Books in Seymour Library are arranged by call number. Call numbers group books together on the shelf by topic. Books on the history of Japan have call numbers in the DS 800s.
Search Knox Primo using words that would appear in subject headings, "japan" and "history" and other keywords that describe a narrower topic. Choose the SUBJECT index. For example:
When you find a relevant book in Knox Primo, look at the subject headings. All the subject headings are links, and if you click on one of them you will see all the other books in Knox Primo that also use that subject heading.
Also look at subject headings to get additional search terms that you might not have thought of!
JSTOR contains full text of both journal articles and books. See these tips for making the most effective use of JSTOR to discover journal articles and books or book chapters on your topic:
1. Try using the FIELDS to limit your search terms. If you do not use the fields to limit your search, JSTOR will look for your search terms anywhere in the full text of the article. (Sometimes this is helpful, but most of the time, it results in too many irrelevant results.)
Tip: Think of synonyms and use the OR search operator to combine terms. Example: disease OR plague OR epidemic
Tip: Use the * as a truncation symbol to retrieve search terms with variant endings, for example: disease*
2. If you want to limit results to just articles or just books, after you see the results list, check one of the boxes to show a specific type of content:
3. After you see the results list, use the subject limit (on the left) to find content in a specific discipline: 
CiNii is the Japanese version of JSTOR, used for finding academic articles, books, and dissertations written in Japanese. Full text PDF often linked, sometimes English-language abstracts are included.
The Cambridge History of Japan is a tertiary source produced by many scholars covering the history of Japan. This is generally deemed an authoritative source.
