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Non fiction book about the archaeology of bones and graves written for a popular audience. This is written in a fairly easy to read style and I didn’t have too much trouble with it, although I’m glad I pre-studied the bone and disease vocab via the jpdb deck, and I definitely read it at a slower pace than I would a novel. At only 250 pages in bunkobon format it isn’t a huge time investment.
I think my criticism of it is that it doesn’t have a strong thesis or story it’s trying to tell, so the different sections can feel a bit disjointed. Perhaps there’s something here of the traditional Japanese essay format which unlike the Western one doesn’t clearly flag the direction of an essay up front, because the concluding chapter does pull things together a bit. Or maybe my comprehension of non fiction argumentative writing is too weak to see the thread of connection unless the author beats me over the head with it :-) Also, contra the title, one chapter is about 17th and 18th century London – the justification is to provide a comparison with Edo, but I can’t help feeling that the fact that part of the author’s academic career was spent at a London university was at least as much of a factor…
Perhaps because the author’s speciality and interest is bones, she sometimes stops short at the point where the bone evidence does – for instance in a description of the excavation of the graves of some of the women in the shogun’s castle’s women’s quarters, she notes that they all have pretty bad lead poisoning – but then just leaves the topic there rather than discussing why. This also left me a little dissatisfied.
I hadn’t realised until I read this book that Japanese burial customs included grave goods up until quite recently. The author has an anecdote about her grandparents’ isolated mountain village still burying people with their favourite writing brush, sake cup, etc until as late as WW2, and during the Edo period it was common.
On balance I think I recommend it if you find the topic interesting, but it’s not a must-read.