A brief history of Japan in five distinct historical periods. The summary hopefully provides a basic insight into the country’s tumultuous past and provides some foundations from which the unique culture and customs of today’s Japan can be understood.
The first humans to inhabit Japan walked over from the mainland around 35,000 BCE at a time when the northwestern tip of Hokkaido was connected to the eastern extremities of Russia. Evidence of cord-marked pottery… Read More
The ebb and flow of power between various factions dictated domestic history for much of the following centuries. In the same way that an emperor relying on the loyalty of increasingly powerful and militarized families… Read More
Tokugawa Ieyasu installing himself as shogun did not wash away the grievances felt by those daimyo with ambitions for power or who thought Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s son, Hideyori, the legitimate successor. Ieyasu exacerbated such tensions by… Read More
The relative ease with which power shifted back to the emperor stood in contrast to the huge task of nationalization which lay ahead. While Tokugawa rule had unified the country, governance was still semi-feudal in… Read More
General Douglas MacArthur, who had been commander of the United States Army Forces in the Far East, landed at Atsugi in Kanagawa Prefecture on 30 August, 1945. As Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP)… Read More
