Japan

Japan is an island nation lying off the east coast of the Asian continent. It consists of a string of islands in a northeast-southwest arc, stretching approximately 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) through the western North Pacific Ocean. The majority of Japan's landmass is taken up by four main islands: Hokkaidō, Honshū, Shikoku, and Kyūshū. In addition, there are numerous smaller islands, the major groups of which include the Ryukyu (Nansei) Islands (which includes Okinawa) and the Izu, Bonin (Ogasawara), and Volcano (Kazan) islands.

Japan's national capital city is Tokyo (Tōkyō) in east-central Honshū, and it is one of the world's most populous cities, with an estimated population in 2023 of 37 million residents. Japan has a long history, one where complexity and contrast are keynotes of life, which has seen the country possess intricate and ancient cultural traditions. Yet, in 1950, it emerged as one of the world's most economically and technologically advanced societies. Similarly, life in Japan has a heavy emphasis on education, with one of the highest literacy rates globally, and evidences a sensitivity to natural beauty and a concern with form and balance.

Tokyo skyline.

The country's cultural attitudes are partially a reflection of the country's history and a reflection of its landscape. The Japanese landscape tends to be rugged, with more than four-fifths of the land surface being mountainous, with abundant precipitation and generally mild temperatures, which have resulted in lush vegetation cover despite generally poor soils (making agriculture difficult) while the majority of the country's ethnically homogenous population is concentrated in the low-lying areas along the pacific coast of Honshū.

Traditional Japanese architecture.

Meanwhile, historically, the country of Japan has been unified since the early fifth century, which developed a largely isolated culture while being led by largely militaristic leaders. That isolation would break in the early-seventeenth and mid-nineteenth century, after which Japan underwent rapid and unprecedented economic and cultural changes, moving from a largely agrarian society to a modern industrialized nation in a generation. Since then, Japan has shown an ability to make rapid cultural and economic changes, which saw the country in a century moving from an isolated country on the periphery of the Asian continent to a nation at the forefront of the world economy, including being a foremost manufacturing and trading country and a global financial leader.

Map of the main body of Japan.

As an island nation, Japan is bound on all sides by seas, oceans, and straits. To the west, Japan is bordered by the Sea of Japan, which separates Japan from the eastern shores of Siberia, North Korea, and South Korea. To the north, Japan is bordered by the La Perouse (Sōya) Strait— which separates the Japanese islands from Russian-held Sakhalin Island—and by the Sea of Okhotsk. To the east and south, Japan is bordered by the Pacific Ocean. To the southwest, Japan is bordered by the East China Sea, which separates it from the east coast of China. And the Island of Tsushima, which lies between northwestern Kyūshū and southeastern South Korea, defines the Korean Strait on the Korean side, and the Tsushima Strait on the Japanese side.

The chain of islands all share a mountainous character. This is the result of orogenic (mountain-building) forces, which were active during the Quarternary time (or the past 2.6 million years) and are part of the cause of the frequent violent earthquakes, volcanic activity, and changes in sea levels along the coast that the Japanese islands experience yearly. Further, there are no sizeable plains, which are usually features of stable regions, and the island's mountains are in a youthful stage, as evidenced by steep slopes incised by river-valley networks. These rivers tend to be torrential, with valleys accompanied by a series of river terraces which are the result of movements in the Earth's crust paired with climactic and sea-level changes as a result of the most recent ice age.

Part of Japan's mountain chains.

Similar to the mountainous character of the islands is the volcanic character. The islands feature recent and old volcanoes and the activity of those activities (either recent or older activity), creating juxtaposition across the islands, evidenced by depressed features such as headlands, bays, and lowlands or deep saddles, which divide the mountains into many small blocks, with the islands no longer having continuous or long mountain ranges. These lowlands tend to be a feature of intense faulting, or fracturing and bending, in the Earth's crust.

Rivers are also a constant feature of the Japanese islands. These rivers sprout from the dormant volcanoes and mountainous areas and shape the plains when they are large enough to extend their courses to the sea. They result in low plains and alluvial fans, which create shallow and sheltered bays in some cases; in most cases, they plunge directly into the sea and create low, sandy beach ridges. Other plains, known as dissected plains, are created by disturbances that lift the alluvial fans, deltas, and sea bottoms to form flat-topped uplands, such as those found in the Kantō Plain.

As evidenced from above, geologic instability is a key feature of the the Japanese islands and has been the driving force in shaping the geological characteristics of those islands. The tectonic movements that create these characteristics include the subduction (or sinking) of the Pacific Plate in the north and the sinking of the Philippine Plate in the south, both of which are moving beneath the Eurasian Plate upon which Japan lies. This tectonic movement formed six mountain arcs off the northeastern coast of Asia: the Chishima Range of the Kuril Islands, the Karafuto (Sakhalin) Mountain system of Hokkaido, the Shichito-Mariana ranges of Honshū, and the Ryukyu Island formations.

Volcanic eruption in Japan.

The movements of these tectonic plates mean Japan experiences some 1,000 tremors annually. Most of these are minor quakes, but some become major, such as those experienced by Tokyo-Yokohama in 1923 and Kobe in 1995—both of which caused considerable loss of life and destruction. Volcanic eruptions are also frequent across the islands, with at least sixty volcanoes active within historical time and new volcanoes born since 1900, including the Showa Volcano and Myojin Rock. Recent major eruptions (since 1980) have included the eruptions of Mount O in 1983 and Mount Unzen in 1991. Many of the volcanoes are conical in shape, and a few group form steep lava domes. However, shield volcanoes (which tend to be broad and gently sloping) are rare in the islands. The islands also lack extensive lava plateaus, while enjoying many volcanic calderas (large, basin-shaped volcanic depressions), which form many of the country's lakes when filled with water (such as Lakes Kutcharo, Towada, and Ashi). Japan is also known for the country's abundant hot springs, most of which are of volcanic origin.

Volcanoes and the mountains resulting from volcanic and tectonic activity have largely shaped the Japanese islands, and generally, the mountain arcs they've created correspond to Japan's major physiographic regions: the four regions of Japan proper (Hondo)—Hokkaido, Tōhoku, Chūbu, and the Southwestern region—and the Ryukyu and Bonin archipelagos.

Major regions of Japan.

The Hokkaido region was formed by the coming together of the Chishima and Karafuto mountain arcs, which align north to south. The chiefs of the mountain system are the Kitami Mountains in the north and the Hidaka Range in the south. This mountain range includes three volcanic chains with elevations above 6,000 feet (1,800 meters).

The Tōhoku region coincides with a northeastern mountain arc, which stretches from southwest Hokkaido to central Honshū. This region includes several rows of mountains interspersed with lowlands and speckled with volcanic zones, which create an insular arc to the region that is convex to the Pacific Ocean.

The Chūbu region of central and western Honshū is dominated by the termination of the Northeast, Southwest, and Shichito-Mariana mountain arcs near Mount Fuji. Much of this region is dominated by the Fossa Magna, a great rift lowland that traverses the widest portion of Honshū from the Sea of Japan to the Pacific. The Fossa Magna includes some mountains and volcanoes of the southern portion of the East Japan Volcanic Belt, with intermountain basins sandwiched between partially glaciated central mountain knots of the Akasihi, Kiso, and Hida ranges—which form what is known as the Japanese Alps)—to the west and the Kantō Range in the east. A feature of the Kantō Range is the Kantō Plain, a shallow structural basin and the most extensive lowland area in Japan, which houses the metropolis of Tokyo.

The Southwestern region is a thin strip on the Pacific side of the main island and includes Honshū, Shikoku, and northern Kyushu. The region generally coincides with the southwestern mountain arc and is roughly convex to the Sea of Japan. The region was formed by complex faulting and warping, which formed two specific zones: the Inner Zone (which was formed by faulting) and the Outer Zone (formed by warping). The Inner Zone is formed of ancient granites (rocks aged 250 to 540 million years) with some more geologically recent volcanic rock. The Outer Zone, which consists fo the Akaishi, Kii, Shikoku, and Kyushu mountain groups, offers regular zonal arrangements from north to south of Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic formations.

Ryukyu Islands region.

The Ryukyu Islands region constitutes the main portion of the Ryukyu arc, which stretches from the West Japan Volcanic Belt to Mount Aso. The influence of the geographic arc is seen in the trend of many elongated islands, which include the Koshiki, Goto, and Tsushima islands. To the east of the Ryukyu arc are the islands of the Izu-Ogasawara Region, which consist of a number of volcanoes and the submarine ridge of the Izu-Marina arc, and the Bonin Islands.

The soil of Japan is divided from northeast to southwest into several zones. These include the podzolic zone, which are soils with thin organic mineral layers over a leached layer; a brown earth zone; and a red earth zone. Despite the general arrangement, each locality includes variations on the general theme. Most importantly for Japan, the kuroboku soils, which are black soils rich in humus content, tend to be found on terraces, hills, and gentle slopes; while the fertility of soil increases in the lowlands where agriculture is practiced, with the fertility a result of natural alluvium washed from uplands down to the lowlands and from centuries of reworking of the soil by farmers.

Drainage is an issue Japan faces, both as the demand for freshwater increases (as a result of wet-rice [paddy] cultivation, domestic consumption, and industrial consumption) and as the country experiences difficulties in the supply of necessary freshwater. The majority of the country's supply comes from short and swift-running rivers supplied by small drainage basins, and some of those rivers are overly acidic (as they come from volcanic areas) and cannot be used for irrigation or other purposes.

Japan's climate is often generally characterized as monsoonal—governed by wet and dry seasonal winds—which, in turn, are influenced by the country's latitudinal extent, the surrounding oceans, and the island chain's proximity to the Asian continent. Many of the local regions experience climactic variations, which result from the mountainous terrain and its impact on climate patterns. During the winter (generally from late September to March), high-pressure zones over Siberia and low-pressure zones over the Pacific result in an eastward flow of cold air picking up moisture and depositing the moisture as rain or snow on the Sea of Japan side of the island while bringing dry, windy weather to the Pacific side. During summer (generally mid-April to early September), the pressure systems are reversed, which brings warm temperatures and rain. Cyclonic storms and typhoons (tropical cyclones) are common in the late summer and early fall, when they generally originate from the southwest.

Across Japan, temperatures are generally warmer in the south than in the north, and the transitional seasons (spring and fall) are typically shorter in the north than in the south. At the central point of Japan, the average temperature in the coldest month is 18 degrees F (-8 Celsius), the average for the warmest month is 70 degrees F (21 Celsius), and the average annual temperature is 44 degrees F (7 Celsius). Meawhile, in Tokyo, the average temperature in the coldest month is 42 degrees F (6 Celsius). More inland sees cooler temperatures, and warmer temperatures are mostly experienced closer to the Sea of Japan. The warmest temperatures are experienced in Kyushu and the southern islands.

Rainy season in Japan can bring torrential rains and flooding.

As an island nation, Japan experiences plentiful precipitation in the form of snow and rain. Maximum precipitation occurs in early summer, while minimum precipitation occurs in winter, with the exception of the Sea of Japan coast, which experiences the highest levels of snowfall throughout the islands. Precipitation patterns vary with the country's topography, but the majority of the country receives more than 40 inches (1,020 millimeters) of precipitation annually, the majority of which is rainfall. The lowest point for precipitation is eastern Hokkaido, where an average of 36 inches (920 millimeters) falls annually, while the mountainous interior of the Kii Peninsula receives more than 160 inches (4,060 millimeters) annually.

Japanese cherry tree (sakura).

Much of the original vegetation of Japan has been replaced by agriculture or by the introduction of foreign species. Many of the species that have come to dominate the island chain are part of semitropical rainforests; these include various kinds of mulberries, camphor, oaks, and ferns (including fern trees), while madder and lianas tend to be found as undergrowth. The southern coast of Kyushu also hosts mangrove swamps. Common tree types found across the islands of Japan include camphor, Japanese evergreen oak, ficus, fan palm, pine trees, Japanese cedars, pausanias, camellias, hollies, beeches, katsura trees, maples, oaks, birches, bamboo, Sakhalin spruces, Sakhalin firs, blue firs, Yezo spruces, and the celebrated and symbolic cherry tree (sakura).

Japanese macaque.

Despite Japan's large human population (relative to area), land mammals are relatively numerous, especially in the remote, heavily forested mountain regions. These include bears, wild boars, raccoon dogs, foxes, deer, antelope, hares, and weasels. Some of these species found in Japan are distinct from similar species found on the Asian continent, such as the Japanese macaque. Reptiles across the island chain include sea turtles, freshwater tortoises, sea snakes, and lizards. There are two poisonous species of snakes, but the majority of snakes are harmless. The island chain has plenty of amphibians, including toads, frogs, and newts, but of note is the endemic Japanese giant salamander, which can reach lengths of four feet or more.

The Crested ibis is a traditional bird of Japan.

Insect life on the Japanese archipelago is what would be expected of a temperate humid climate, but several species are unique for having seasonal associations in literature and popular culture of the country. These include cicadas and dragonflies, which are typically associated with summer, and crickets, which are associated with autumn. Japan is also part of a major East Asian flyway, which sees some 600 bird species make transitory residence across the Japanese islands, with other species making residence on the island. Not surprisingly, water birds are abundant across the islands, including gulls, auks, grebes, albatrosses, shearwaters, herons, ducks, geese, swans, and cranes. The terrestrial birds include 150 species of songbirds, eagles, hawks, falcons, pheasants, ptarmigans, quails, owls, and woodpeckers.

Not surprisingly, Japan also experiences a rich aquatic life, with the waters around Japan inhabited by a variety of fish, including whales, dolphins, porpoises, and fish such as salmon, sardines, sea bream, mackerel, tuna, trout, herring, gray mullet, smelts, and cod. Other sea life includes crustaceans in mollusks, such as crabs, shrimps, prawns, clams, and oysters. Freshwater fish in the rivers and lakes include trout, salmon, crayfish, and the commonly referenced carp, or koi, fish which are also often kept in ponds for decorative purposes.

Due, in large part, to Japan's isolationist history, the country's population is overwhelmingly composed of Japanese people. The Japanese people are ethnically akin to other peoples of eastern Asia. There are small populations of people of Chinese and Korean descent, both from waves of migration when either country was part of Japan's empire (especially around the Second World War). During the Edo Period, the people of Japan were stratified into social classes—including warrior, farmer, craftsman, and merchant—while a peer class and outcast class still existed. The class system has almost completely disappeared. There are a few exceptions, such as resident aliens (especially Koreans) and Japanese citizens of Ainu and Okinawa tend to hold a unique identity.

This identity comes from people of Ainu and Okinawan descent, historically, being relegated to a second-class status. The indigenous Ainu were largely assimilated into the general Japanese population centuries ago. Despite this, a few scattered populations, especially in Hokkaido, have maintained their traditional identity. People from Okinawa, before the Second World War, were generally distinguished from other Japanese because of perceived cultural and physical differences. These distinctions were based on the Okinawan culture, dialect, and religion, which shares many traits with Japanese culture; however, despite larger assimilation between the groups, there remains interest in those identified as Okinawan to maintain their distinctive cultural identity.

The population distribution across Japan sees population centers in the limited plains and lowlands across the islands. However, the increased population of the islands—which experienced incredible growth after 1868—has concentrated the population in urban centers with populations in rural areas decreasing considerably during that time. This has led to the development of major urban centers, such as Tokyo, and with the introduction of industrialization, developed the country's four major industrial districts: Tokyo-Yokohama, Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto, Nagoya, and northern Kyushu. The incredible growth rate has declined since World War II, with a decline in birth and death rates, seeing families have fewer children and leading to a near stagnant, if not falling, birth rate in the first few decades of the twenty-first century. In that time, Japan has seen the world's lowest birth rate, leading to a net population loss annually. Paired with a rapidly aging population, this has led to concerns over the potential of population collapse.

The Japanese language is the national language of the country. The language is generally included in the Altaic linguistic group, and, despite differences in the vocabularies, is akin to Korean. Previous to the fourth century CE introduction of the Chinese writing system and of Chinese literature enriched the original Japanese vocabulary, especially as, to that point, Japanese had no written form. At first, the Chinese characters, known as kanji in Japanese, were used to write Japanese until, by the ninth century CE, two syllabaries were developed from the Chinese characters. These two syllabaries are known collectively as kana and individually as katakana and hiragana, and a combination of kanji and kana has been used for written Japanese.

The syllabaries, especially kanji, include some 3,000 to 5,000 characters, which have been used generally. However, since the conclusion of the Second World War, the number of necessary characters for a basic vocabulary was reduced to about 2,000 characters, with a simplified way of writing these characters. Further, the Japanese language has included tens of thousands of loan words, principally from English.

The distribution of dialectical Japanese coincides with the territory of Japan, with what is known as Standard Japanese based on the dialect spoken in Tokyo which was formally established in the nineteenth century through the creation of a national Japanese education system and through widespread communication. However, many local dialects remain, some more or less intelligible, which has increased the use of Standard Japanese through formal communications and broadcasting as it is understood throughout the whole of Japan.

Broadly, Japanese is divided into two major linguistic dialects: Hondo and Nantō. The Hondo dialect is used throughout Japan and is further subdivided into three major subdialects: Eastern, Western, and Kyushu. The Eastern subdialect was established in the seventh and eighth centuries before being largely replaced by the influx of the Kinai subdialect, which forms the basis of Standard Japanese. The Western subdialects include Kinki, which was the standard form of Japanese for a long time before the adoption of what is now known as Standard Japanese. The Nantō dialects are used by Okinawa islanders and have long been placed outside the mainstream of linguistic change, which means these dialects retain much of their ancient forms.

Shinto, the indigenous religion of Japan, coexists with various sects of Buddhism, Christianity, some ancient shamanistic practices, and a few "new religions" (such as shinkō shukyō) that emerged since the nineteenth century. None of the religions are dominant. It is typical, for example, for one person or family to believe in several Shinto gods while belonging to a Buddhist sect. And, more generally, intense religious feelings tend to be lacking, with the notable exception of adherents of some new religions. Children across Japan do not receive formal religious training, while some families have a Buddhist altar to commemorate deceased family members. The majority of what are called "new religions" have borrowed influence from the mix of religions in Japan and have largely emerged after the nineteenth century. Some of these have attracted large followings, such as the Risshō Kōsei-kai or the Sōka Gakkai.

A Shinto shrine.

Shinto is a traditionally polytheistic religion, which has enshrined some people (such as major historical figures) as gods, as well as adopting some Hindu gods and Chinese spirits to the religion and adapting those figures for the Shinto religion. Generally, rural settlements have shrines, and there are several shrines of national significance, such as the Grand Shrine of Ise in Mie prefecture.

Buddhism is the second-most followed religion in Japan, following Shinto, and was officially introduced in the mid-sixth century from Korea. Direct contact with the Asian continent was maintained with the introduction of several Buddhist sects coming from this connection. Buddhism was, for a time, adopted as the national religion of Japan—similar to Shinto in other periods—with Zen Buddhism, which developed in the late twelfth century, coming to be the dominant Buddhist sect, which has retained the largest following.

Christianity was introduced to Japan by Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries in the mid- to late-sixteenth century. Originally well received, both as a religion and as a product of European culture, the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1603 saw the persecution of Christians before the religion was banned in the 1630s. However, isolated or inaccessible islands continued to harbor Christian villages until the ban was lifted. Christianity only accounts for a tiny fraction of religious observance of the nation's population.

An advanced Japanese factory floor.

Japan's economy is known for its rapid rate of growth and diversification in the twentieth century in the first several decades post-World War II. This growth was based on the expansion of industrial production, and the development of an enormous domestic market and aggressive export trade policy. In terms of gross national product (GNP; a common indicator of a country's wealth), Japan has commonly been ranked second in the world, behind only the United States. Manufacturing includes one of the world's largest producers of motor vehicles, steel, and high-technology manufactured goods (especially consumer electronics). Meanwhile, the service sector has come to dominate the economy in terms of its proportion of the gross domestic product (GDP) and employment.

Japan has an emphasis on trade, which comes from the country's lack of natural resources to support its industrial economy. This means Japan imports large amounts of natural resources, such as fossil fuels and most minerals, and the country imports a large portion of its food due to the limited amount of arable land across the islands. Japan's strong domestic market has reduced the country's dependence on trade, and the percentage of trade in regards to the country's GDP has reduced compared to other countries. There has also been, since the 1950s, a growing global demand for Japanese goods, which led to the country's sudden economic growth, and which largely stabilized in the 1990s. However, Japanese goods remain sought after in global markets.

Japan's government participates directly in economic activities, with the government exerting a stronger and more pervasive control and influence over business than in most other countries with market economies. This control is exercised primarily through the government's consultation with businesses and authorities' indirect involvement in banking. Consultation is often done through joint committees and groups that monitor the performance of and set targets for almost every sector of the economy. There have been, since the 1990s, attempts to limit the use of collusion between government and business, especially as there have been concerns over the power bureaucrats wield over the economy.

That said, the government has several agencies and departments that concern themselves with different parts of the economy, including exports, imports, investment, prices, and overall economic growth. These agencies, such as the Economic Planning Agency, which is part of the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, monitor the economy while also working on long-term planning for the economy. The long-term planning is considered a major force in the functioning of the Japanese economy, and it is credited with its success or the lack of success (given the year) and operates through economic objectives, including using policy measures to shift resources among industrial sectors and influence specific industries.

In the 1980s, the Japanese government relinquished monopolies over various industries—such as the tobacco, salt, and telecommunications industries—to the private sector. Since then, control of business in the Japanese economy has been underpinned by detailed regulations of business activities. Since the 1990s, there have been efforts to reduce government intervention in the economy, as Japan has sought new ways to create business opportunities and increase foreign accessibility in Japanese domestic markets, thereby revitalizing the economy.

Japanese offshore aquaculture.

As noted above, arable land is scarce across Japan and tends to be the most populated areas, which has further reduced the supply of land suitable for agricultural use. The largely infertile and immature soils require careful husbandry and fertilization, while the relatively wet climate assures the country has the necessary freshwater supplies for agricultural activity, especially as the country's precipitation patterns are quite reliable. This, along with many of the country's rivers, which can be tapped for irrigation, have made wet-rice, or paddy, cultivation possible across much of the country. That said, agriculture still accounts for a tiny fraction of the country's overall GDP, while employing a relatively large proportion of the working population when compared to its portion of GDP. The two largest produced crops are rice and sweet potatoes. Livestock raising is generally practiced on a small scale, with some dairy and beef cattle herds in Hokkaido, but most crops and beef remain imports.

Instead, Japan relies heavily on the sea as a source of food and has one of the largest fish industries in the world. This includes long-distance, deep-sea fisheries and fishing in the local seas. However, the fishing industry faces some trouble, despite Japan's dominant international position, due to local depletion from overfishing and pollution, while deep-sea fishing faces increasing international restrictions. The workers engaged in fishing have declined as the industry has struggled, and the current workers have begun to rapidly age. The aquacultures of fish, shellfish, and seaweed have been of increasing importance.

Japan's mineral reserves are small, and the quality of those mined tends to be poor. Generally, mining has been unimportant and is a declining part of the Japanese economy. The extractive industry is characterized by small and relatively inefficient mines. In the twenty-first century, mining for iron and copper has essentially ceased, and virtually all of Japan's mineral needs come from imports. The most abundant and most commonly extracted minerals (in relative terms) include coal, iron ore, zinc, lead, copper, sulfur, gold, and silver, while the country has lesser deposits of tungsten, chromite, and manganese. Limestone is also found across the Japanese archipelago and is quarried. Along with gold, silver, lead, and zinc, limestone tends to be the most relatively mined mineral. Japan is also lacking in oil deposits, with the country having a meager domestic oil production. Coal tends to be the most important mineral mined during Japan's industrial period, but the industry has since shrunk due to inefficient production and cheaper foreign coal, as well as increasing domestic use of natural gas and oil.

Nuclear power generation facility in Japan.

After having increased steadily throughout the twentieth century, Japan's consumption of energy has leveled off, with the diluting population in the twenty-first century. While per capita consumption of electricity is comparable across Japan, for other industrialized countries, the country's use of oil and gas for power generation is relatively lower, with the majority of Japan's electric power generated by thermal plants. Similarly, the country has pursued an energy policy that favors the development of nuclear power generation, which contributes to approximately one-third of the country's consumption. With the country's mountainous terrain, hydroelectric power plants are sprinkled around the country, though the terrain that enables these plants also forces their distribution to be uneven. Further, complicating the capability of these plants, the plants are only able to operate at full power generation capacity for a few months of the year. This has led to the development of storage facilities to allow hydroelectric projects to generate power at higher capacity year-round.

As noted above, part of Japan's economic growth since World War II has come with the development of manufacturing and with progress in quantitative growth, quality, variety, and efficiency in that manufacturing. Emphasis in manufacturing since the mid-twentieth century has shifted from light to heavy industry with a higher degree of processing. This has made Japan one of the world's principal shipbuilders and automakers, while also being a heavy producer of basic products, such as crude steel, synthetic rubber, aluminum, sulfuric acid, plastics, cement, pulp and paper, chemicals and petrochemicals, and textiles. In the late twentieth century, the growth in manufacturing across Japan included the production of motor vehicles, iron and steel, machinery (including robotics), and precision equipment (especially cameras). The country's manufacturing has since become noted for producing quality advanced electronic products.

As with other industries, the financial industry was very different in the decades post-World War II to where it would end up by the 1980s. By then, the Japanese financial establishment had become an international industry, with Japanese banks emerging as top banks internationally and the establishment of the Tokyo Stock Exchange as one of the largest securities markets (in terms of capitalization) in the world. However, due to a real estate bubble (which saw an economy stimulated by highly inflated real estate prices) bursting in the 1980s, the Japanese finance industry took a step back on the international market in the 1990s, and since then it has been in a prolonged period of recovery, which has seen a revision of the laws and regulations in the financial system, liberalizing the sector to try and see it recover.

The Japanese banking sector, since the 1990s, has seen the barriers that previously segmented banks into several types of establishments into interconnected institutions through mergers and acquisitions. These lending institutions include commercial banks, trust banks, long-term credit banks, government financial institutions, mutual savings and loan banks, and credit associations. For the majority of the twentieth century, the financial system was characterized by high degrees of interdependence between institutions. However, following the bursting of the bubble economy, many institutions were folded into each other, and the government was forced to intervene and nationalize some banks, as many of the institutions were saddled with bad loans.

Tokyo Stock Exchange building.

Japan's capital market has become a major pillar in the 24-hour securities market. Trading in Japan became popular during the late 1980s in response to a stronger currency, declining interest rates, and the existence of large capital for investment. At the same time, these markets in the late 1980s were highly speculative with advances followed by declines, and recovery has been slow, mirroring the pace of Japan's overall economic growth, which has struggled with further economic downturns in the twenty-first century. The bond market in Japan has been relatively underdeveloped compared to its peers due in part to the country's low long-term interest rate policy, and efforts made to expand the market, often through a diversity of bond instruments, were only partially successful. This, in turn, led to the deregulation of the bond market in Japan in the 1990s to increase the participation of corporations and foreign investments.

Until the late nineteenth century, traveling on foot remained the dominant mode of transportation for the majority of Japanese people. Vehicular traffic was limited to small wagons, carts, and palanquins, which used either humans or animals for power. It would not be until 1872 that the first railway was built between Tokyo and Yokohama. Around the same time came the development of modern ports and iron ships. Later came roads, which lagged in development behind other transportation methods. Since then, Japan has had one of the most developed transportation networks in the world, with a large focus on publicly available, speedy, and efficient travel. This includes connections to major cities through intercity or interregional transportation, including connecting Kyushu and Honshu through undersea railway tunnels.

Rail in Japan connects the country with speedy, prompt service.

The railways of Japan are incredibly important in passenger and material transport and are a commonly remarked upon feature of the country. The first Japanese rail lines were financed and built by the British, and despite local opposition at the time, the development of the railway network was an early and far-sighted goal of the Japanese government to connect and modernize the country. The mainstay of the government's extensive passenger rail network is the Japan Railways (JR) Group of companies, which was formed in 1987 with the privatization of the previously state-run Japan National Railways (JNR). There are other private railway companies, mostly regional operators of commuter trains. These commuter trains, regardless of the owner, are renowned for their cleanliness, punctuality, and safety.

The telecommunications network across Japan is another network that is considered to be one of the most sophisticated and best in the world. The hundreds of islands and remote villages in the mountains are all linked by these services, while Japan boasts some of the most advanced telecommunications, including satellite and fiber-optic transmission networks. This has only increased with the use of mobile phones and smartphones, personal computers, and connections to the internet. Similar to other services, beginning in the mid-1980s, much of the previously state-run telecommunications companies were privatized, including the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT), which provides domestic telecommunications services; while monopolies on international telecommunication services held by Kokusai Denshin Denwa (KDD) were broken, all to allow a number of private telecommunications companies operate throughout Japan.

Japan's constitution was developed in 1946 and came into force in 1947, which superseded a previous constitution developed in 1889. The major differences between these two constitutions were that the 1947 constitution stipulated that the sovereign power of the nation rests with the people, guaranteeing the fundamental rights of the people, rather than placing all sovereign authority in the person of the emperor; the 1947 constitution aimed to maintain Japan as a peaceful and democratic country in perpetuity. Part of this includes Article 9, which states that Japan "forever renounces war as a sovereign right of the nation" which names Japan as a peaceful nation, but is also a clause that has been the subject of much debate.

The constitutional government of Japan, much like other constitutional governments, separates power between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches; while it also reduces the emperor's role to consist of formalities, such as appointing the prime minister or the chief justice of the Supreme Court, convoking sessions of the Diet, and promulgating laws and treaties. Legislative powers are vested in the Diet, which is popularly elected and consists of the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors. The House of Representatives takes precedence over the House of Councillors when it comes to matters of passing legislation, controlling the budget, and approving treaties with foreign powers. The House of Representatives also formally appoints the prime minister, with whom executive power is vested. Similarly, the House of Representatives can pass a resolution of no confidence or refuse to pass a vote of confidence, which refers to the prime minister and their cabinet and which requires them to resign.

Party politics entered the Japanese government during the Meiji period (1868–1912), and while it was suppressed during the 1930s and 1940s, the freedom to organize political parties was once more guaranteed by the 1947 constitution. Several parties have risen to national prominence. Chief among these are the generally conservative and pro-business Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP), the mildly socialist New Komeito party, the labor union-supported Social Democratic Party (SDP; originally the Japanese Socialist Party), and the common main opposition party the Democratic Party of Japan, which was formed in the mid-1990s and has gradually absorbed other small parties. There remains a small but influential Japanese Communist Party (JCP), which remains on the fringe of opposition.

The party in power of Japan's government is voted in through elections where all adult citizens aged twenty or older can participate. Members of the House of Representatives have to be older than twenty-five, and it has 480 seats, which need to be filled. While members of the House of Councillors have to be thirty or older and must fill 242 seats. The members of the House of Representatives are elected to four-year terms, although these terms can be ended early when the house is dissolved. Members of the House of Councillors are elected to six-year terms, with half the members elected every three years. The party that wins the most seats in the House of Representatives places its party leader in place as the prime minister.

The judiciary system in Japan is independent of the executive and legislative branches of government, consisting of three levels: the Supreme Court, eight high courts, and a district court and family court in each prefecture. There are also many summary courts, which hear cases for minor offenses; otherwise, the district and family courts are the courts of first instance. The Supreme Court is comprised of a chief justice and fourteen other justices. The chief justice is appointed by the emperor, but the other justices are appointed by the cabinet, with each appointee subject to review in a national referendum, first at the time of the general election following their appointment and then at the general election every ten years. Justices on the Supreme Court are also subject to an impeachment system, which is important given the Supreme Court's power as the final body of review, which sets its rulings as precedent for all final decisions in the administration of justice and the court's power of judicial review (which allows the court to determine the constitutionality of any law, order, regulation, or official act). Justices in the Supreme Court are required to retire at age seventy.

The 1947 constitution also established a principle of autonomy for local public entities. These local governments and local assemblies were given significant power—with members elected via direct public votes—over matters of labor, education, social welfare, health, land preservation and development, disaster prevention, and pollution control. Japan is divided into forty-seven prefectures, each of which is administered by governors and assembled based on their population and area. Each prefecture is then further subdivided into branch offices of several ministries, which act as regional centers and which together administer the overall prefecture. Populous cities (a population over 500,000) are considered designated cities that are divided into wards, and each ward has a chief and an assembly, with the chief nominated by the mayor and the assembly elected by the residents of the ward.

Japan is noted for the country's modern education system, which has been an enabling factor in the country's emergence as a highly industrialized country. Japan as a culture has long recognized the social and economic benefits of education, with education seen as a means to achieve personal advancement. This means that attending the "right" school is a critical factor for individuals to better determine their ultimate social status and earning power. And as students all want to get into the best schools, Japan has instituted student screening from elementary to university level to select students for advancement based on their performance on the screening. Students work from a young age to qualify for the best possible schools, and the merit-based admission system has created strict rankings among schools and intense competition between schools and between students.

The education system includes three years of non-compulsory kindergarten, six years of compulsory elementary school, three years of compulsory middle school, and another three years of non-compulsory high school. Public elementary and middle schools are free, although there remain numerous private institutions, and even though kindergarten and high school are non-compulsory, attendance at both has become virtually universal. The country also has 1,200 institutions of higher education, which include junior colleges (with degree programs of two to three years), ordinary colleges and universities (with four-year programs), and institutions that offer master's degrees and doctorate degrees. Further, the country has five-year technical colleges, which combine high school and junior college education.

Japan is noted for its unique artistic taste, which combines delicacy, exquisiteness of form, and simplicity. This combination is partially a response to the traditional Chinese arts, which the Japanese have historically found to be too grandiose or showy. More recently, Western arts have felt to suffer from flaws of exuberant self-realization at the expense of exploration of the conflicts in human relations, particularly in the notion of divided loyalties, which is a pervasive theme in Japanese traditional drama.

Painting of traditional kabuki theater.

The traditional arts of Japan include forms such as the tea ceremony, calligraphy, flower arranging, gardening, architecture, painting, lacquer work, papermaking, silk weaving, cloth dyeing and sculpture. The performing arts of Japan blend music, dance, and drama and are rooted in unique traditions in theatrical forms. These traditional theatrical forms include bugaku (court dance and music), Nō (a classical form of dance-drama), kyogen (a comic opera), Bunraku (puppet theater), and Kabuki (drama with singing and dancing). These traditional forms tend to be celebrated in popular culture, but with the advances of modernization and technology and the widespread use of standard Japanese, many of these traditional arts, as well as folk traditions, have begun to significantly decline.

Another factor in the reduction of folk traditions and traditional art forms has been the introduction of Western art forms, which have been fully embraced by the Japanese. Major cities often have several symphony orchestras, Western-style painting and sculpture, and architecture. The Japanese have been successful with also mixing traditional Japanese and Western art styles, including in music, where conductors have incorporated traditional Japanese instruments into classical compositions, or in cinema, where Japanese directors have taken Western styles and put them through a Japanese aesthetic filter to produce a distinctive style.

When humans first settled on the Japanese archipelago is not known, but it is believed, based on the discovery of a variety of Paleolithic tools, that there was early occupation in Japan. There is little doubt that the earliest settlers of the Japanese archipelago who built and used these early stone and flake tools came from the Asian continent, with some believing that land bridges over what are now the Korean and Tsushima straits, making immigration from the Korean peninsula possible, and another connection through what is now the Soya and Tsugaru straits, allowing people to immigrate from northeastern Asia. Nothing is known of the culture of the period, though it seems likely, similar to other Paleolithic people, that these people made their homes in either pit-type dwellings or in caves, hunted and gathered for food, and used fire.

Other than tools, no other implements, such as horns, bones, or ceramics, have been found in the region. Ceramics later emerged in better recorded periods, giving this early period—from 30,000 to 10,000 BCE—its name of Pre-Ceramic era. Climactic changes are believed to have led to changes in the culture of the area, the introduction of the bow and arrow, and a decrease in game for available food.

Pottery of the Jomon period.

The so-called Pre-Ceramic era was followed by two better-recorded cultures (which had ceramic pottery), known as the Jomon and Yayoi. The Jomon takes its name from the type of pottery found throughout the Japanese archipelago, which had "cord marks" (or jomon) pressed into the clay. It is believed that this culture existed from about 10,500 to 300 BCE and showed progress from chipped tools to polished tools, manufacturing pottery, the beginnings of agriculture and pasturage, the development of weaving, and the erection of massive stone monuments. Many of the technologies developed in the Jomon period suggest continental influences, but the findings suggest, at least, that the pottery predates any Chinese findings, which suggests the impetus to develop pottery was local.

This pottery developed regional differences as the Jomon culture spread over the entire Japanese archipelago, and diversity and complexity of form developed over the time of the culture, which has led to subdividing the period into six periods: Incipient (c. 10,500 - 8,000 BCE) and Initial (c. 8000 - 5000 BCE), both of which manufacture deep urn-like vessels with tapered bullet-shaped bases; the Early (c. 5000 - 2500 BCE) period where the vessels become roughly cylindrical in shape with flat bases and vegetable fiber in the walls; the Middle (c. 2500 - 1500 BCE), which showed rapid strides in pottery techniques with complex patterns of raised lines and handles; the Late (c. 1500 - 1000 BCE) and Final (c. 1000 - 300 BCE), which continued to show increases in variety in the types and shapes of vessels, and a distinction between purely functional pots and highly decorated techniques.

The Yayoi culture arose from circa 300 BCE and lasted until around 250 CE with the first evidence arising in Kyushu while the Jomon culture was still undergoing development and slowly overwhelming the Jomon culture until it reached the northern districts of Honshu. The name is derived from the district of Tokyo, where the first pottery of the Yayoi type was unearthed and pointed to a distinct culture. The Yayoi pottery was fired at higher temperatures than Jomon pottery and was turned on wheels while also showing an absence of the decoration that characterized Jomon pottery. This pottery is also associated with metal objects and wet cultivation of rice, thought to begin around the Late Jomon period, and exhibits cultural advances over the Jomon period.

Pottery of the Yayoi culture.

During the Yayoi era, China had entered the Iron Age, and the armies of the emperor Wudi occupied Manchuria and parts of the Korean peninsula, which spread this technology to Japan, where the Yayoi culture shows iron implements early and bronze implements somewhat later (although the relatively easy rusting of iron implements means comparatively few objects have been found). Those iron objects found include axes, knives, sickles, hoes, arrowheads, and swords; while the bronze objects were equally varied, including halberds, swords, spears, taku, and mirrors. The spears, halberds, and swords seem to have been prized as precious objects by the Yayoi culture, rather than for practical purposes.

One of the other notable points of the Yayoi culture is their increase in irrigated agriculture and their diversification of living type. Similar to the Jomon culture, much of the evidence shows the settlements of the period remained pit-type and surface-type dwellings, but raised-floor structures were also introduced, which were believed to be used for storing grain out of reach of rodents. Despite many of these elements, the Yayoi culture showed a maturation of the Jomon culture with only limited continental influence despite the sharing of technology.

This period, running roughly from 250 to 552 CE, is a period of various hypotheses as it shows the development of the Yamato court and the unification of the people of the Japanese archipelago. Previous to this period, Chinese and Korean records offer a view of the Japanese archipelago being inhabited by more than one hundred states. These same records then show an approximate version of what occured, although the records have a relative paucity of information from 266 to 413 when, in 266, the records show the Yamatai court is dominant, but not unified, and in or around 413, the Yamato kingdom has risen and unification has occurred (with the likely tumult of the intervening period likely reducing the potential for Japanese people to travel and trade with China and Korea).

The name of the period during the rise of the Yamato court is called the Tumulus (or Tomb) period from the presence of large burial mounds as one of the most common archaeological features of the period. This showed a break from the relatively primitive burial practices of the preceding Jomon and Yayoi cultures, when large circular and keystone-shaped stone tombs began to proliferate throughout Japan. The first stages of these developments were clustered around the Shiki area of the Yamato province (modern Nara prefecture) before they expanded with Mount Miwa at their center as an object of worship. The Yamato kings were known to hold secular and sacred functions, with a focus on priestly functions in connection to Mount Miwa.

Massive burial mounds of the period.

Archaeological evidence suggests the use of iron tools for cultivation, leveling, and flooding paddy fields improved agricultural techniques and allowed the Yamato kings to exercise greater overall control over manpower resources, allowing them to construct the tombs that gave the period its name. And, given that control, the Yamato kingdom had considerable control over the peoples of the archipelago by the end of the fourth century, capable of exchanging diplomatic envoys with Chinese rulers and to several kingdoms of the Korean peninsula. Some evidence suggests the kingdom was even strong enough to send an army against the state of Koguryo. More than conflict, contact with the mainland encouraged a rise in the standards of living across Japan, with the fruits of the advanced Chinese civilization reaching Japan, including Chinese ideographic script with Confucian works.

Painting of the Yamato court.

By the fifth century, the Yamato court reached its peak: the center of power shifted to the province of Kawachi and Izumi (modern Osaka prefecture), new enormous keyhole-shaped tombs were developed, and there were power shifts in the clan federations that made the Yamato court. The new tombs showed the rulers had access to great power, as some of them, such as the tomb attributed to the semi-legendary emperor Ojin, are around 1,380 feet (420 meters) in length. There is speculation over whether the fifth-century rulers represented a new line of rulers, with the disagreement coming over the origin of this new line. Some consider them to have come from a continental invasion of "horse riders," with tantalizing details suggesting a conquest narrative; while the consensus opinion supports an indigenous shift in leaders based on agricultural output and monopolies on military technology.

The Yamato line and power would eventually decline at home and abroad with a marked reduction in power held by the rulers. Local chieftains were noted to rise up and rebel against the power center, with these leaders collecting power as royal power declined. Another notable event occurring in the establishment of power in the archipelago was the introduction of Buddhism. It came to be regarded as especially important in protecting the state, with a belief that a true understanding of Buddhism (outside of its magical elements) until the time of Prince Shotoku.

Image of Prince Shotoku.

Prince Shotoku worked to centralize the Japanese state with his ideas and theories of an ideal government. Shotoku served as regent for his aunt, the empress Suiko. He became renowned for taking the Buddhist principles of peace and salvation and making them the underlying ideals of his government. Some of the notable works he did with this philosophy included not charging the murderer of his royal predecessor, but convincing the murderer through the ideals of Buddhism of the wrong they had done; he established a system of twelve court ranks, which gave clear stations for court officials and giving the court a proper organization and etiquette, with each rank having a name for Confucian values; and he established a seventeen-article Constitution, which set forth the ideals of the state and the rules for human conduct.

The style of government established by Prince Shotoku was similar to the Confucian government, which was previously established in China and in kingdoms across Korea. Unsurprisingly, Shotoku also opened relations with China and placed Japan in the state of a tributary state to China, sending students to learn in China and from Chinese culture in order to build Japanese culture. During this time, Buddhism gained ground as a religion, and temples were built in the Chinese style, with multiple stories and tiled roofs at a time when most of the architecture was low, thatched houses. However, Shotoku's ideals would not be fully realized by the time of his death in 622.

There were moves in the wake of Prince Shotoku's death to centralize the government around the power of the emperor as absolute monarch, which would happen in 645 with a coup d'etat by Prince Nakano Oe and Nakatomi Kamatari. An edict was issued in 646 that abolished private ownership of land and people to reduce the power of the various clans in Japan, and the land thus attained was allocated among all with a right to cultivate for which the tenants were to pay a fixed tax. Provisions were made for a governmental system that embraced a capital city, local administration, defense, and communications. Similarly, a system was established in the centralized court to give people a chance to appeal directly to the emperor. These reforms are known as the Taika reforms and worked to solidify the sovereignty of the realm in the authority and person of the emperor.

Painting of emperor Tenji.

Following the death of emperor Saimei, Prince Nakano Oe ascended the throne as emperor Tenji, who worked to shore up the archipelago's foritifications to defend the kingdom from an expected invasion, while also amending the system established by the Taika reforms to make it more suitable for the state's needs. Upon Tenji's death, a succession battle ensued, which was eventually won by emperor Temmu, who, similarly, devoted his energies to strengthening the imperial government, propagating Buddhism, and ordering the compilation of official histories to enhance the prestige of the nation and the emperor's dynasty.

The ritsuryō system refers to a governmental structure defined by the criminal code, the administrative code, and the civil code. It is a system similar to what had long been in force in China and was in many ways an imitation of lüling of Tang China, incorporating many of its original articles and amending others for the local conditions. This is considered, by some, to be one of the first examples of what would become a cultural standard of Japan adapting foreign culture (or, later, technology) to Japanese culture.

Page describing the ritsuryo system.

Under the ritsuryō system, the Japanese emperor is an absolute monarch, but it includes a bureaucracy similar to that which had developed in China, and it formalized the emperor as the high priest responsible for maintaining peace for the land and people. The central government was, under the system, headed by the Council of State and Office of Deities. Prospective bureaucrats were required to study at a central college and pass prescribed examinations, and once in office, their performance was subject to yearly scrutiny, the results of which adjusted their rank and position. The system still offered advantages to those from families of high rank and good family, however, it adapted to the old respect for birth, which continued in Japan.

Under the ritsuryō system, people were divided into two classes: freemen and slaves. The slaves were the possession of the government, aristocracy, and shrines, and as such, they were obliged to provide unlimited labor, with their total number accounting for one-tenth of the population. The majority of the free population were farmers. Each farmer was taxed each year with a levy on the production of their paddy. The farmers were also responsible for the transport of their goods to the capital and ensuring their tax was accounted for, while adult males were expected to give military service and provide labor for public works.

Image of Emperor Shomu.

The Nara Period, from 710 to 784, saw the government begin to shift toward an imperial state. The capital was shifted a short distance to Nara, and the old custom of changing the capital with each successive emperor was discarded. Meanwhile, the period was also known for atypical social mobility based on merit, where those with the necessary learning (Chinese and Buddhist, generally) enjoyed better access to power than they had in previous periods. The Nara period also saw a flowering of a Buddhist culture across the archipelago. The emperor Shomu was a leader in the promotion of this culture and took two measures to help promote Buddhist faith: first was the founding of the provincial temples known as kokobunji, each staffed with twenty monks and a nunnery of ten nuns, whose task was to recite the scriptures and offer up prayers to the nation. Second was the construction of the Todai Temple as a kokobunji of the capital, which included an installation of a huge bronze figure of the Vairochana Buddha as supreme guardian deity of the nation.

Example of a kokobunji temple.

The marriage of Buddhism and politics that was emperoro Shomu's goal—a goal largely realized—became promblematic after his death. The temples gradually amassed wealth, and the monks acquired political positions and began to interfere in secular affairs. This began to undercut the influence of the emperor's family, and by the end of the eighth century, priest-premier Dokyo rose to a position of undisputed hegemony. The flowering of the Buddhist culture was also a result of exchanges with other nations, which brought culture into Japan. This is particularly the case with China, with the Nara culture borrowing from the Tang culture. During this period, respect was also shown for traditional Japanese culture, which was shown in collections of Japanese verse, which were shared around China. Especially the collection Man’yōshū, which included poems covering basic human themes with little Buddhist influence or Confucian influence that would have an influence on subsequent Japanese culture.

Emperor Kammu.

The Heian period is usually marked as beginning in 794 and lasting until 1185. This period began with another shift of the government's capital city to Heian, which worked to dilute the ties between government and Buddhism and attempted to revive the ritsuryō system, which had degraded under the Buddhist influence and hegemony. The system was amended to meet the difficulties of the time, moving the allocation of rice fields every six years to twelve years; it called for a tighter watch on corruption among local officials and abolished conscription in favor of selecting from among the sons of local officials with martial prowess. Early in the Heian period, the emperor continued a campaign that had begun in the Nara Period against the Ezo, a nonsubject tribal group who were regarded as aliens and who would be pacified during the Heian period, although the northern border was never fully controlled. The Ezo were forced to resettle throughout the empire and encouraged to assimilate into the existing population.

Another policy pursued by Emperor Kammu, the early emperor of the Heian period, was to forbid interference in state affairs by religious authorities. Despite this forbidding, the Buddhist priests were encouraged to see that Buddhism fulfilled its proper functions, as the emperor Kammu was a supporter of Buddhism for national and individual purposes. These efforts, and the emperor's interest, would lead to the establishment of the Tendai and Shingon sects of Buddhism, both uniquely Japanese sects of the religion.

Successive emperors after emperor Kammu carried on his policies that led to some 150 years of peace throughout the kingdom. The formal aspects of government were carefully observed, histories were compiled, coins were minted in accordance with precedence, and legal codes were supplemented. However, the social reality unraveled during the time, with the form of social life and government and its reality traveling in different directions. The foundations of the ritsuryō government began to crumble under a decline of government revenue, which occurred because the allotment system based on census registers had become increasingly difficult to carry out. This led to the state shifting to first calculating taxes based on land units rather than individuals, before giving up and leaving the provincial affairs to local governors and local resident officials who were responsible, with forwarding a specified tax amount to the government. This opened the gates to increased abuse on the part of the governors as more lands began to be held in tax-free estates, as far as was reported from regional governors to the Heian government.

Another divergence from the ritsuryō system saw the appointments to official posts looking (on the surface) to be according with the document but in actuality, power was shifting to newly created posts, which were created outside the codes as occassion seemed to dictate. These positions not only eroded the potential of social mobility but also eroded the power of the emperor and placed increasing amounts of power in the family of the emperor and a noble class. This removed the previous bureaucratic class and established a new aristocratic government.

Image of Fujiwara Michinaga.

Beginning in the tenth century through to the eleventh, successive generations of the ruling Fujiwara clan continued to control the nation's government by monopolizing the newer, ritsuryō-exempt, posts, and wealth poured into the coffers of the clan. The high-water mark came when Fujiwara Michinaga saw four of his daughters become consorts of four successive emperors, and three of their resulting sons becoming emperors. By this point, the Fujiwara clan was ruling, and government had largely become a center for ritualized ceremonies.

The ritsuryō system of public ownership of land and people survived in name alone. Land passed into private hands, people became private citizens, and fiscal changes of the early tenth century saw paddy fields fail to produce enough to meet the high tax rates. Public revenue continued to decline, and the incentive to seek new lands to cultivate were reduced, while tax-exempt manors (shoen) were increased until such a time as edicts were issued intended to check the formation of new estates. However, the edicts failed to halt the tendency to create new manors, as the very officials who constituted the government were those developing the shoens, and changing the situation became almost impossible.

Image of Fujiwara Sumitomo.

This led to an increase in the estates of the aristocracy, and their incomes increased proportionately. However, in the wake of the corruption, there began a stirring of a new power in the land. Throughout the provinces of the empire, a warrior (samurai) class was growing. Young males of the imperial and lower-ranking aristocratic families who were dissatisfied with the Fujiwara monopoly of high government offices took up provincial posts, acquired their own lands, and established their own power, which turned into developing significant armed forces. This created a new class of highly autonomous and martially capable men which could be easily provoked to conflict. Early rebellions of Taira Masakado in the Kanto district and of Fujiwara Sumitomo in western Japan were examples of this new class exercising its power. Despite the government suppressing these conflicts, they weakened the prestige of the government and increased the discontent of the provinces.

Example of contemporay kana syllaberies.

Another important development of the Heian period was the development of indigenous kana syllabaries, which was a new and the first Japanese script, which divorced Japanese cultural life from Chinese—as they previously had used the syllabaries of Chinese script. The two kana syllabaries were called hiragama and katakana and made it possible to write the national language with freedom, by abbreviating and simplifying Chinese characters. This also sparked a trend toward the development of purely Japanese forms and qualities, which had arguably begun with the founding of the Japanese sects of Buddhism.

The beginning of the Medieval Japan period came with the rise of the samurai (warrior) class. As noted, the class began in the provinces with discontent under the growing aristocracy and corruption of the Heian period. These warriors would eventually be enlisted after discord between the imperial family and the Fujiwara regent's clan split the nobility into two factions. These two factions clashed openly in what is known as the Hogen Disturbance of 1156. The conflict was small, lasting a single night, but was significant in that it demonstrated the inability to settle differences without reliance on the power of warriors. Further conflicts led to the Hieji Disturbance of 1159, which pitted the Minamoto and Taira clans against each other, in which the Minamoto were defeated, and Taira Kiyomori emerged as a major power. However, Kiyomor and his kinsmen ruled in a high-handed manner, which provoked a reaction and led to an uprising and insurrection in 1180. The so-called Gempei War engulfed Japan in warfare on a scale not seen before, with a combination of interclan fighting and a struggle between central control and forces for local autonomy. The end saw power swing in favor of the Minamoto clan and its head, Yoritomo, who established a military government, known as bakufu in Japanese and as shogunate in English.

Painting of the Hieji Disturbance.

The establishment of the shogunate was done in opposition to the political authority of the civil aristocracy. It began a new era of government, although contemporary scholars retreated from recognizing the change, and there was a preference for a dyarchy with civil power centered in Kyoto and military power centered in Kamakura, and both power centers trying to share authority and co-govern the nation. Although the Gempei War ended in 1185 with the destruction of the Taira family, a conflict arose between Yoritomo and his brother, Yoshitsune, which resulted in the war continuing until 1189, when the northern Fujiwara family of Mutsu provinces were destroyed.

Painting of events from the Gempei War which led to the establishment of the shogunate.

Three years after the end of the conflict, Yoritomo was appointed in Kyoto as shogun (which is an abbreviation of seii taishogun, which is commonly translated as "barbarian-quelling generalissimo") and was the highest honor a warrior could receive. Although he kept the title only briefly and was never known as or referred to as "shogun," the term would eventually become the title associated with the head of the shogunate. Initially, the shogunate would rule in the provinces granted to Yoritomo by the imperial court before it was able to expand it influence over the land that was still controlled by the civil provincial governors.

Shogun Minamoto Yoritomo.

After the death of Yoritomo in 1199, the power in the shogunate passed into the hands of the Hojo family, which was associated with Yoritomo's wife, Masako. In 1203, Hojo Tokimasa, Masako's father, assumed the position of regent for the shogun, which would be held by the Hojo family until 1333. The Hojo family was of low social rank, and though they outmaneuvered and overthrew Yoritomo's generals and their rivals, its leaders did not aspire to be shogun themselves. Kojo Yoritsune, a Fujiwawa scion and distant relative of Yoritomo, was appointed shogun, while power remained with the Hojo family, who would continue to appoint and dismiss shoguns during their period of rule.

The increasing power of the shogunate during this period led to a conflict with the aristocracy and emperor Go-Toba. Seeing an opportunity, emperor Go-Toba issued a mandate in 1221 to overthrow Yoshitoki. Few warriors heeded the call, and instead, the Hojo family dispatched an army to occupy Kyoto and arrest Go-Toba, who would be banished to the island of Oki, in an incident since known as the Jokyu Disturbance. The shogunate was now able to set up headquarters in Kyoto and began to supervise the court and control legal and administrative business of the western provinces.

To further strengthen their base of power, the regent Hojo Yasutoki reorganized the leading retainers into a Council of State, which would, in 1232, create a legal code known as the Joei Formulary. The fifty-one articles of this legal code set the legal precedents of the shogunate and was a simpler code of laws than the previous ritsuryō, largely considered a simpler and more pragmatic law for the proper conduct of warriors in administering justice. In 1249, regent Hojo Tokiyori would go further and set up a judicial court to secure greater impartiality and promptness in legal decisions.

The establishment of the shogunate coincided with the rise of the Mongols under Genghis Khan across Central Asia. Beginning in 1206, and in the space of barely half a century, the Mongols had established a massive empire stretching from Korea to Poland. Genghis Khan's successor, Kublai, set up a capital in China in Peking (Beijing) and shortly thereafter began preparations for an invasion of Japan. In 1274, a Mongol and Korean army of some 40,000 men set out from the Korean peninsula and landed in Kyushu. Shoni Sukeyoshi was appointed as a military commander for the shogunate, but before serious conflict between the two forces could occur, a typhoon arose and destroyed more than 200 ships of the invaders, with their survivors returning to southern Korea.

Painting of the kamikaze winds which protected Japan from invasion.

The shogunate prepared for another invasion. In 1281, two separate Mongol armies were prepared: one of 40,000 troops, which set out from the Korean peninsula, and a second of 100,000 troops, which set out from southern China. But again, as the forces combined to assault and breach the defenses at Hakata Bay, a fierce typhoon destroyed nearly all of the fleet, forcing the surviving invaders to retreat. It has been said that fewer than one in five invaders survived. These invasions were important for Japan, as the invasions led to government insolvency, a period of isolation from China that would last for almost a century, and gave an impetus to feelings of national pride and the kamikaze (divine wind), which destroyed the invading hosts.

Following the invasions came the Kamakura period, which saw the establishment of a feudal system throughout Japan in which samurai-landlords lived in villages and supervised peasant labor while the central civil aristocracy and temples and shrines held the public lands, these new samurai landlords began to rival the previous landlords in power. More generally, these new samurai landlords were previously influential resident landlords who had become agents of the previous provincial government and had now become samurai (through generations in most cases).

Painting of feudal Japan.

These lands were not complete fiefs, with Kamakura officials and warriors able to legally confiscate the land, regardless of the traditional land type, and be appointed into confiscated lands, and thus there was a limit to the degree to which a samurai landlord could exploit the land and people under their control. Conflict also became endemic between the central proprietor and the samurai as they wrestled over control of the villages and land disputes became the central legal activity of the period. The Kamakura shogunate gained a reputation of fairness, often dispensing orders of admonition to its vassals to follow precedents, although the Kamakura samurai were able to whittle away the absentee control of villages. Conflict also became endemic between the farming population and the warriors, stemming largely from the farming populations' desire to increase personal and economic autonomy and to enlargen their holdings.

The samurai were intended to provide military service, and, during times of peace, they were to manage agricultural holdings, engage in hunting, and train in martial arts. There was an emerging sense of an ideal warrior and behavior of the ideal warrior that came out of the daily training and experience of actual warfare, which would also lead to the development of a warrior code. The Kamakura samurai was largely a mounted warrior whose primary skill was equestrian archery.

Samurai of the Kamakura period.

The general economic conditions of the Kamakura period, which had deteriorated due to the cost of repelling the Mongol invasions, and the practice of dividing lands shifted to single inheritance as the landholdings remained within families and were no longer small enough to continue dividing. This created a power concentration in the head of the house and conflict in the line of inheritance, leading younger siblings to break with their families and join others. This weakened many of the vassal ties of the Kamakura regime. Meanwhile, the landowners were often unable to meet their expenditures and began to borrow money at high rates of interest, which saw many families lose their landownings to moneylenders, further unraveling the vassal structure of the Kamakura regime. All of the instability led to some local warriors taking the law into their own hands, disturbing the local order, further weakening the Kamakura regime. By the mid-thirteenth century, two competing lines for succession emerged. A compromise was proposed, but the dispute these alternate successions caused did not cease until, in 1318, Prince Takaharu acceded to the throne as emperor Go-Daigo.

With the rise of the new samurai class during the Kamakura period and at the beginning of the shogunate of Japan, there was an unsurprising shift in the culture of the period, as the ancient civil aristocracy began to be superseded, overseas trade expanded continental contacts and increased Chinese influences across Japan, with the most important of these influences being the introduction of Zen Buddhism and Neo-Confucianism (other Chinese influences included new monochrome painting styles, new architecture styles, specific regional skills in pottery manufacture, and the custom of tea drinking). Along with the great social changes, there was a sense of crisis and religious awakening across Japan, which led to people demanding a simpler standard of faith when compared to the teachings and ceremonies of Buddhism, leading to several new sects that eschewed difficult ascetic practices and recondite scholarship. But toward the end of the Kamakura period, based on various influences and societal changes—including a rise in military epics—there was a move toward more secular artistic works.

Emperor Go-Daigo.

On the accession of Go-Daigo, the office of the retired emperor was dissolved, which placed the entire authority of the imperial government in the figure of the emperor. The young emperor wanted to renovate the government, and he decided he needed to rid himself of the shogunate. Once found out, the emperor was arrested and exiled to Oki Island. However, imperial forces and allies of emperor Go-Daigo fought against the shogunate and the Hojo family. Supported by discontented vassals of the Hojo shogunate, the imperial forces led by Ashikaga Takauji defeated the Hojo family in Kyoto, while forces led by Nitta Yoshisada defeated the Kamakura shogunate, and therefore after 140 years of rule, the shogunate government ended.

The emperor returned in 1333, and this was known as the Kemmu Restoration, as Go-Daigo set about to restore direct imperial rule, abolished offices outside of a central bureaucracy, revived a Records Office to settle lawsuits, and set up a Court of Miscellaneous Claims to handle minor suits, while also working to keep order among the warriors across the country (especially in Kyoto). However, some of emperor Go-Daigo's former allies became disappointed by the emperor's reforms, leading to a revolt in 1336 led by Ashikaga Takauji, which drove the emperor from Kyoto and enthroned an emperor from a competing imperial line in Kyoto, while Go-Daigo set up a rival court in the Yoshino Mountains.

The shogun's castle at Nijo Takakura in Kyoto.

Political power was divided for the next sixty years as Ashikaga Takauji set up a shogunate at Nijo Takakura in Kyoto. The shogunate would be moved in 1378 by Takauji's grandson, the shogun Yoshimitsu, who moved the seat of power to the Muromachi district in Kyoto, where it took final shape. The Murmoachi shogunate gradually overcame the power of the military governors who had helped found the regime, and in 1391, they destroyed the Northern and Southern courts, destroyed the governor Ouchi Yoshihiro, and gained control of the Inland Sea. Shogun Yoshimitsu would build the famed Golden Pavilion and reestablish trade and diplomacy with the Ming Dynasty China. One difference in the Muromachi shugonate was less centralization of power, with much of the power balanced between the shogun and the powerful governors (shogu).

The increase in autonomy, with increases in agricultural technology, commerce, and small-scale manufacturing, led to peasant revolts against absentee control, often led by middle and small landlords. These unions were formed to defend the small and middle landlords from the ravages of warfare and for the maintenance of local infrastructure. This led to strong self-governance in the communities and, in turn, resistance of farming villages against the shogunate as they wanted a reduction in yearly taxes and moratoriums on debts owed. This led to more uprisings to expel warriors, or samurai, from the province (as happened in Harima province), and pawnbrokers were attacked as debt moratoriums continued to be demanded. These revolts became yearly events under the fading imperial and shogunate power.

Lasting from 1467 to 1477 during the rule of shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa, a general civil war broke out around Kyoto. Shogun Yoshimasa had issued thirteen edicts for the cancellation of debts while yearly rebellions occurred, but given the economic distress and an impending succession dispute, they split the shogu (governors) between Hosokawa Katsumoto and Yaman Sozen. The "eastern" army of Hosokawa enjoyed support of the emperor and shogun but found the "western" army of the Yamana faction supported by the powerful Ouchi family and other shogu. The fighting would ensue for eleven years around Kyoto before the fighting spread to the provinces.

Painted representation of the Onin War.

In the wake of the power, farming villagers held conferences and mounted armed uprisings in self-defense, with many of the village leaders being local samurai with village roots, who in many cases established themselves as domain lords during this period, and formed associations which, in some cases, extended over an entire province and threatened the shugo and his power. In the case of the shogunate, political power became nonexistent, and the Hosokawa family held the real power from 1490 to 1558. In the sixteenth century, power devolved into the hands of the Miyoshi family until it was usurped in 1565 by the Matsunaga family.

After the Onin War, increased power was held by local leaders, and, in many cases, the shugo houses were usurped by their deputies and retainers, and branch families seized power from the main families. The previous power structure of the shugo almost completely disappeared, and the new daimyo (large landowner) type of domain lord took their place. This began a period of near-constant warfare amongst these lords, lending the period its name: Sengoku (warring states).

Painting of the Sengoku - Warring States - period.

The daimyo enjoyed direct, local control of the farming villages and began to issue their own laws. They turned local leaders into their retainers and directly administered their own territories. However, the daimyo also built irrigation dikes and opened new rice fields to stimulate local production while also readjusting the local fortified strongholds and reorganizing roads and post stations to center on their castle towns. Despite the conflict of the period and the obstructions of the local fiefs, periodic markets sprung up in which products from all parts of the country were made available, and commodity exchanges were established in the larger cities. The circulation of coined money—as well as imported copper coin imported from the continent—began to circulate, which led to confusion over exchange rates and to some hoarding good coins.

Japanese castle from the Sengoku period.

During this time, new cities began to develop around the castles of the daimyo as the castles shifted from serving as defensive mountain fortresses to administrative strongholds, and markets were opened outside of the castle walls where merchants and artisans could gather. Trade increased, and harbor towns flourished as exchange centers with leading townsmen and elders chosen to carry local governments through assemblies, maintaining the city and its defense while profiting from the confrontation between daimyo as they resisted the domination of the daimyo. The daimyo's independent local kingdoms became ungovernable by the emperor or shogun, overseas trade was no longer strictly controlled, and Japanese and Chinese pirates became active during the period.

This period was also notable as it was when the first Spanish and Portuguese made their appearance, when in 1543, several Portuguese shipwrecked off the island of Tanega, and they passed off the method of musket construction, which, with the technology sought after by daimyos, changed warfare in Japan. For the Portuguese, the discovery of Japan was a new land for missionary work, with the Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier arriving in Kagoshima in 1549 and more missionaries arriving continuously to try and propagate Christianity throughout Japan.

Oda Nobunaga, who worked to unify Japan.

From 1550 to 1560, following one hundred years of constant warring, the Sengoku daimyo began to acquire land and widen their domain before working to seize control of the whole control in a period of greater conflict. The Sengoku daimyo would work to control Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan, in order to unify the warring daimyo. Oda Nobunaga of Owari province would succeed in occupying the capital as the first feudal unifier. The emergence of Nobunaga's regime reversed the century of feudal disintegration and pushed the country toward unification. Noted as a military genius, Oda was the first to successfuly adapt firearms to Japanese warfare, and his campaigns led to redrawings of the political map of Japan.

Rather than working to dominate, from the beginning, in his own territory, Nobunaga divided control among his commanders and recognized the privileges of the temples, shrines, and local landlords as he saw them as important to strengthen the military and unify the country. There was some resistance from old political forces, and unification would have to continue under Oda Nobunaga's successor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who worked to continue Nobunaga's unification.

Toyotomi Hideyoshi came from peasant stock but was able to impress Nobunaga with his talent, rising to the level of commander. After Nobunaga's death by assassination, Hideyoshi eliminated rivals through political judgment and shrewd actions and established himself as successor. Following in Nobunaga's footsteps, Hideyoshi worked toward unification, and by 1590, from Kyushu to Tohoku was under his control. One move, which exemplifies his shrewd capabilities, was to reward Tokugawa Ieyasu the Kanto domain for distinguished service, which forced Ieyasu to move to Edo and removed the Tokugawa family from the Chubu region and its power base.

Hideyoshi maintained Nobunaga's policy of separation between warrior and peasant. And, similar to Nobunaga, Hideyoshi did not feel his lineage allowed him to name himself shogun, and he sought other titles to legitimize his role. Through land surveys, which were intended to delineate between peasants and warriors, the complicated relationship rights between land ownership that had developed in the previous centuries were clarified. The new system based land relationships on the actual product of the land, and land taxes were levied on the village as a unit rather than on individuals. Further, tax levies could be paid in rice, rather than coins, under the new tax system, with rice organized into a standard unit. Despite these advancements, the political structure of the Hideyoshi regime was not sufficient to be a unified governing authority for the whole country, which gave rise to internal struggles and drove Hideyoshi to invasions of Korea in 1592 and 1597, designed to increase revenues and bring parts of the continent under Hideyoshi's control, but would lead to his death.

Following the death of Hideyoshi, Tokugawa Ieyasu emerged as the leader of the kingdom and began a period that stretched from 1603 to 1868, known as the Edo period under the Tokugawa shogunate. Ieyasu had seen the failures of Nobunaga and Hideyoshi in consolidating a lasting regime, and in 1603 he established the Edo, or Tokugawa, shogunate to legalize the position. He assumed the title of shogun and exercised firm control over the remaining daimyo of the time, and those daimyo who opposed him were dispossessed, reduced, or transferred away from their bases of power, and the lands confiscated from them were given to Ieyasu's allies and family.

Osaka Castle.

In 1615, Ieyasu stormed and captured Osaka Castle, which destroyed the rival Hideyori and Toyotomi family and afterward established the Laws for the Military Houses and Laws for the Imperial and Court Officials, which promulgated the legal basis for the shogunate control of the daimyo and imperial court. When Ieyasu died in 1616, his succession was already established.

Under the second and third shoguns—Hidetada and his successor Iemitsu—the policy of control went further under the Tokugawa shogunate and pursued a policy where, by 1633–1642, the executive of the shogunate government established the bakuhan system. The system centralized power in the shogunate, and his councilors and commissioners. The daimyos were rearranged, and during the rearrangement, key lands were placed under the direct control and administration of the shogunate to better control commerce, industry, and trade.

Another change came in the establishment of a system, called sankin kotai (alternative attendance), which required daimyo to pay ceremonial visits to Edo every other year, while their wives and children resided permanently in Edo as hostages. This system also forced the daimyo to assist in public works while also financially supporting two separate administrative structures, which kept the daimyo in financial difficulties, and thereby increased the power of the shogunate over the daimyo, reducing the daimyo's ability to organize any military strength against the shogunate. This also, in many ways, finalized a feudal system, in which the shogun was the supreme power, and daimyo were vassals who were given land as a favor. This also strengthened control over the agricultural populace as the Edo shogunate recognized the rights of peasants as cultivators and made them responsible for taxes.

The 1630s also brought another important policy: sakoku (closed country). This policy, which translates as "closed country," was a policy of national seclusion. The seeds of the policy had been sown in the Nobunaga and Hideyoshi regimes, who had sought strong control of trade as a source of wealth and military strength. Also attracted to profits, Ieyasu made efforts to expand trade to include the Portuguese Roman Catholics and Protestant Holland and England, granting special trading licenses to merchant ships and establishing a trade monopoly held by the shogunate. Ieyasu's interest in trade made him tolerant of Christian proselytization. However, over time, he came to fear that Christians would join Hideyoshi's heir, Hideyori, to resist the shogunate, and he began to prohibit Christianity through the 1612 and 1614 decrees.

Christian persecution increased to the detriment of trade and resulted in seclusion orders in 1630, which by 1635 meant Japanese citizens were forbidden to make overseas voyages or return from overseas voyages. This crippled Japan's traders and, in 1637, it led to revolts of heavy taxes and the prohibitions of Christianity. The revolts were put down, and all Japanese were required to register as parishioners to a Buddhist temple. By 1639, Portuguese ships were forbidden to visit Japan, while the Dutch and Chinese were able to trade as before. The policy of seclusion and its effect has long been debated, but it had a profound impact on Japan as the country became hostile to foreign trade, but also enabled a prolonged piece during the Tokugawa period (although some have argued that peace was established by a rigid feudal system unlike any other in the world).

By the second half of the seventeenth century came an establishment of a strict class structure of warriors, farmers, artisans, and merchants. Distinctions between these classes were strictly enforced, although the distinction between the samurai and other classes was especially strict, where samurai wore two swords by law (to symbolize their dominance by force of arms). The other classes were forbidden to wear swords. With the Tokugawa shogunate came a need to legitimatize the regime, for which a new worldview and system of ethics were sought. This led to Neo-Confucianism, which had been well-known since the thirteenth century, providing this legitimization and an intellectual rationalization for the status-oriented structure of the Tokugawa shogunate system.

Image of Neo-Confucian thinker Hayashi Razan.

Neo-Confucianism is one of the more systematic doctrines of Confucianism, with many of its early thought leaders lecturing to early Tokugawa shoguns and offering a historical justification for the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate. Neo-Confucian thinker Hayashi Razan argued the Confucian idea of order between heaven and earth required there to be order between rulers and subjects, and arguing the separation of the classes was in accordance with this concept and the teachings of Confucius. Also, the moral ideas of loyalty and filial piety central to Confucianism, Razan, placed emphasis on these concepts as support for a feudal lord-vassal relationship. However, Japanese thinkers of the period argued against these interpretations and argued for a return to the original teaching of Confucius (a movement underway in China at the time).

The Tokugawa regime brought with it an end to the period of violence and ushered in a period of domestic peace. This saw a development in commerce and cities across Japan, which led to widespread commercialization in the latter half of the seventeenth century, which meant even the farming populace subject to heavy taxes and labor services began to enjoy a higher standard of living. Communication and transportation for the circulation of goods also increased, and increased mobility meant new styles of wholesalers and brokers were able to handle commercial crops, and powerful financiers grew in the cities.

Drawing of an Edo-period castle.

With commercialization, the Edo period saw a growth in urban centers in the previous daimyo castle towns, in many cases with the castles pulled down to open the city and offer a commercial character to the towns. With greater commercialization, flow of goods, and flow of money came an increase in fine arts and crafts, including new genre novels, joruri (puppet play) pramas, and masters of haiku poetry. The Edo period saw many remarkable artistic figures come to the fore. This saw, around the beginning of the eighteenth century, the flourishing of theatrical districts as dramatic forms, such as kabuki, gained in popularity. In the shadow of the rise of new art forms, traditional art forms, such as traditional drama, tea ceremony, and flower arrangements, also developed and were popular. These traditional arts were joined by decorative painting in gold lacquer and other media, improvements in dyeing and weaving, and wood-block painting, which met a growing popular demand.

Entering the eighteenth century, the shogunate system began to show weakness. The finances of the regime, which were based in taxes levied in rice, fell behind the increasingly money-based economy where the levied rice had to be converted to currency, creating exchanges that became part of financiers' power. Further, commercial development continued to spread, from the cities where it began in the seventeenth century, to the hinterlands of Japan through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This gave rise to wealthy rural members who used their wealth to invest in land and commercial ventures and began to buy land and squeeze small farmers into tenancy. This not only increased social divisions in society but also destabilized taxes paid by farmers, as fewer farmers existed, creating financial difficulties for those who depended upon the taxes—specifically the warriors.

The samurai class, during commercialization, had taken up residence in the cities, where they incurred increasing expenses, but as they lived on fixed incomes, which were being destabilized by the move away from farming and with periodic crop failures, many became impoverished. Ultimately, these conditions, especially among the farmers where stratification grew between wealthy and poor farmers, led to peasant uprisings, riots, and plundering.

This led to continual political reforms. The first such reform, the Kyoho Reforms by the eighth shogun, Tokugawa Yoshimune (ruling from 1716 to 1745), ordered the daimyos to make rice contributions and worked to supplement the samurai's stipends as worked to increase tax yields by opening new lands for cultivation and revising methods of taxation. When the price of rice rose in the 1730s, the common people ransacked wholesale rice dealers, and his reforms enjoyed little success. Under Yoshimune's son Ieshige, the shogun's power was diminished, and powerful councilors, such as Tanuma Okitsugu, continued reforms to advance the development of the commercial economy and increase control over the economy and the circulation of goods through guilds and licensing fees.

Representation of the 1783 eruption of Mount Asama.

However, due to various natural disasters during the 1780s, such as the eruption of Mount Asama in 1783, led to large-scale riots and led to the dismissal of Tanuma Okitsugu in favor of Matsudaira Sadanobu. Sadanobu initiated the Kansei reforms which instituted a policy of retrenchment by reducing high prices and establishing a reserve fund, reduced taxes and set aside portions of the tax for relief for the poor, and canceled the debts of high-ranking samurai, while also encouraging villages to cultivate the land and giving parcels of land to vagabonds to increase stability in the population. Sadanobu also sought to root out corruption and incompetence, but these remained recurrent problems.

HMS Phaeton.

During this period, Russian envoys landed in Japan and requested trade relations. Despite a refusal of these demands, they brought to bear a pressing problem of the national seclusion policy as foreign envoys in the nineteenth century began to call on Japan to request more commercial relations. This led to an 1808 English warship Phaeton making an incursion on Nagasaki and Russian naval lieutenant V.M. Golovnin landing on Kunashiri Island in 1811. Further foreign incursions into Japanese waters led to increased foreign pressure and a further weakening of the shogunate power.

Underlying this weakening was also an ideological crisis, as an understanding was dawning that the policies of rigid class separation, national isolation, and agricultural self-sufficiency were undermined by unintended economic changes caused by those various policies. The intellectual life, despite a strong direction towards heterodox Confucian schools, saw new currents that mixed Confucianism with Buddhism and Shinto, as well as interest in popular education, which began with many public lectures and saw an amalgamation of these ideas in the tradition developed by Ishida Baigan known as Shingaku, or "Heart Learning," which has been called a Japanese version of the Protestant ethic.

This extended into "Western learning" or "Dutch learning," where the study of modern European science had drawn interest from various scholars. This increased the consciousness of foreign studies and the possibility of foreign threats. Philosophers in Japan also began to repudiate feudal society, with many rejecting the stratified society as nothing more than a fabrication of the ruling class. This coincided with a spread of popular knowledge, with a growing self-conciousness and a growing literacy that meant, by the end of the Edo period, even the lowest classes were partly literate.

Representation of urban life during the Edo period.

By the early nineteenth century, the urban culture that had begun in the seventeenth century, supported by wealthy townspeople and warriors, spread among the major cities and castle towns. The spread of culture introduced new literary styles that examined in detail things such as the townspeople's way of life, customs, conceptions of beauty, and ways of thinking through genre, comic, or regular novels. The widespread literacy brought popularity to these novelistic forms and brought an awareness of the contradictions in the political sphere, especially the signs of stagnation and corruption in some aspects of Edo culture. These were exacerbated in the 1830s by a great famine, which led to peasant uprisings and city riots. At the same time, European powers began to press more heavily upon Japan, as the Opium War (1839–1842) broke out between China and Britain, drawing greater European interest in Japan.

Mizuno Tadakuni

Beset by these domestic and foreign affairs, chief senior councilor Mizuno Tadakuni instituted the Tempo Reforms, based on the earlier Kohyo and Kansei reforms. They revised regulations for government officials, encouraged samurai to practice frugality, and aimed to restore farming villages by forcing temporary residents in cities to return to villages and restrict commercial-goods production of farmers to make them focus on rice farming. The reforms also sought to lower the price of commodities and ordered the dissolution of merchant and artisan guilds as they were seen as driving up commodity prices. The reforms lasted from 1841 to 1843, and their failure led to Tadakuni being driven from power in 1845. However, Tadakuni had predicted that his reforms would allow the Tokugawa regime to last for another thirty years, and it would be thirty years (1867) before the Tokugawa shogunate would fall.

During those final thirty years, Japan began to open the country in an attempt to maintain its monopoly and reduce the possible influence European powers could exert. This came as in 1844, 1845, and 1846 visits from foreign ships—including British and French warships—visited the Ryukyu Islands and Nagasaki to request commercial relations. In 1848, the Order to Drive Away Foreign Ships was not revived, while military preparations were taken against potential attacks. Pressured in 1846 by Commander James Biddle of the American East Indian fleet, who arrived with two warships and was eager for a port of call (Biddle would leave empty-handed), Commodore Matthew C. Perry entered Uraga Bay with a squadron of U.S. warships in 1853, and Japan was officially open.

The term "restoration" is commonly applied to the changes that would come from 1868 with the return of the imperial house to power as the boy emperor Mutsuhito, later known as Meiji, replaced the Tokugawa shogunate. Although phrased in terms of a restoration of imperial rule, the changes of the period constituted a social and political revolution that would not be completed until the 1889 Meiji constitution. The arrival of foreign powers would lead to the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate, as the need to strengthen the country against foreigners weakened their control, while imperial power had consorted with foreign power for new military technology, especially Western guns, which could prove more effective than samurai warriors. Further, samurai soon realized that expelling foreigners by force was impossible, as the bombardment of Kagoshima in 1863 and Shimonoseki in 1864 proved. This led to a loss of power and prestige for the famed warriors and the larger shogunal government.

Artistic rendering showing changes during the Meiji period in dress and culture.

With a realization of defeat, the principal daimyo were summoned to Kyoto in 1868, where they were informed of a return to imperial rule. This came as several were convinced that Japan needed a unified national government to achieve military and material equality with the West, a plan led by Satsuma, Choshu, and Tosa, whose units became the imperial army. By 1869, the sporadic fighting of the Tokugawa shogunate continued, but by that date, the imperial government was set. It was also believed that the West depended on constitutionalism for national unity and for industrialization for material strength, and relied on a well-trained military for national security, which was what the Meiji government sought to replicate. This led to an 1871 mission led by Iwakura Tomomi to the United States and Europe to learn and gain Western knowledge for modernization.

Emperor Mitsuhito and family.

Meiji reformers began by centralizing the previously decentralized feudal structure, turning 250 domains into 72 prefectures and three metropolitan districts, a number later reduced by a third. The remaining daimyo were eased out of administrative roles, given titles in a European-style peerage in 1884, but removed from political power. The Meiji leaders also realized the complex class system, which existed under feudalism had to be ended, which proved difficult in the case of the samurai, who were given annual pensions but had their class markers abolished. This led to a new three-order division of society: court nobles and former feudal lords became kazoku (peers); former samurai became shizoku; and all others became heimin (commoners). In 1873, a national conscription system was instituted, which further deprived the samurai of power and resulted in numerous revolts of former samurai and for some to call for a foreign war to provide the former samurai with employment.

In 1873, the new Mieji government established land surveys, which dictated land value based on average rice yields and introduced a monetary tax of 3 percent on the newly established value. This resulted in some short-lived revolts, but the establishment of private ownership and measures to promote new technology, fertilizers, and seed produced a rise in agricultural output. Despite monetary concerns, the Meiji government also underwent an industrialization program, which led to increased privatization, as the government's cash-strapped nature and fears of excessive inflation led them to sell any plants to private investors. Unsurprisingly, many of these were given to families with close ties to the Meiji government, including the House of Mitsui and the House of Mitsubishi.

The new Meiji government also sought a national identity, which required the propagation of new loyalties among the general populace. Early Meiji policy sought to use religion for this purpose, elevating Shinto for this reason, but by the 1890s, a national education system was considered the ideal vehicle for the new ideological orientation. In 1890, the Imperial Rescript on Education laid out a moral content for Japanese education, which sought to counter what was seen as excessive Westernization.

Early into the Meiji restoration, the government saw constitutions as providing unity that gave Western nations their strength. The government experimented with a two-house system in 1868, which proved unworkable. Following a call for greater participation from voices throughout the population that could reflect emerging interests. This led to calls for a popularly elected assembly. This led in 1881 to a constitutional draft submitted to emperor Meiji, published without official approval by its author Okuma Shigenobu, who also revealed sensational evidence of corruption. For this, he was forced out of the government's inner circle, but the incident resulted in an imperial promise of a constitution by 1889. During this period, former samurai Itagaki Taisuke formed the Liberal Party (Jiyuto) in 1881, and Shigenobu founded the Progressive Party (Kaishinto) in 1882 to further call for a constitution.

Handwritten version of an eight-point proposal for new government.

In 1884, government leaders, military commanders, and former daimyo were given titles and readied for future seats in a house of peers, and in 1885, a cabinet system was installed, and a Privy Council designed to judge and safeguard the constitution was set up in 1888. The constitution was formally promulgated in 1889, and elections were prepared for the initial Diet, which were to take place in 1890. However, the constitution took the form of a gift from the sovereign to his people and could only be amended on imperial initiative. Despite these and other antidemocratic features, the constitution provided a greater arena for dissent and debate than had previously existed. Private property was inviolate, freedoms were greater, military budgets required Diet approval for increases, and tax qualification decreases led in 1925 to universal manhood suffrage.

Image of the Sin-Japanese War.

By the early 1890s, Chinese influence in Korea had increased, and when China notified Tokyo that it would send assistance to put down a local rebellion in 1894, Japan rushed troops to Korea. When the rebellion was crushed, neither side withdrew, and the Sino-Japanese War formally erupted. The Japanese forces proved superior on land and sea, and China sued for peace following the loss of its northern fleet. The peace treaty was signed on April 17, 1895, with both sides recognizing the independence of Korea, and China ceded Formosa, the Pescadores Islands, and the Liaotung Peninsula to Japan. European powers were not willing to endorse Japanese gains and forced the return of the Liaotung Peninsula to China. A commercial treaty of 1896 would give Japan special tax exemption and other trade and manufacturing privileges, which brought the new Japanese government prestige and internal support and strengthened the military in national affairs.

Japanese soldiers dug-in during the Russo-Japanese War.

However, Korea did not accept Japanese leadership as argued for in the Sino-Japanese treaty, and the country sought help from Russia who, during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 in China, occupied southern Manchuria, strengthening the country's link with Korea. Fearing multiple European enemies, Japan formed an alliance in 1902 with Britain, known as the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. In the pact, both countries agreed to aid the other in the event of an attack by two or more powers. In 1904, emboldened by their pact with Britain, Japanese ships attacked the Russian fleet at Port Arthur without warning. The Russo-Japanese War followed, in which Japanese arms were successful everywhere, including a spectacular naval victory in the Tsushima Strait where the ships of Admiral Togo Heihachiro destroyed the Russian Baltic fleet, but the war was costly in Japanese lives and economy. In 1905, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt offered to mediate a peace settlement, and the Treaty of Portsmouth would be signed on September 5 of that year and give Japan primacy in Korea. Russia granted Japan its economic and political interests in southern Manchuria (including the Liaotang Peninsula) and gave the southern half of the island of Sakhalin to Japan.

Part of Japan's Twenty-One Demands to China.

Following the Russo-Japanese War, Japanese leaders had a free hand in Korea, and opposition to Japanese "reforms" was no longer tolerated. These reforms gave Korea little more than protectorate status, ordered the abdication of the Korean king, and led to the annexation of Korea by Japan in 1910. When Emperor Meiji died in 1912, Japan had achieved equality with the West and became the strongest imperial power in East Asia. During World War I, given the new opportunity and power, Japan began a campaign of expansion. Japan fought on the Allied side during World War I but limited its activities to seizing German possessions in China and the Pacific. When China sought the return of former German holdings in Shantung province, Japan responded with the Twenty-one Demands in 1915, which sought to pressure China into widespread concessions, including extended leases in Manchuria and joint control of China's coal and iron resources. China gave in on some demands and resisted others, and the policy left behind a legacy of ill-feeling and distrust of Japan in China and the West. And the inability of China to recover any of its losses in the Treaty of Versailles cost Japan a chance of Chinese friendship.

There were attempts, given concerns over Japanese expansion, to reduce Japanese influence and which sought to limit battleships built by Japan. In light of these treaties, Japan agreed to withdraw from Shantung in China, Siberia, and northern Sakhalin. A 1925 treaty with the Soviet Union extended recognition to the U.S.S.R. and ended hostilities between the countries. By 1925, the political parties established by the Meiji constitution had grown in influence, along with growing labor movements that had strengthened the parties, but the Diet often found itself virtually powerless, and the prime ministers could do little under the constitution. Under the growing Japanese empire, social changes occurred, especially as the educated class grew in size and vigor and Western and Marxist influences grew. However, colonial competition began to depress domestic agricultural prices, and increased fragmentation in holdings and increased tenancy.

Beyond male suffrage of 1925, few political or institutional changes occurred, outside of the 1928 establishment of special police corps to ferret out "dangerous thoughts." However, with the collapse of international financial markets in 1929 came a rise of militarists in the 1930s. This came from the notion that military conquest would solve Japan's economic problems. It was argued that to sustain necessary imports, Japan had to be able to export, and Western tariffs that limited exports could not be resolved in the League of Nations, which failed to affirm racial equality, and therefore Japan had to use force.

These arguments were supported by military elements in Japanese politics, which also distrusted party politics. Though party politics and the civilian government had dominated in Japan through the 1910s and 1920s, the 1930s saw a resurgence of the political influence of the military leaders who previously chafed under the restrictions civilian governments placed on them. They began by portraying parliamentary government as "un-Japanese" and sought to preserve what they saw as unique to the Japanese spirit and fought against undue Western influence. And the principal force of this growing military movement came not from high-ranking officers but from junior military officers largely from rural backgrounds who were distrustful of their senior leaders and contemptuous of urban luxuries of politicians. They would contend that the Meiji constitution should be suspended in favor of a military government.

Kwantung Army in the Kwantung Peninsula.

The Kwantung Army, which occuppied the Kwantung (Liaotung) Peninsula, included officers aware of Japan's continental interests and took steps to further them by placing the civilian government in an untenable position and force its hand. This direct action began with the 1928 murder of Chang Tso-lin, a warlord in Manchuria. And while the action was not authorized by the Tanaka government of the period, it led to its fall as neither the cabinet nor the Diet would investigate or punish those responsible. On September 18, 1931, came the Mukden (Manchurian) incident, which launched Japanese aggression in East Asia. A Kwantung Army charged Chinese soldiers with trying to bomb a South Manchurian Railway train, which resulted in the unauthorized capture of Mukden and an occupation of all of Manchuria. The civilian government in Tokyo failed to stop the army. And, to forestall intervention by the civilian government, naval officers undertook a terrorist attack in Tokyo but failed to secure martial law.

The army refused to accept a party cabinet, and Admiral Saito Makoto was suggested for prime minister in an attempt to end hostilities. However, on February 26, 1936, several statesmen were murdered by the army, and while the officers and ringleaders were arrested, giving way to more conservative elements in the military, the senior statesmen were unwilling to bring emperor Hirohito into the conflict. However, as international criticism of Japan's aggression grew, popular support of the army also grew. There were attempts to reconstitute Manchuria as an independent state, but control remained with the Kwantung Army. And Japan withdrew from the League of Nations in 1933 after calls for them to withdraw from Manchuria.

Japanese forces during the Marco Polo Bridge Incident.

In northern China, the boundary areas were consolidated to increase Japan's economic sphere. In 1932, the Japanese navy precipitated an incident at Shanghai to end the boycott of Japanese goods, and in 1934, Japan made it known it would brook no interference in its China policy. A military revolt in Tokyo in February 1936 shifted power to military conservatives. In July 1937, Japanese troops engaged Chinese units at the Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing, leading to warfare between China and Japan. Japanese armies took Nanking, Han-k'ou, and Canton, and Nanking was brutalized and pillaged by Japanese troops. To the north, Inner Mongolia and China's northern provinces were invaded, and the Japanese installed a cooperative regime in 1940.

Signing of the Tripartite Pact.

In 1936, Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy. This was replaced by the Tripartite Pact in September 1940, which recognized Japan as the leader of a new order in Asia. While the Pact included an agreement for Japan, Nazi Germany, and Italy to assist each other, they did not trust or communicate with each other, and the ties between Japan and Nazi Germany were never effective. During the period, Japanese relations with democratic nations had deteriorated, especially as the United States and Great Britain worked to support Chinese Nationalists. This led to embargoes in 1940 and President Franklin Roosevelt's effort to rally public opinion against aggressors when war broke out in Europe in 1939.

The European conflict presented Japan with tempting opportunities. Once the Nazis attacked Russia in 1941, the Japanese were torn between German urgings to attack Russia and their inclination to seek richer prizes in the European colonial territories to the south. In 1940, Japan occupied Indochina to block access to supplies to Chinese Nationalists, and in July 1941, it announced a joint protectorate with Vichy France over the whole colony. The United States reacted to the occupation of Indochina by freezing Japanese assets and embargoing oil. This left Japan in a position where either they withdraw from Indochina or seize oil production facilities in the Dutch East Indies. There were attempts to negotiate with the United States, but the State Department refused meetings without prior Japanese concessions. In October 1941, Prime Minister Konoe resigned and was succeeded by his war minister, General Tojo Hideki. Japan began negotiations in poor faith with the United States, while preparations for an opening strike against the United States fleet at Pearl Harbor began.

Japanese dive bomber during the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The attack on Pearl Harbor achieved complete surprise and success. Japanese perspective thought a reconquest would be so expensive in lives or treasures would discourage the "soft" American democracy from engaging in the fight. The first years of the war brought Japan unprecedented success. In the Philippines, Japanese troops occupied Manila in January 1942; Singapore fell in February; and the Dutch East Indies and Rangoon (Burma) in early March. The Allies struggled to maintain communications with Australia, and British naval losses gave the Japanese greater confidence and belief in their success. However, the Battle of Midway, in June of 1942, would cost the Japanese fleet four aircraft carriers and a large majority of their seasoned pilots, while the battle for Guadalcanal Islands in the Solomons ended with Japanese withdrawal in February 1943, while the United States rebuilt their fleet.

After Midway, Japanese naval leaders considered Japan's outlook for victory poor. With the fall of Saipan in July 1944, U.S. bombers were within range of Tokyo. The Tojo cabinet was replaced with that of Koiso Kuniaki, who formed a supreme war-direction council intended to increase communications amongst the various silos. Many realized the war was lost, but none was willing to admit it, especially to the Japanese people who had only been told of victories. Firebombing raids in 1945 brought destruction to every city except the old capital of Kyoto, but Japanese generals remained convinced of a major victory that would gain them favorable terms in a surrender. With the U.S. landings on Okinawa in April 1945, the Koiso government fell, and Admiral Suzuki Kantaro was given premiership and had to solve the problem of how to end the war. Japan sought terms in surrender that it would not be enslaved as a race or destroyed as a nation.

Images of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

On August 6 and 9, atomic bombs destroyed the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On August 8, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and marched in Manchuria, where the Kwantung Army was swiftly defeated. The war in the Pacific and the Second World War came to an end on August 15, and a formal surrender of Japan was signed on September 2 in Tokyo Bay aboard the battleship USS Missouri.

With the formal surrender of Japan, the country would be under Allied military occupation from 1945 to 1952, headed by the Supreme Commander for Allied Powers (SCAP), which was a position held by U.S. General Douglas MacArthur until 1951. Despite multinational councils intended to offer various involvements, the occupation was entirely an American affair. And unlike the Allied occupation of Germany, MacArthur relied on local support, including the local Japanese government and military to undertake the occupation. This began a period similar to the Taika Reform and the Meiji Restoration in which rapid social and institutional changes occurred based on borrowing foreign models.

General MacArthur during his time in Japan.

The general principles of governance of Japan were spelled out in the Potsdam Declaration, which called for the demilitarization of Japan, to ensure peace for the country. Democratization of Japan, while not forcing a particular government on the country, pushed to develop a political system that guaranteed and protected individual rights and the establishment of an economy to support a peaceful and democratic Japan. As an administrator of considerable skill and a man of considerable ego, MacArthur was well suited to his task with his combination of charisma and strong leadership. MacArthur brooked neither domestic nor foreign interference in his development of a new Japan.

Image of the Consitution of Japan.

MacArthur and SCAP worked to remove the supports for the militarist state, demobilized the army, and repatriated Japanese troops and civilians abroad. The group abolished many of the Japanese ministries of war, abolished nationalist organizations, removed members of those organizations from their posts, decentralized the police force, reduced the Education Ministry's powers over education, and removed all prominent individuals responsible for conducting and supporting the war. At the same time, MacArthur and SCAP prepared a draft of a constitution to base a new government on. The emphasis on the constitution was on the people rather than the throne, placing sovereignty for the nation in the people, with a 31-article bill of rights. It was placed before the postwar Diet in April 1946 and went into effect on May 3, 1947. The constitution gained wide public support, and despite some groups wishing to revise the constitution, those parties have never secured the two-thirds majority necessary.

The occupation's political democratization was reinforced by economic and social changes. The first was to divest landlords of a high proportion of their holdings to reduce tenancy and increase owner-farmers with the land offered to tenants on favorable terms and offered favorable tax and price arrangements to give these new owner-farmers control of their land. This land reform would lead to increased prosperity and support Japan's later emergence as a consumer economy. Other economic reforms included the dissolution of some of Japan's financial houses (as much as the nascent economy could handle) while strengthening the influence of labor, in part through a new Ministry of Labor established in 1947. Educational reforms would follow, as democracy and equality were best inculcated through education. A Fundamental Law of Education was passed in 1947 that guaranteed academic freedom, extending the length of compulsory education from six to nine years. The new curriculum worked to encourage intiative and self-reliance, with a standardization of grade levels following the American 6-3-3-4 structure of elementary, lower secondary, higher secondary, and undergraduate higher education adopted.

The occupation of Japan worked to stabilize the country and allowed for a transitory cabinet formed in 1948, which allowed the occupation to end on April 28, 1952. From 1952 to 1973, Japan experienced a near-unprecedented acceleration of economic growth and social change. This was at first supported by the Korean War, as Japan was able to profit indirectly from the war which put the economy into a recovery state and began a period of sustained prosperity and high annual growth rates—averaging 10 percent from 1955 to 1960 and later climbing to more than 13 percent—which changed all sectors of Japanese life. Small-scale mechanization led to an increase in agricultural yields with a reduced reliance on labor, which saw a growth in urban population. Efforts to control population growth were also introduced, including the legalization of abortion in 1948 and a national campaign for family planning, to ensure gains in economic output were not offset by a rapidly growing population.

At the same time, Japan was rapidly developing a consumer economy, which influenced the structure of Japan's economy to concentrate on high-quality and high-technology products designed for domestic and foreign consumption. This required a network of economic trading partners to replace the Asian markets Japan had previously relied on. This led to improvements in transportation to deal with the great distances over which Japan's products had to be shipped and led to growing Japan's domestic market at the same time. A major factor in Japan's economic resurgence came from the destruction of the company's industrial base during World War II, which allowed the new factories to use the latest technological developments and leapfrog the manufacturing of foreign competitors while producing goods that were more reliable with fewer flaws than those competitors.

The rapid growth between 1952 to 1973 introduced significant social changes in Japan. There was a significant decline in birth rate, which stabilized the population; the population shifted from rural to urban centers; the highly education population postponed marriage in favor of education and employment; and a desire for greater independence in early adulthood led to changing fertility patterns. The change in birth rates led to labor declines, which placed factories in the countryside to make use of the underemployed rural labor force, while agriculture was mechanized and commercialized, and agricultural life held less appeal for younger generations.

The greater focus on urban living led to a housing crisis and with limited space, led to the development of low-income, small apartments or higher-priced high-rise condominiums. This urban lifestyle also led to the development of consumer economies in the city, an interest in and proliferation of American culture, and a change in traditional Japanese family and gender relations. But unlike other areas where these transitions occured, crime rates through Japan remained low while the youth developed a more egotistic and brash mass culture.

By the early 1970s, Japan had fully modernized its economy and enjoyed significant advances in technology. However, the devaluing of the U.S. dollar in 1971 disrupted the Japanese yen and the economy, which was further complicated by the 1973–1974 OPEC oil embargo. By the mid-1970s, Japan felt increasingly insecure about its place in the global economy, especially as the country's dependence on imports for fuel and food had caused consternation. During the 1970s and 1980s, as a consequence of this concern, Japan tried to integrate its economy more effectively into the global system, sought to diversify its markets, became an advocate for international free trade, and increased the use of nuclear power.

By the 1980s, the Japanese economy had become one of the world's largest and most sophisticated in the world and had become one of the world's leading net creditors. The Japanese economy successfully weathered the recession from 1972–1974, and again from 1979–1981. Part of this success was due to the country's exports, the bulk of which were automobiles, color television sets, high-quality steel, precision optical equipment, and electronic products. By contrast, the domestic consumption important to Japan's pre-1970 recovery began to stagnate, and by the early 1990s, the Japanese consumed less than their American, British, or German counterparts. Mounting Japanese trade surpluses also created friction between its trade partners in Europe and the United States, who claimed Japan engaged in "adversarial trade" designed to benefit only Japan, to which Japan responded by making efforts to "open" Japan to foreign investment.

However, despite Japan's weathering of the 1970s recessions, by the 1980s, the country was in a "bubble" economy, which was typified by unbridled speculation and real estate markets that reached astronomical levels. In 1992–1993, this ushered in a deep recession, the severity of which postponed previous reform plans and undercut Japanese consumer confidence. Japan's domestic consumption reduced, and its export surpluses continued to grow. The yen appreciated against the U.S. dollar. American expectations had been appreciating and affected the trade balance. Contrary to this, the yen's appreciation had minimal impact on the trade balance, but the stronger Japanese currency allowed Japanese firms and individuals to invest heavily abroad and buy foreign assets.

The Japanese economy continued to stagnate, teetering between recession and anemic growth, as the country entered the twenty-first century. Unemployment, low by Western standards, rose in 2000, surpassing 5 percent for the first time in the postwar era. A series of prime ministers through the 1990s and twenty-first century called for economic reforms, particularly deregulation in administration, finance, social security, the economy, the monetary system, and education. However, the measures met many resistances across sectors, and the government was unable to change policy to produce economic growth.

Japan has continued a close relationship with the United States, but in efforts to diversify and grow its economy, Japan has rebuilt relations with its Asian neighbors. The country has also maintained its place under the U.S. nuclear weapons "umbrella" while Japan still has not developed its military. This relationship has been strained as Japan has developed from a client to a competitor of the United States, which has removed some of the harmony between these two nations, while there remains substantial goodwill between the both. The end of the Cold War allowed Japan to pursue an independent China policy, especially in 1978 when the first set of economic pacts was established, and by the early 1990s, China was Japan's second-largest trading partner after the United States. However, since then, tensions between the two countries have risen.

Japan also solidified its ties with other Asian countries as they industrialized, especially South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong. However, Japan stopped having a formal relationship with Taiwan after 1978. The late twentieth century also saw Japan work to solidify relations with its southeast Asian neighbors, although those relations carry lingering resentment from Japan's World War II actions and from insensitive attitudes of Japanese businessmen when they toured the region in the 1960s and 1970s. Japan's role in the world also increased in 1991, when troops from Japan's Self-Defense Forces participated in a UN peacekeeping operation, the first time since World War II Japanese forces had ventured overseas. Similarly, Japan has taken on larger roles in international bodies, such as the OECD, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization, and United Nations.