Introduction to Japan

Japan (日本 Nihon or Nippon, officially 日本国 Nihon or Nippon-koku?) is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of China, Korea, and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea in the south. Its capital is Tokyo, one of the 47 prefectures.

At over 377,873 square kilometres, Japan is the 62nd largest country by area. It encompasses over 3,000 islands, the largest of which are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku. Most of Japan's islands are mountainous, and many are volcanic, including the highest peak, Mount Fuji. It has the world's 10th largest population, with nearly 128 million people. The Greater Tokyo Area, with over 30 million residents, is the largest metropolitan area in the world.

Archaeological research indicates that people were living on the islands of Japan as early as the upper paleolithic period. The written history of Japan begins with brief appearances in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Japanese history has been marked by alternating periods of long isolation and radical influence from the outside world. Its culture today is a mixture of outside and internal influences.

Since it adopted its constitution on May 3, 1947, Japan has maintained a unitary constitutional monarchy with an emperor and an elected parliament, the Diet, which is one of the oldest legislative bodies in Asia. Japan is an economic world power with the world's second largest economy, and is the sixth largest exporter and importer and is a member of the United Nations, G8, G4, and APEC.

History

The first signs of civilization appeared around 10,000 BC with the Jōmon culture, characterized by a mesolithic to neolithic semi-sedentary hunter-gatherer lifestyle of pit dwelling and a rudimentary form of agriculture. The Jomon people made decorated clay vessels, often with plaited patterns. Some of the oldest surviving examples of pottery in the world may be found in Japan, although the specific dating is disputed.

The Yayoi period, starting around 300 BC, marked the influx of new practices such as rice farming and iron and bronze-making brought by migrants from Korea and China. Japan first appears in written history in 57 AD, in China's Book of Later Han, as "the people of Wa, formed from more than one hundred tribes." In the 3rd century, according to China's Book of Wei, the most powerful kingdom in Japan was called Yamataikoku.

The Yamato period, from the 3rd century to the 7th century, saw the establishment of a dominant polity centered in the Yamato area and thus arose the Japanese imperial lineage.

Buddhism was introduced to Japan by Baekje, to which Japan provided military support,[4] and it was promoted by the ruling class. Prince Shotoku devoted his efforts to the spread of Buddhism and Chinese culture in Japan. He is credited with bringing relative peace to Japan through the proclamation of the Seventeen-article constitution.

Starting with the Taika Reform Edicts of 645, the Yamato court intensified the adoption of Chinese cultural practices and reorganized the government and the penal code based on the Chinese administrative structure (the Ritsuryo state) of the time. This paved the way for the dominance of Confucian philosophy in Japan through the 19th century. This period also saw the first use of the word Nihon (日本, Nihon?) as a name for the emerging state.

The Nara period of the 8th century marked the first emergence of a strong Japanese state, centered around an imperial court in the city of Heijo-kyo. The imperial court then moved briefly to Nagaoka, and then to Heian-kyō (now Kyoto).

Historical writing in Japan culminated in the early 8th century with the massive chronicles, the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki. These two chronicles give a legendary account of Japan's beginnings. According to them Japan was founded in 660 BC by Emperor Jimmu, a descendant of the Shinto deity Amaterasu (the Sun Goddess). Emperor Jimmu is said to be the ancestor of the line of emperors that remains unbroken to this day. Historians, however, believe the first emperor who actually existed was Emperor Ōjin, though the date of his reign is uncertain.

In the Heian period, from 794 to 1185, a distinctly indigenous culture emerged, noted for its art, especially poetry and literature. In the early 11th century, Lady Murasaki wrote the world's oldest surviving novel called The Tale of Genji. The Fujiwara clan's regency dominated politics during this period.

Japan's medieval era was characterized by the emergence of a ruling class of warriors, the samurai. In 1185, following the defeat of the rival Taira clan, Minamoto no Yoritomo was appointed Seii Tai-Shogun and established a base of power in Kamakura. After Yoritomo's death, another warrior clan, the Hojo, came to rule as regents for the shoguns. The Kamakura shogunate managed to repel Mongol invasions in 1274 and 1281, with assistance from a storm that the Japanese interpreted as a kamikaze, or Divine Wind. The Kamakura shogunate lasted another fifty years and was eventually overthrown by Ashikaga Takauji in 1333. The succeeding Ashikaga shogunate failed in the management of daimyo, and a civil war erupted. The Onin War(1467 to 1477) is generally regarded as the onset of the "Warring States" or Sengoku period.

During the 16th century, traders and missionaries from Portugal reached Japan for the first time, initiating the Nanban ("southern barbarian") period of active commercial and cultural exchange between Japan and the West. Oda Nobunaga conquered numerous other daimyo by using European technology and firearms, and had almost unified the nation when he was assassinated in the Incident at Honnoji in 1582. Toyotomi Hideyoshi succeeded Nobunaga and united the nation in 1590. Hideyoshi twice invaded Korea, but was thwarted by Ming China. After several defeats and Hideyoshi's death, Japanese troops were withdrawn in 1598.

After Hideyoshi's death, Tokugawa Ieyasu utilized his position as a regent of Toyotomi Hideyori (Hideyoshi's son), along with the conflicts among loyalists of the Toyotomi clan, to gain the support of daimyo from across Japan. When open war broke out, he defeated his rival clans in the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600. Ieyasu was appointed to be shogun in 1603 and established the Tokugawa shogunate in Edo (Tokyo).

After defeating Toyotomi clan, at the Siege of Osaka in 1614 and 1615, the Tokugawa clan became the ruler of Japan both in name and reality, setting up the centralized feudal system with the Tokugawa shogunate at the head of the feudal domains. After Ieyasu, the Tokugawa shogunate enacted a variety of measures to control the daimyo, among them the sankin-kotai of alternating between home and attendance in Edo. In 1639, the shogunate began the isolationist sakoku ("closed country") policy that spanned the two and a half centuries of tenuous political unity known as the Edo period. This has often considered to be the height of Japan's medieval culture. The study of Western sciences, known as rangaku, continued during this period through contacts with the Dutch enclave at Dejima in Nagasaki. The period saw the development of the ethnocentric kokugaku philosophy .

On March 31, 1854, Commodore Matthew Perry and the "Black Ships" of the United States Navy forced the opening of Japan to the West with the Convention of Kanagawa. The Boshin War of 1867-1868 led to the resignation of the shogunate, and the Meiji Restoration established a government centered around the emperor. One of the main figures that helped bring change was Fukuzawa Yukichi who wrote the article "Leaving Asia", encouraging Japan to be open to change and modernize through Westernization.

Japan adopted numerous Western institutions, including a modern government, legal system and military. Japan introduced a parliamentary system modeled after the British parliament, with Ito Hirobumi as first Prime Minister in 1885.

The Meiji era reforms helped transform the Empire of Japan into a world power, expanding its sphere of influence through victories in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). The latter was highly significant because it was the first time that an Asian country had defeated a European imperial power. By 1910, Japan controlled Korea, Taiwan and the southern half of Sakhalin. Next year, the unequal treaties Japan had signed with western powers were cancelled.

The early 20th century saw a brief period of "Taisho democracy" overshadowed by the rise of Japanese expansionism and militarization. World War I enabled Japan, which fought on the side of the victorious Allies, to expand its influence in Asia and its territorial holdings in the Pacific. In 1920 Japan joined the League of Nations and became a member of its security council. Japan continued its expansionist policy by occupying Manchuria in 1931. The ensuing criticism from the League prompted its withdrawal in 1933. In 1936, Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Germany, later joining the Axis Powers alliance in 1940.

Japan subsequently attacked the rest of China, starting the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). In 1941, after suffering from oil embargoes and under diplomatic pressure from the United States, United Kingdom and the Netherlands, Japan attacked the United States naval base in Pearl Harbor and declared war on those three powers. Germany subsequently declared war on the United States a week later, bringing the U.S. into World War II.

After a long campaign in the Pacific Ocean, Japan gradually lost its initial territorial gains. American forces moved close enough to begin the strategic bombing of cities like Tokyo and Osaka, culminating in the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing about 214,000 people (mostly civilians)[verification needed]. After the atomic bombings, Imperial Japan agreed to an unconditional surrender. The formal surrender documents were signed September 2, 1945 (V-J Day). The Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal was convened on May 3, 1946 to prosecute Japanese war crimes, including atrocities like the Nanking Massacre. Emperor Hirohito was given immunity from any prosecution and retained his position.

The war cost millions of lives in Japan and other countries, especially in East Asia, and left much of the country's industry and infrastructure destroyed. In 1947, Japan adopted a new pacifist constitution, seeking international cooperation and emphasizing human rights and democratic practices. Official American occupation lasted until 1952 and Japan was granted membership of the United Nations in 1956. After the American occupation, under a program of aggressive industrial development and U.S. assistance, Japan achieved spectacular growth to become the second largest economy in the world, with a growth rate averaging 10% for four decades. This ended in the 1990s, when Japan suffered a major recession from which it has since been slowly recovering.