知ってびっくり! 日本の歴史のお話 後編

Dry & terrible format for the information

I found the initial history about the introduction of guns (from Portuguese traders), introduction of Christianity to Japan, and even parts of Nobunaga's story interesting enough. However the content shifted to be mainly focused on battles, and the presentation of them is very dry and linear, and it largely just becomes a sea of personal names (and locations) that are irrelevant 4 pages later. Except for the parts about Nobunaga's military endeavours, there's almost no connection between chapters, to give you any kind of relevance for the events. Even the parts that were interesting are very shallow. In theory it's an easy reading level, especially with the full furigana, but in practice keeping track of all the names and such makes it much harder. The book would have really benefitted from any kind of charts, 登場人物, maps, etc, instead of the random illustrations each chapter. I could only really see this being useful for someone who wants to go through the book very slowly, take notes, look everything up, etc. I feel like it's more useful for natives - for whom a lot of these names & places are probably already familiar - than learners.

If you're interested in this period, I'd highly recommend the 角川まんが学習シリーズ 日本の歴史 | L28 manga series - the corresponding volume is volume 8. It presents the information much more engagingly, including maps, charts, explanations, etc, and there's much more connection between different sections.

Alternately そうなんだ!日本の歴史のお話 is another text-book series that from the previews I've read (of volume 1), seems likely to do a better job than this did.