work often rest on the shoulders of the most local of officials.  Consequently, neighborhood officialdom often engages with citizens and residents more openly, even in authoritarian systems. Such engagement may hold the seeds of future democratic change. Hastings’ study of Honjo Ward and other proletarian Tokyo districts before World War II reveals a surprisingly robust participatory political and cultural environment across the early twentieth century.

By Sally Ann Hastings,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Neighborhood and Nation in Tokyo, 1905-1937 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this pre-World War II analysis of working-class areas of Tokyo, primarily its Honjo ward, Hastings shows that bureaucrats, particularly in the Home Ministry, were concerned with the needs of their citizens and took significant steps to protect the city's working families and the poor. She also demonstrates that the public participated broadly in politics, through organizations such as reservist groups, national youth leagues, neighborhood organizations, as well as growing suffrage and workplace organizations.


Book cover of Neighborhood Tokyo

Blair A. Ruble Why did I love this book?

Theodore Bestor carries the neighborhood theme forward into the boom years of the 1980s.  Based on ethnographic fieldwork between 1979 and 1981, Bestor pulls apart the deep web of social, economic, and political relationships which hold neighborhoods and communities together despite being submerged in the enormity of Tokyo.  He uncovers actors, institutions, and customs which facilitated modernization while sustaining a veneer of tradition.  At it core, Bestor’s neighborhood revealed a social and cultural inventiveness that enabled its communities to engage with and benefit from unprecedented social change.

By Theodore C. Bestor,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Neighborhood Tokyo as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the vastness of Tokyo these are tiny social units, and by the standards that most Americans would apply, they are perhaps far too small, geographically and demographically, to be considered "neighborhoods." Still, to residents of Tokyo and particularly to the residents of any given subsection of the city, they are socially significant and geographically distinguishable divisions of the urban landscape. In neighborhoods such as these, overlapping and intertwining associations and institutions provide an elaborate and enduring framework for local social life, within which residents are linked to one another not only through their participation in local organizations, but also…


Book cover of The City as Subject, 13: Seki Hajime and the Reinvention of Modern Osaka

Blair A. Ruble Why did I love this book?

Osaka became an industrial giant during the Meiji period, remaining one of the world’s fastest-growing cities throughout the later decades of the nineteenth century and early decades of the twentieth.  The city outgrew Tokyo in both population and industrial production for a brief period during the 1930s.  This was a time when social displacement, horrendous public health and housing failings, and labor unrest threatened communal wellbeing.  The city responded with some of the most innovative social policies of the era, especially under the leadership of Mayor Seki Hajime.  As Hanes uncovers, Seki used his training as a social economist to promote increased industrial production that simultaneously became people-centered. The result was a modernized Osaka that retained a vibrant social inventiveness in the years leading up to World War II.

By Jeffrey E. Haynes,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The City as Subject, 13 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In exploring the career of Seki Hajime (1873-1935), who served as mayor of Japan's second-largest city, Osaka, Jeffrey E. Hanes traces the roots of social progressivism in prewar Japan. Seki, trained as a political economist in the late 1890s, when Japan was focused single-mindedly on "increasing industrial production," distinguished himself early on as a people-centered, rather than a state-centered, national economist. After three years of advanced study in Europe at the turn of the century, during which he engaged Marxism and later steeped himself in the exciting new field of social economics, Seki was transformed into a progressive. The social…


Book cover of Atlas Historique De Kyôto: Analyse Spatiale des Systèms de Mémoire D’une Ville, de Son Architecture et de Son Paysage Urbain

Blair A. Ruble Why did I love this book?

Only an organization with the deep pockets of UNESCO could have supported and produced this magnificent historical atlas of Kyoto, covering more than 15 centuries of urban development through comprehensive data connected to stunning and informative maps analyzed by two dozen leading historians, urbanists, architects, and cartographers.  As site to more UNESCO World Heritage Sites than almost any other city, Kyoto has drawn UNESCO engagement across several decades. This volume captured that work at the beginning of the twenty-first century through essays arranged chronologically drawing on the built environment to trace Kyoto’s physical, economic, cultural, and political evolution. The spectacular maps tell the story even for those readers who struggle with the French text.

By Nicolas Fiévé,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Atlas Historique De Kyôto as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Dès sa fondation au ville siècle, la ville de Kyôto a été l'une des plus vastes capitales mondiales, surpassant en taille et en magnificence les villes de l'Europe médiévale. Exception superbe dans un pays essentiellement rural, la ville est restée le foyer de la civilisation japonaise pendant près de mille ans. Unique grande agglomération japonaise à avoir été épargnée par les bombardements de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, Kyôto est aujourd'hui une métropole d'un million quatre cent mille habitants qui a conservé d'innombrables vestiges de son prestigieux passé. On y recense près de deux mille lieux de culte, temples bouddhiques et…


Explore my book 😀

Second Metropolis: Pragmatic Pluralism in Gilded Age Chicago, Silver Age Moscow, and Meiji Osaka

By Blair A. Ruble,

Book cover of Second Metropolis: Pragmatic Pluralism in Gilded Age Chicago, Silver Age Moscow, and Meiji Osaka

What is my book about?

Second Metropolis compares North America's, Russia's, and Japan's "second cities"--Chicago, Moscow, and Osaka—at the height of their capitalist industrial expansion between 1870 and 1920.  The book discloses the extent to which social fragmentation, frequently viewed as an obstacle to democratic development, fostered a "pragmatic pluralism" that nurtured pluralistic public policies. Such policies are explored through six case studies that illustrate how even those with massive political and economic power were stymied by the complexity of their communities. These three cities, though the products of very different nations and cultures, shared an important experience of inclusive politics during an era of extraordinary growth and social diversity.

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No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944

By Rona Simmons,

Book cover of No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944

Rona Simmons Author Of No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

I come by my interest in history and the years before, during, and after the Second World War honestly. For one thing, both my father and my father-in-law served as pilots in the war, my father a P-38 pilot in North Africa and my father-in-law a B-17 bomber pilot in England. Their histories connect me with a period I think we can still almost reach with our fingertips and one that has had a momentous impact on our lives today. I have taken that interest and passion to discover and write true life stories of the war—focusing on the untold and unheard stories often of the “Average Joe.”

Rona's book list on World War II featuring the average Joe

What is my book about?

October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on any other single day of the war.

The narrative of No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident while focusing its attention on ordinary individuals—clerks, radio operators, cooks, sailors, machinist mates, riflemen, and pilots and their air crews. All were men who chose to serve their country and soon found themselves in a terrifying and otherworldly place.

No Average Day reveals the vastness of the war as it reaches past the beaches in…

No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944

By Rona Simmons,

What is this book about?

October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, or on June 6, 1944, when the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy, or on any other single day of the war. In its telling of the events of October 24, No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident. The book begins with Army Private First-Class Paul Miller's pre-dawn demise in the Sendai #6B Japanese prisoner of war camp. It concludes with the death…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in Tokyo, Japan, and urban history?

Tokyo 92 books
Japan 516 books
Urban History 5 books