Ancient history is taking a global turn. Responding to broader trends in the discipline, recent volumes have gone beyond the Mediterranean heartlands of Classical studies to compare (for example) the resources and legitimating frameworks of ancient empires across Eurasia (e.g. A. J. S. Spawforth (ed.), The Court and Court Society in Ancient Monarchies (2007); W. Scheidel (ed.), Rome and China: Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires (2009) and idem (ed.), State Power in Ancient China and Rome (2015)). One concern raised in the context of an analogous project — the UK ‘Global Middle Ages’ network (http://globalmiddleages.history.ox.ac.uk/) — is that of participation: it is less than ideal if the discipline goes global, but its practitioners remain largely drawn from Europe and the US. Against that wider backdrop, New Approaches to the Later Roman Empire is both timely and welcome. Stemming from a 2014 colloquium at Kyoto University — and building on the success of the ancient history journal Kodai — New Approaches presents studies of the late antique Mediterranean by nine Japanese and three European scholars, interlaced with responses from other participants.

A useful introduction by the editor, Takashi Minamikawa sets out the key question: where next for Japanese historians of the later Roman Empire after the return of its ‘fall’ in Anglophone historiography? From the papers which follow, the consensus seems to be a need to combine cultural history with attention to political institutions: a marriage of the competing emphases of the ‘transformation of the Roman world’ and ‘the fall of Rome’. In his opening chapter, Mischa Meier sets out a prospectus for one version of this synthesis, sketching developments in the political culture of the Eastern Empire after 476.

Readers looking for systematic comparison of Eurasian empires will have to turn elsewhere. As might be expected, the location of the conference inspired many to reflect briefly on similarities and differences between societies at opposite ends of the Eurasian landmass, but the volume focuses predominantly on the Roman Mediterranean. The implications of East–West dialogue come through most clearly in the second section on late Roman élites. John Weisweiler summarizes his arguments for a ‘domestication’ of the senatorial élite in the later Empire (outlined in greater detail in a paper in J. Wienand (ed.), Contested Monarchy: Integrating the Roman Empire in the Fourth Century AD (2015)). Weisweiler gestures towards parallel features in Han China, a comparison taken up in a short response by Hajime Tanaka, and in the next paper, by Fuminori Inoue, on the separation of military and senatorial élites in the later third and fourth centuries. Inoue sets out a sharp contrast of intermarriage between military and civilian élites in China with endogamy among their Roman counterparts (a contrast finessed by Weisweiler in his own response, at 80–2). Finally, Kosuke Yamashita teases out (from a series of constitutions in the Theodosian Code) the administrative processes surrounding petitions for the granting or pre-emptive possession of bona caduca: land inherited by the fisc.

The third section turns to miscellaneous issues in late antique cultural history. Hajime Tanaka's chapter is an elegant study of Book 5 of Theodoret of Cyrrhus’ Ecclesiastical History. Through careful elucidation of subtle omissions and chronological distortions, Tanaka sets out a convincing case that Theodoret's rôle in contemporary ecclesiastical politics shaped his presentation of late fourth- and early fifth-century history. Moving from the micro to the macro, Masahiro Nishimura considers various aspects of late Roman ideology as presented in surviving panegyrics. Meanwhile, Hiroaki Adachi presents an engaging account of the famous fifth-century Alexandrian philosopher Hypatia as a Christian holy woman manquée. In his response to this section, Richard Flower rightly draws attention to the sensitive perspectives on ‘artful’ late antique literary texts on display (143).

The final section presents two treatments of problems in Byzantine history. Isao Kobayashi asks why the Arab armies under Mu‘āwiya raided western Asia Minor in the early 660s, when they had proceeded directly to Constantinople in 654. His chapter presents a plausible set of factors; further discussion of the disparate (and often problematic) evidence which must be adduced for this (and indeed any) reconstruction of those decades would have been useful. Finally, Hisatsugu Kusabu argues for a closing down of the concept of the oikoumene in the middle Byzantine Empire, and a similar geographical restriction on ideas of Byzantine orthodoxy.

‘The sound of the Gion Shoja bells echoes the impermanence of all things.’ In his response to Meier's opening survey, Taisuke Nagumo suggests a fundamental difference between Japanese and European historiographical perspectives, rooted in basic metaphors: a vision of history as ‘a constantly changing thing, like a flowing river’ as against ‘something constructive, like a building process’ (29). Thus, for Nagumo, the idea of ‘decline and fall’ is both much less problematic and much more naturally appealing than it is for many of his Western contemporaries. His striking insight — like many of the papers in this volume — sheds new light on old problems. What this volume suggests, above all, is the merit of continuing comparative work and global scholarly dialogue. The challenges presented (and tackled) here face all historians of Late Antiquity — and not simply those working in Japan.