Kojin Karatani, one of Japan's most influential thinkers, wrote the essays collected in History and Repetition during a period of radical historical change, triggered by the collapse of the Cold War order and the death of the Sh?wa emperor in 1989. Through an original reading of Marx, Karatani developed a theory of history based on the repetitive cycle of crises attending the expansion and transformation of capital. His work led to a rigorous theoretical analysis of political, economic, and literary forms of representation-joined by a detailed, empirical study of Japan's modern history-th.