Japan: History

Pre-20th-Century History

Japan's earliest settlers were fishers, hunters and gatherers who slogged over the land bridges from Korea to the west and Siberia to the north. It's also thought that seafaring migrants from Polynesia were part of the ethnic blend. By AD 300, the fierce Yamato kingdom had loosely unified the nation through conquest and alliance. Buddhism was introduced from China in the mid-6th century and soon became the state religion. Rivalry between Buddhism and Shintō, the traditional religion of Japan, was diffused by presenting Shintō deities as manifestations of Buddha.

With the empire more or less stable, particularly after the conquest of the indigenous Ainu in the 9th century, Japan's emperors began to devote more time to leisure and scholarly pursuits and less time to government. Important court posts were dominated by the influential Fujiwara family. Out in the provinces, a new power was on the rise: the samurai, or warrior class, readily turned to arms to defend its autonomy, and began to muscle in on the capital, Heian (modern-day Kyoto). The Taira clan briefly eclipsed the Fujiwara, and were ousted in turn by the Minamoto family in 1185. After assuming the rank of shōgun (military leader), Minamoto Yoritomo set up his HQ in Kamakura, while the emperor remained the nominal ruler in Kyoto. This was the beginning of a long period of feudal rule by successive military rulers which lingered until imperial power was restored in 1868.

The feudal centuries can be clunkily split into five main periods. The Kamakura Period (1185-1333) saw several invasion attempts by Kublai Khan's Mongol armies. Japan managed to stave them off, but a weakened leadership lost the support of the samurai. Emperor Go-Daigo presided over the beginning of the Muromachi Period (1333-1576), until a revolt masterminded by the disgruntled warrior Ashikaga Takauji saw him flee to the hills. Ashikaga and his descendants ruled with gradually diminishing efficiency and Japan slipped into civil war and chaos. The various factions were pacified and unified during the Momoyama Period (1576-1600) by Oda Nobunaga and his successor Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The quick spread of Christianity during the Christian Century (1543-1640) was tolerated at first, then ferociously quashed as the interloping religion came to be seen as a threat. During the Tokugawa Period (1600-1867), Tokugawa Ieyasu defeated Hideyoshi's young heir and set up his headquarters at Edo (now Tokyo). The emperor continued to exercise purely nominal authority in Kyoto while the Tokugawa family led Japan into a period of national seclusion. Japanese were forbidden to travel overseas or to trade abroad and foreigners were placed under strict supervision. The rigid emphasis of these times on submitting unquestioningly to rules of obedience and loyalty has lasted, some would say, to the present day.

Modern History

By the turn of the 19th century, the Tokugawa government was stagnant and corrupt. Foreign ships started to probe Japan's isolation with increasing insistence, and famine and poverty weakened support for the government. In 1868 the ruling shōgun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, resigned and Emperor Meiji resumed control of state affairs, seeing Japan through a crash course in Westernisation and industrialisation. In 1889 Japan created a Western-style constitution, the tenets of which seeped into national consciousness along with a swing back to traditional values. Japan's growing confidence was demonstrated by the ease with which it trounced China in the Sino-Japanese War (1894-5) and Russia in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5). Under Meiji's son, Yoshihito, Japan sided with the Allies in WWI. Rather than become heavily involved in the conflict, however, Japan took the opportunity, through shipping and trade, to expand its economy at top speed. Emperor Hirohito ascended to the throne in 1926. A rising tide of nationalism was quickened by the world economic depression that began in 1930. Popular unrest led to a strong increase in the power of the militarists: Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 and entered into full-scale hostilities against China in 1937.

Japan signed a tripartite pact with Germany and Italy in 1940 and, when diplomatic attempts to gain US neutrality failed, the Japanese launched themselves into WWII with a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. At first Japan scored rapid successes, pushing its battle fronts across to India, down to the fringes of Australia and out into the mid-Pacific. The Battle of Midway opened the US counterattack, puncturing Japanese naval superiority and turning the tide of war against Japan. By August 1945, with Japan driven back on all fronts, a declaration of war by the Soviet Union and the release of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was all over. Emperor Hirohito announced unconditional surrender. Japan was occupied until 1952 by US forces who aimed to demilitarise the country and dismantle the power of the emperor. A recovery programme enabled the economy to expand rapidly, and Japan became the world's most successful export economy, generating massive trade surpluses and dominating such fields as electronics, robotics, computing, car production and banking.

With the arrival of the 1990s, the old certainties seemed to vanish: Japan's legendary economic growth slowed to a virtual standstill; the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was swept out of power and then back in again the next year; a massive earthquake in 1995 brought Kobe to its knees (a disaster made worse by a government that was slow to react); and to top it off, a millennial cult with doomsday ambitions engineered a poison gas attack on the Tokyo subway system.

Recent History

Things began to look up with the appointment of Keizo Obuchi, who took over after Prime Minister Hashimoto was ousted by a voter backlash over the shrinking economy. Obuchi ushered in a few brief years of economic vitality, but the job took its toll and he died while still in office from a massive stroke. His successor, LDP stalwart Yoshiro Mori, held the dubious honour of possessing the lowest approval rating of any leader in recent Japanese history, until he announced his resignation in early April 2001. Mori's successor was the telegenic Junichiro Koizumi, who brought a beguiling mix of conservatism and reform to Japan's top job. Promising to end the culture of high-level nepotism that had in part led to the deflation, he distinguishes himself with his charisma and dashing haircut. His energies seem to be paying off: Japan's economy is ever-so-slowly climbing out of its deflationary hole in the ground.

Sports-mad eyes turned to Japan in 2002, when the country co-hosted the football World Cup with sometime rival Korea. Though perhaps labelling it a football-led recovery might be a little offside, the Japanese economy settled into a pattern of annual growth: Chinese demand rather than the beautiful game being the key driver.

The transition to a growing economy has not been stress-free however, as the country abandons many of its old ways of doing things - cradle-to-grave employment, age-based promotion, a strong social safety net, a preference for manufacturing over service industry - in favour of an economy based more closely on the American model. Now, rather than priding itself on being a country where everyone is a member of the middle class, there is talk of a nation composed of two distinct classes: the kachi-gumi (winners) and make-gumi (losers).

However strong the Japanese economy may be, the trade-weighted value of the yen is hovering at a 21-year low. While this means hard times for Japanese travellers abroad, it's a boon for foreign travellers to Japan. In 2006, the number of foreign visitors to Japan topped seven million for the first time, with the greatest growth seen in visitors from other Asian countries: visitors from South Korea, China and Singapore were all up by over 20% compared with 2005. Increasing numbers of Western travellers are also coming to Japan.

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