Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2014 January 13

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January 13

A book on Japanese history

What I want is, basically, a much longer and more in-depth version of our History of Japan article. Not being a prolific history book reader (this will, in fact, be my first), I'm not terribly familiar with how to search for exactly what it is I want. Are there any resources that the Ref Desk would recommend? I'm going to guess something in that article's reference list, but it's quite a long list.

Thinking about it, there probably won't be a single book, given how long history in most countries is. Still, I'd be interested to see what might be recommended, or how I could refine my searches. 86.173.145.139 (talk) 04:10, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

One semi-classic older book that I happen to know about because I have it is "Japan: A Short Cultural History" by G.B. Sansom. It has some interesting material, though it ends in 1867... AnonMoos (talk) 09:40, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

I know you specified "book", but the part about never reading a history book leads me to suggest this video. Quite long and fairly deep. Turning on the captions makes it an e-book, with moving illustrations. It might also help you narrow down which periods and events you want to explore further (on paper, or otherwise). Not a big country, but a very busy and old one. To fit it all in one physical book would take a miracle. InedibleHulk (talk) 10:54, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

I've just finished reading A Brief History of the Samurai by Jonathan Clements, which covers the history of Japan's ruling elite from the early medieval period to the Meiji Restoration in the second half of the 19th century and about their influence down to the present. Very readable. Alansplodge (talk) 13:49, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

The Wikipedia article's reference list is a decent starting point. Another method that has worked for me is to type "History of X" (in your case, "History of Japan") into the search box on Amazon.com, specifying that you want books in the drop-down menu. Then you can see what comes up and read the reviews. Or you can search for titles from our list of references on Amazon to read the reviews. This is not intended as an endorsement of Amazon, and you don't have to buy the book from Amazon just because you read the review there. Marco polo (talk) 17:17, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you very much for all of your suggestions! Exactly what I was looking for. I'll put them to use soon. 86.173.145.139 (talk) 07:55, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Sherlock Holmes stories from a professional POV

Have you ever come across a discussion, an article or a book that has a modern professional police detective discussing Sherlock Holmes stories, from the point of view of whether what Holmes does makes sense (adjusting for technology difference). Something along the lines of "here he does what a real detective would do, here he jumps to unwarranted conclusions, here he is full of it, but gets lucky", etc. I think I once read a passage in a fictional book where a (fictional) policeman criticizes one episode in such a fashion. I can't remember what it was though. I'd be most interested in a comprehensive sort of analysis of all, or at least many of the stories in this fashion. --108.202.177.21 (talk) 07:49, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Don't think that Sherlock Holmes was intended to represent professional police crime-solving techniques, but rather an idiosyncratic individual with sharp powers of observation and "ratiocination". In any case, modern criminal forensics barely even existed when Conan Doyle was writing the first Sherlock Holmes stories... AnonMoos (talk) 10:05, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

I found a US TV documentary called How Sherlock Changed the World which seems to fit the bill. It looks as though you ought to be able to see the whole episode from the linked website, but not if you're outside of the US. For something more science based, I found Sherlock Holmes: scientific detective by Laura J. Snyder of St John's University, NY, but sadly you have to pay to read it. Finally, Sherlock Holmes: Father of Scientific Crime Detection at JSTOR which looks as though you can read it for free. Alansplodge (talk) 13:39, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

I have seen the PBS documentary Alansplodge links to, and highly recommend it. It does not critique the stories in the way that the OP is talking about, but it does show how the Holmes stories had a direct influence on the pioneers of modern forensic criminology. Blueboar (talk) 14:52, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

He's not a "modern" detective, in form at least, but Samuel Vimes in Feet of Clay (part of Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld series) is given opinions which are clearly meant as a policeman's comment on Sherlock Holmes:

Samuel Vimes ... had a jaundiced view of Clues. He instinctively distrusted them. They got in the way.

And he distrusted the kind of person who’d take one look at another man and say in a lordly voice to his companion, ‘Ah, my dear sir, I can tell you nothing except that he is a left-handed stonemason who has spent some years in the merchant navy and has recently fallen on hard times,’ and then unroll a lot of supercilious commentary on calluses and stance and the state of a man’s boots, when exactly the same comments could apply to a man who was wearing his old clothes because he’d been doing a spot of home bricklaying for a new barbecue pit, and had been tattooed once when he was drunk and seventeen and in fact got seasick on a wet pavement. What arrogance! What an insult to the rich and chaotic variety of the human experience!

It was the same with more static evidence. The footprints in the flowerbed were probably in the real world left by the window-cleaner. The scream in the night was quite likely a man getting out of bed and stepping sharply on an upturned hairbrush.

The real world was far too real to leave neat little hints. It was full of too many things. It wasn’t by eliminating the impossible that you got at the truth, however improbable; it was by the much harder process of eliminating the possibilities. You worked away, patiently asking questions and looking hard at things. You walked and talked, and in your heart you just hoped like hell that some bugger’s nerve’d crack and he’d give himself up.

Proteus (Talk) 14:37, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, that's exactly the sort of feeling I have when I read these stories, but I am curious if an actual detective would more or less say the same, and also which things he would call out as utterly implausible and unjustified inferences.--108.202.177.21 (talk) 18:54, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. In his world there are only ever 2 or 3 possibilities, so eliminating 1 or 2 is easy. In the real world there are thousands of possibilities, so eliminating all of them isn't always possible. At best you can say that one suspect is more likely the killer than another. It's all very messy.

For example, let's look at fingerprints. Say you have a suspect's fingerprint, in blood, on the victim's throat. Open and closed case, right ? Not always. The suspect could say they were trying to assist the victim after somebody else stabbed them. The fingerprint identification might be faulty (either by accident or malice). And these days, when they run a fingerprint against millions in a computer database, some are bound to match, just by chance, especially if you use loose criteria for a "match" and if the quality of the prints is poor. StuRat (talk) 19:09, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

While a work of fiction, The Mystery of the Yellow Room makes it an important point that the detective refrains from jumping to conclusions in the style of Sherlock Holmes. --188.26.23.191 (talk) 07:17, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

• Conan Doyle modeled Holmes after a medical doctor he knew (Joseph Bell), and I have several times seen his methods discussed in relation to medicine. I have never seen them discussed in relation to real police work. Looie496 (talk) 18:45, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Alansplodge's JSTOR article (from the Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology and Police Science) makes the argument that Holmes was a significant figure in the development of modern forensic techniques. He popularized some early criminological tools, such as fingerprints, which at the time first used by Holmes were little known, and he actually invented others, such as the examination of tobacco ashes. Although people who are unfamiliar with him may suppose that Holmes was an armchair detective, reading the stories shows his attention to detail and focus on observation and scientific methods - moreso than actual detectives of the time. In contrast, his use of logic is subject to the criticisms made above. John M Baker (talk) 19:42, 14 January 2014 (UTC)