history of Japan

Assorted References

• major treatment
  • 
    In Japan: Ancient Japan to 1185

    It is not known when humans first settled on the Japanese archipelago. It was long believed that there was no Paleolithic occupation in Japan, but since World War II thousands of sites have been unearthed throughout the country,…

    Read More
• American occupation and peace treaty
  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: South Asia

    In Japan, the American occupation under General Douglas MacArthur effected a peaceful revolution, restoring civil rights, universal suffrage, and parliamentary government, reforming education, encouraging labour unions, and emancipating women. In the 1947 constitution drafted by MacArthur’s staff Japan renounced war and limited its military to a…

    Read More
• Anarchist emergence
  • 
    In anarchism: Anarchism in Japan

    The first self-described anarchist in East Asia was the Japanese writer and activist Kotoku Shusui. In 1901 Kotoku, an early advocate of Japanese socialism, helped to found the Social Democratic Party, which was immediately banned by the government. Early in 1905, after the newspaper…

    Read More
• Antarctic Treaty
  • In Antarctic Treaty

    Chile, France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Later other nations acceded to the treaty.

    Read More
  • 
    In Antarctica: The Antarctic Treaty

    France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States), the treaty was

    Read More
• Anti-Comintern Pact
  • In Anti-Comintern Pact

    …concluded first between Germany and Japan (Nov. 25, 1936) and then between Italy, Germany, and Japan (Nov. 6, 1937), ostensibly directed against the Communist International (Comintern) but, by implication, specifically against the Soviet Union.

    Read More
  • 
    In Adolf Hitler: Dictator, 1933–39

    >Japan; and a year later all three countries joined in a pact. Although on paper France had a number of allies in Europe, while Germany had none, Hitler’s Third Reich had become the principal European power.

    Read More
• Australia
  • 
    In Australia: The postwar years

    …the imbalance of imports from Japan and the United States, offended those countries and actually reduced exports further. A plan for national insurance, the Lyons governments’ most ambitious social legislation, also aborted. These mishaps did not much bother the electorate; improvement, even if meagre, was enough to retain favour.

    Read More
  • 
    In Australia: International affairs

    Relations with Japan were particularly important. Antagonism ran strong in the postwar years and lingered for decades. Nevertheless, trade recommenced in 1949 and grew rapidly; by 1966–67 Japan had surpassed the United Kingdom as the nation receiving the largest share of Australia’s exports, and it was second…

    Read More
• Bering Sea Dispute
  • In Bering Sea Dispute

    …the United States, Canada, and Japan signed the North Pacific Sealing Convention, which further restricted the area of pelagic sealing but awarded Canada a percentage of all the revenue derived from the annual hunt. In 1941 Japan withdrew from the agreement, claiming that the seals were damaging its fisheries, and…

    Read More
• boxing
  • 
    In boxing: Asia

    …at national boxing contests in Japan. Korean boxing was then banned by the Japanese government in the mid 1930s as an “activity inimical to Japanese interest.”

    Read More
• chain store development
  • 
    In chain store

    …200 bc and in 17th-century Japan. An early American chain of trading posts was operated by the Hudson’s Bay Company before 1750. For the most part, however, retail chain stores were not significant until the end of the 19th century. Their most substantial growth, both in Europe and in the…

    Read More
• chronology
  • In chronology: Japanese

    The principal chronicles describing the origins of Japanese history are the Nihon shoki (“Chronicle of Japan”) and the Koji-ki (“Record of Ancient Matters”). The Nihon shoki (compiled in ad 720) assembled information in a chronological order of days, months, and years starting several years…

    Read More
• Colombo Plan
  • In Colombo Plan

    The United States, Japan, and a number of Southeast Asian, East Asian, and Pacific countries joined later. The plan came into full operation in 1951. Its name was changed following the end of participation by several newly communist countries of Southeast Asia.

    Read More
• Empire of Japan
  • 
    In Empire of Japan

    …house until the defeat of Japan in World War II and the enactment of Japan’s postwar constitution on May 3, 1947.

    Read More
• European Great Powers diplomacy
  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: Germany’s new course

    …1894–95 signaled the arrival of Japan on the world stage. Having seen their nation forcibly opened to foreign influence by Commodore Matthew C. Perry in 1853, the Japanese determined not to suffer China’s fate as a hapless object of Western incursion. Once the Meiji Restoration established strong central government beginning…

    Read More
  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: Failures of the League

    …eight days later officers of Japan’s Kwantung Army staged an explosion on the South Manchurian Railway to serve as pretext for military adventure. Since 1928, China had seemed to be achieving an elusive unity under Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists (KMT), now based in Nanking. While the KMT’s consolidation of power seemed…

    Read More
  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: The realist vision

    The other victorious Great Power, Japan, suffered the least human and material loss in the war and registered astounding growth. Between 1913 and 1918 Japanese production exploded, foreign trade rose from $315,000,000 to $831,000,000, and population grew 30 percent until 65,000,000 people were crowded into a mountainous archipelago smaller than…

    Read More
  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: Rearmament and tactical planning

    Only in Japan, which had won easy victories at little cost in 1914, did the military push for action.

    Read More
• fascist influence
  • 
    In fascism: National fascisms

    … and fascist movements operated in Japan after 1918, and their activities helped to increase the influence of the military on the Japanese government. Among the most important of these groups were the Taisho Sincerity League (Taisho Nesshin’kai), the Imperial Way Faction (Kodo-ha), the Greater Japan National Essence Association (Dai Nippon…

    Read More
  • 
    In fascism: Opposition to Marxism

    …of fascist groups emerged in Japan to resist new demands for democracy and to counter the influence of the Russian Revolution of 1917. Although there were important differences between these groups, they all opposed “bolshevization,” which some Japanese fascists associated with increasing agitation by tenant farmers and industrial workers. Fascists…

    Read More
• Great Depression
  • 
    In Great Depression: Timing and severity

    …the greater flexibility of the Japanese price structure, deflation in Japan was unusually rapid in 1930 and 1931. This rapid deflation may have helped to keep the decline in Japanese production relatively mild. The prices of primary commodities traded in world markets declined even more dramatically during this period. For…

    Read More
• Harris Treaty
  • In Harris Treaty

    …for the United States in Japan and constituted the basis for Western economic penetration of Japan. Negotiated by Townsend Harris, first U.S. consul to Japan, it provided for the opening of five ports to U.S. trade, in addition to those opened in 1854 as a result of the Treaty of…

    Read More
• kabane system
  • In kabane

    (Japanese: “family name”), hereditary title that denoted the duty and social rank of an individual within the Japanese sociopolitical structure from the late 5th to the late 7th century. Titles, or kabane, included the categories omi, muraji, tomo no miyatsuko, and kuni no miyatsuko.

    Read More
• Kanagawa treaty
  • In Treaty of Kanagawa

    …of Kanagawa, (March 31, 1854), Japan’s first treaty with a Western nation. Concluded by representatives of the United States and Japan at Kanagawa (now part of Yokohama), it marked the end of Japan’s period of seclusion (1639–1854). The treaty was signed as a result of pressure from U.S. Commodore Matthew…

    Read More
• Kingston upon Hull
  • 
    In Cordell Hull

    …Asia he rejected a proposed “Japanese Monroe Doctrine” that would have given that country a free hand in China (1934). When Japan served notice later that year that it would not renew the naval-limitation treaties (due to expire in 1936), Hull announced a policy of maintenance of U.S. interests in…

    Read More
• Korean War
  • 
    In Korean War: Revolution, division, and partisan warfare, 1945–50

    …in the collapse of the Japanese empire at the end of World War II in September 1945. Unlike China, Manchuria, and the former Western colonies seized by Japan in 1941–42, Korea, annexed to Japan since 1910, did not have a native government or a colonial regime waiting to return after…

    Read More
  • 
    In logistics: Logistics in the nuclear age

    …an excellent base in nearby Japan, whose factories made a major contribution by rebuilding U.S. World War II material. UN air superiority kept both Japan and Pusan, South Korea’s major port of entry, free from communist air attack. UN forces thus were able to funnel through Pusan supply tonnages comparable…

    Read More
• landing craft development
  • 
    In landing craft

    …was first undertaken by the Japanese, who in the early 1930s employed the first landing craft with a ramp in the bow to permit the rapid deployment of troops. This design was copied by the British and Americans, who eventually incorporated it into 60 different types of landing craft and…

    Read More
• London Naval Conference
  • In London Naval Conference

    States, France, Italy, and Japan. At the end of three months of meetings, general agreement had been secured on the regulation of submarine warfare and a five-year moratorium on the construction of capital ships. The limitation of aircraft carriers, provided for by the Washington Five-Power Treaty (1922), was extended.…

    Read More
• Mongolian relations
  • 
    In Mongolia: Mongolia from 1900 to 1990

    …prevailed, and Russia ceded to Japan all its interests in northeastern China. In addition, by secret treaties concluded after the war, Inner Mongolia east of the meridian of Beijing was recognized by Russia as a Japanese sphere of interest.

    Read More
  • 
    In Mongolia: Counterrevolution and Japan

    On the Bogd Khan’s death, the limited monarchy lapsed, but the new MPR government obstructed the search for a reincarnation of the Javzandamba. By 1929 the government had instituted an official ban on recognizing any reincarnations. The 1920s were marked by violent swings in…

    Read More
• nationalism
  • 
    In government: Nationalism and imperialism

    Only the Japanese proved to have the skill to adapt successfully to the new ways—taking what suited them and rejecting the rest. They kept their millennial sacred monarchy but modernized the armed forces. In 1895 they fought and won a war against China, which was sliding into…

    Read More
• new religious movements
  • 
    In new religious movement: Japan

    The traumatic political, economic, social, and cultural changes that took place during the final years of the Tokugawa shogunate and the first two decades of the Meiji Restoration contributed to the formation of a large number of new religious entities that scholars of Japan…

    Read More
• Open Door policy violation
  • 
    In Open Door policy

    France, Italy, Japan, and Russia. The Open Door policy was received with almost universal approval in the United States, and for more than 40 years it was a cornerstone of American foreign policy in East Asia.

    Read More
  • 
    In United States: The Open Door in the Far East

    When Japan attempted in 1915 to force a virtual protectorate on China, Pres. Woodrow Wilson intervened sternly and in some measure successfully to protect Chinese independence. Victory for American policy seemed to come with the Nine-Power Treaty of Washington of 1922, when all nations with interests…

    Read More
• Portsmouth treaty
  • 
    In Treaty of Portsmouth

    Roosevelt, the defeated Russians recognized Japan as the dominant power in Korea and made significant territorial concessions in China.

    Read More
• radio broadcasting history
  • 
    In radio: Japan

    Planning for Japanese radio was delayed by the Tokyo-Yokohama earthquake of 1923; transmissions did not get under way until two years later, allowing the country to refine its basic broadcast policies (based on the experience of other countries) before the first stations appeared. The…

    Read More
  • 
    In radio: Postwar rebuilding

    …occupation authorities in Germany and Japan required dramatic changes in both programs and management, chiefly in order to diminish centralized control and excessively nationalistic content. The number of radio transmitters in Japan grew from 195 in 1953 (after the occupation ended) to 400 a decade later, in part because of…

    Read More
• Reiwa period
  • 
    In Reiwa period

    >Japan, the imperial reign period that began on May 1, 2019, following the abdication of Emperor Akihito and the elevation of his son Naruhito to the Chrysanthemum Throne. The two ideograms (kanji) constituting the period’s reign name (gengō) are rei (meaning “order” or “auspicious”) and…

    Read More
• Root–Takahira Agreement
  • 
    In Root-Takahira Agreement

    …between the United States and Japan that averted a drift toward possible war by mutually acknowledging certain international policies and spheres of influence in the Pacific. The inflammatory effect of discriminatory legislation against Japanese labourers in California had been ameliorated in 1907 by the Gentlemen’s Agreement. The United States was…

    Read More
• Russian relations
  • 
    In history of Europe: Prewar diplomacy

    …East in the rise of Japan. The Japanese, fearful of Russian expansion in northern China, defeated the tsarist forces in the Russo-Japanese War in 1904–05, winning Korea in the process. The unstable Russian regime looked for compensatory gains in the hothouse of the Balkans rather than in the distant reaches…

    Read More
  • 
    In Russia: Foreign policy

    …diplomatic and commercial relations with Japan by three treaties between 1855 and 1858. In 1860, by the Treaty of Beijing, Russia acquired from China a long strip of Pacific coastline south of the mouth of the Amur and began to build the naval base of Vladivostok. In 1867 the Russian…

    Read More
• Shimonoseki treaty
  • 
    In Treaty of Shimonoseki

    …Liaodong (south Manchurian) Peninsula to Japan; to pay an indemnity of 200,000,000 taels to Japan; and to open the ports of Shashi, Chongqing, Suzhou, and Hangzhou to Japanese trade. The Triple Intervention (1895), secured by Russia, France, and Germany, subsequently required Japan to retrocede the Liaodong Peninsula to China in…

    Read More
• shogun
  • In shogun

    Japanese history, a military ruler. The title was first used during the Heian period, when it was occasionally bestowed on a general after a successful campaign. In 1185 Minamoto Yoritomo gained military control of Japan; seven years later he assumed the title of shogun and…

    Read More
• silk production
  • 
    In silk: Elsewhere

    (Japan, too, acquired and developed a thriving sericulture a few centuries later.)

    Read More
• stagecraft and theatre
  • 
    In stagecraft: Asian theatre

    In Japan, Noh drama began developing in earnest in the 12th and 13th centuries, and its form was essentially set by the early 1600s. Very little about this dramatic form has since changed. The shape, style, and dimensions of the Noh stage are closely prescribed, and…

    Read More
• television development
  • 
    In television: Colour television

    In 1960 Japan adopted the NTSC colour standard. In Europe, two different systems came into prominence over the following decade: in Germany Walter Bruch developed the PAL (phase alternation line) system, and in France Henri de France developed SECAM (système électronique couleur avec mémoire). Both were basically…

    Read More
• United States expedition of 1853
  • 
    In Matthew C. Perry

    …naval expedition to induce the Japanese government to establish diplomatic relations with the United States. After studying the situation, Perry concluded that Japan’s traditional policy of isolation would be altered only if superior naval forces were displayed and if Japanese officials were approached with a “resolute attitude.” With two frigates…

    Read More

China

• Anhui
  • 
    In Anhui: History

    …to stem the advance of Japanese invaders. The river waters then surged south to Hongze Lake on the Anhui border, flooding a vast area and causing the deaths of about 900,000 people. During World War II most of Anhui was occupied by Japanese forces, but the resistance of the Chinese…

    Read More
• Beijing
  • 
    In Beijing: The modern city

    …under increasing pressure from the Japanese, who established the puppet state of Manchukuo in Manchuria in 1931. In July 1937 fighting broke out between Chinese and Japanese troops near the Marco Polo Bridge, southwest of the city; Beiping was subsequently occupied by the Japanese until 1945. After World War II…

    Read More
• Chongqing
  • 
    In Chongqing: The modern period

    …first Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), gave Japan the right to access the wharves of Chongqing as well. Accordingly, in 1901, when British trade opened, a Japanese concession also was established at Wangjiatuo, on the south shore of the Yangtze. This concession lasted until 1937, when it was abandoned by Japan on…

    Read More
• Dalian
  • In Dalian: Lüshun (Port Arthur)

    …1894–95, it was leased to Japan under the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which ended the war. However, after the intervention of the Western powers that followed, it was returned to China. Russia, which was eager to acquire an ice-free port on the Pacific, occupied the Liaodong Peninsula in 1897 after the…

    Read More
• Guangxi
  • 
    In Guangxi: Guangxi since c. 1900

    The Japanese invaded southern Guangxi in 1939 and occupied Nanning and Longzhou. In this period Guilin became the principal base for the Chinese and Allied air forces, as well as the home of the patriotic press, the National Salvation Daily News. In 1944 the Japanese made…

    Read More
• Hainan
• Heilongjiang
  • 
    In Heilongjiang: History

    …highly vulnerable to Russian and Japanese expansion during the 19th century.

    Read More
• Jilin
  • 
    In Jilin: History

    …and was occupied by the Japanese army in 1931. The province became a part of the puppet state of Manchukuo, with Jilin city as the provincial capital. Just before Japan’s surrender to the Allies on Aug. 15, 1945, Soviet forces entered the region, dismantled key industrial installations, and removed them…

    Read More
• Kao-hsiung
  • In Kao-hsiung

    …real importance began under the Japanese occupation (1895–1945). The Japanese needed a good port in southern Taiwan to serve those areas that were to become a major source of raw materials and food for Japan, and Kao-hsiung was chosen. It became the southern terminus of the island’s main north-south railway…

    Read More
• Li Hongzhang
  • In Li Hongzhang: Appointment as governor-general of Zhili

    In the same year, Japan made a treaty with Korea that ignored China’s traditional suzerainty over the peninsula, and Li was not able, in a later treaty of commerce between the United States and Korea that he tried to manipulate, to get U.S. recognition of the old relationship. In…

    Read More
• Liaoning
  • 
    In Liaoning: History

    …territorial privileges were transferred to Japan following the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 (which largely had been fought in and around Liaoning). From that time, Japan continually strengthened its hold on the economic life of Liaoning and all of Manchuria, partly through physical control but also through an active and successful…

    Read More
• Manchuria
  • In aggression

    On the other hand, Japan was found to be an aggressor in Manchuria in 1933, Paraguay in the Chaco area in 1935, North Korea and mainland China in Korea in 1950 and 1951, and the Soviet Union in Hungary in 1956, because they refused to observe cease-fire orders.

    Read More
  • 
    In Manchuria: Manchuria since c. 1900

    …was forced to grant the Japanese vast concessions in the region in return for their tacit military support. The notorious Twenty-one Demands that Japan presented to China in 1915 compelled the Chinese to extend Japan’s lease on the territory of Kwantung (Pinyin: Guandong; at the tip of the Liaodong Peninsula)…

    Read More
• Marco Polo Bridge Incident
  • In Marco Polo Bridge Incident

    …1937), conflict between Chinese and Japanese troops near the Marco Polo Bridge (Chinese: Lugouqiao) outside Beiping (now Beijing), which developed into the warfare between the two countries that was the prelude to the Pacific side of World War II.

    Read More
• Ming dynasty
  • 
    In China: The dynastic succession

    During the same era, Japan-based sea raiders repeatedly plundered China’s southeastern coast. Such sea raiders, a problem in Yuan times and from the earliest Ming years, had been suppressed during the reign of the Yongle emperor, when Japan’s Ashikaga shogunate offered nominal submission to China in exchange for generous…

    Read More
• post-dynastic era
  • 
    In China: Japanese gains

    Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Japan joined the side of the Allies and seized the German leasehold around Jiaozhou Bay together with German-owned railways in Shandong. China was not permitted to interfere. Then, on Jan. 18, 1915, the Japanese…

    Read More
  • 
    In China: Wartime changes

    Japan, however, extended its gains in China. The Beijing government, dominated by Duan after Feng’s retirement, granted concessions to Japan for railway building in Shandong, Manchuria, and Mongolia. These were in exchange for the Nishihara loans, amounting to nearly $90 million, which went mainly to…

    Read More
  • 
    In China: The Nationalist government from 1928 to 1937

    For Japan, Manchuria was regarded as vital. Many Japanese had acquired a sense of mission that Japan should lead Asia against the West. The Great Depression had hurt Japanese business, and there was deep social unrest. Such factors influenced many army officers—especially officers of the Kwantung…

    Read More
• Qing dynasty
  • 
    In China: Foreign relations

    …was the Qing trade with Japan. The Tokugawa shogunate viewed the Manchu as barbarians whose conquest sullied China’s claim to moral superiority in the world order. They refused to take part in the tributary system and themselves issued trade permits (counterparts of the Chinese tributary tallies) to Chinese merchants coming…

    Read More
  • 
    In China: Japan and the Ryukyu Islands

    Three years after the Meiji Restoration of 1868—which inaugurated a period of modernization and political change in Japan—a commercial treaty was signed between China and Japan, and it was ratified in 1873. Understandably it was reciprocal, because both signatories had…

    Read More
• Qingdao
  • 
    In Qingdao

    In 1914, when Japan declared war on Germany, its prime purpose was the capture of Qingdao; the port capitulated after a blockade in November. The Japanese continued to occupy the city until the Washington Conference of 1922, when the port was returned to China. During that period, however,…

    Read More
• Shandong
  • In Shandong question

    After World War I began, Japan joined the Allies and took over German interests in the peninsula. At the same time (1915), it presented China with its list of Twenty-one Demands, including Chinese recognition of Japan’s special position in Shandong. Since its Western friends were preoccupied with Germany, China had…

    Read More
  • 
    In Shandong: History of Shandong

    …advent of World War I, Japan took over German interests in the peninsula and in 1915, as one of its infamous Twenty-One Demands, compelled the Chinese to give official recognition to the renewed occupation. Taking up the Shandong question, the imperialist powers decided in 1919 to grant Japanese occupation, which…

    Read More
• Shanhaiguan
  • 
    In Shanhaiguan

    Shanhaiguan’s capture by Japanese forces operating in southern Manchuria (January 1932) placed that entire region under Japanese control and helped set the strategic stage for the establishment of the Japanese-sponsored puppet regime of Manchukuo.

    Read More
• Siping
  • 
    In Siping

    After 1932, under the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, some agriculture-based industry (brewing, oil pressing, flour milling) grew up, and, in the latter part of World War II, the Japanese built a refinery for the production of synthetic petroleum from coal. After the war, Siping was virtually destroyed in four…

    Read More
• South Manchurian Railway
  • 
    In South Manchurian Railway

    …Liaodong Peninsula was transferred to Japan. In 1906 the Japanese made the South Manchurian Railway Company their chief instrument for the economic exploitation of Manchuria, and the company developed the enormous open-pit Fushun coal mine and the Anshan steelworks. Lower-echelon Japanese employees harboured ultranationalistic feelings, which encouraged the Japanese to…

    Read More

colonial expansion

• In Western colonialism: Japan’s rise as a colonial power

  Japan was the only Asian country to escape colonization from the West. European nations and the United States tried to “open the door,” and to some extent they succeeded; but Japan was able to shake off the kind of…

  Read More
• In Western colonialism: Asia

  Japan conquered its Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere and arrived at the gates of India, displacing British, Dutch, and French colonial rulers as well as the Americans in Guam and the Philippines. The Japanese had to allow some margin of freedom to their satellite regimes…

  Read More

• Indochina
  • 
    In Indochina

    In 1940 the Japanese occupied the Tonkin area of northern Vietnam and in the following year the rest of Indochina. But, except for Vietnam and the western provinces of Cambodia, which the Japanese ceded to their Thai ally, Indochina was unaffected by the Japanese invasion. The local French…

    Read More
• Indonesia
  • 
    In Indonesia: Japanese occupation

    Japanese military authorities in Java, having interned Dutch administrative personnel, found it necessary to use Indonesians in many administrative positions, which thus gave them opportunities that had been denied them under the Dutch. In order to secure popular acceptance of their rule, the…

    Read More
• Laos
  • 
    In Laos: Under foreign rule

    …attention to Laos until the Japanese invaded mainland Southeast Asia during World War II; in 1941, under Japanese pressure, the Vichy government of German-occupied France restored to Thailand the territories France had acquired in 1904. In March 1945 the Japanese took outright administrative control of the remainder of French Indochina,…

    Read More
  • In flag of Laos

    …the Japanese (see flag of Japan), who had promoted the Lao independence movement in World War II, but it also symbolized a bright future for the country. Red was said to stand for the blood of those seeking freedom and independence, and blue stood for the promise of future prosperity.…

    Read More
• Lytton Commission
  • In Lytton Commission

    …determine the cause of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria begun on Sept. 18, 1931.

    Read More
• Malaysia
  • 
    In Malaysia: Political transformation

    …of Malaya and Borneo by Japan (1942–45) during World War II generated tremendous changes in those territories. Their economies were disrupted, and communal tensions were exacerbated because Malays and Chinese reacted differently to Japanese control. The Japanese desperately needed access to the natural resources of Southeast Asia; they invaded Malaya…

    Read More
• Myanmar
  • 
    In Myanmar: World War II and after

    Assistance came instead from the Japanese government. Aung San returned to Burma in secret, recruited 29 young men, and took them to Japan, where these “Thirty Comrades” (including Ne Win, who later became head of state) received military training. The Japanese promised independence for Burma; hence, when Japanese troops reached…

    Read More
• Sakhalin Island
  • 
    In Sakhalin Island

    …of Okhotsk, north of the Japanese island of Hokkaido. With the Kuril Islands, it forms Sakhalin oblast (region).

    Read More
• Siberia
  • In Far Eastern Republic

    …west of Lake Baikal, while Japan held much of the Pacific coast, including Vladivostok. Lenin therefore ordered the creation of the Far Eastern Republic, centring on the city of Chita, to act as a buffer between Soviet and Japanese holdings. Once Soviet power was firmly established in Siberia, the republic…

    Read More
• Singapore
  • 
    In Singapore: World War II and the end of colonialism

    In early December 1941 the Japanese landed in northern Malaya and southern Thailand on the Malay Peninsula. They quickly gained air and naval superiority in the region, and by the end of January 1942 they had overrun the peninsula and were opposite Singapore Island. The Japanese crossed the Johor Strait…

    Read More
• Southeast Asia
  • 
    In history of Southeast Asia: Japanese occupation

    The arrival of the Japanese armed forces in Southeast Asia in 1941–42 did not, however, occasion independence. A few leaders perhaps had been naive enough to think that it might—and some others clearly admired the Japanese and found it acceptable to work with them—but on the whole the attitude…

    Read More
• Vietnam
  • 
    In Vietnam: Modern nationalism

    …plan, mildly encouraged by some Japanese statesmen, was to free Vietnam with Japanese help. Chau smuggled hundreds of young Vietnamese into Japan, where they studied the sciences and underwent training for clandestine organization, political propaganda, and terrorist action. Inspired by Chau’s writings, nationalist intellectuals in Hanoi opened the Free School…

    Read More

World War I

• 
  In 20th-century international relations: The war at sea and abroad

  On August 23, 1914, the Japanese empire honoured its alliance with Britain by declaring war on Germany. Tokyo had no intention of aiding its ally’s cause in Europe but was pleased to occupy the Marshall and Caroline archipelagos and lay siege to Germany’s Chinese port of Qingdao, which surrendered in…

  Read More
• 
  In World War I: The outbreak of war

  …and on August 12, respectively; Japan against Germany on August 23; Austria-Hungary against Japan on August 25 and against Belgium on August 28.

  Read More

• Lansing–Ishii Agreement
  • In Lansing–Ishii Agreement

    and Japanese policies in China during World War I by a public exchange of notes between the U.S. secretary of state, Robert Lansing, and Viscount Ishii Kikujirō of Japan, a special envoy to Washington. Japan promised respect for China’s independence and territorial integrity and for the…

    Read More
• Paris Peace Conference
  • 
    In Paris Peace Conference

    …that they themselves, with the Japanese plenipotentiaries, would constitute a Supreme Council, or Council of Ten, to monopolize all the major decision making. In March, however, the Supreme Council was, for reasons of convenience, reduced to a Council of Four, numbering only the Western heads of government, as the chief…

    Read More
• Tsingtao and Pacific Islands
  • 
    In World War I: The loss of the German colonies

    … (Tsingtao) was the object of Japanese attack from September 1914. With some help from British troops and from Allied warships, the Japanese captured it on November 7. In October, meanwhile, the Japanese had occupied the Marianas, the Caroline Islands, and the Marshalls in the North Pacific, these islands being defenseless…

    Read More
• Twenty-one Demands
  • In Twenty-one Demands

    …1915), claims made by the Japanese government to special privileges in China during World War I. The major European powers, which already enjoyed similar privileges in China, could not oppose Japan’s move because of their involvement in the war. On May 7 Japan delivered an ultimatum, to which the Chinese…

    Read More
• Versailles Treaty
  • 
    In Treaty of Versailles: The Paris Peace Conference

    …Africa were taken over by Britain, France, Japan, and other Allied nations (see mandate).

    Read More

World War II

• 
  In 20th-century international relations: Japan’s aggression in China

  The first major challenge to American isolationism, however, occurred in Asia. After pacifying Manchukuo, the Japanese turned their sights toward North China and Inner Mongolia. Over the intervening years, however, the KMT had made progress in unifying China. The Communists were…

  Read More
• 
  In World War II: Japanese policy, 1939–41

  When war broke out in Europe in September 1939, the Japanese, despite a series of victorious battles, had still not brought their war in China to an end: on the one hand, the Japanese strategists had made no plans to cope with…

  Read More
• 
  In 20th-century international relations: World War II, 1939–45

  The Japanese-American war in the Pacific also assumed at times the brutal aspect of a war between races. This ultimate democratization of warfare eliminated the age-old distinction between combatants and non-combatants and ensured that total casualties in World War II would greatly exceed those of World…

  Read More
• 
  In 20th-century international relations: The atomic decision

  …however, General MacArthur received the Japanese surrender on the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay, and the greatest war in history came to a close.

  Read More
• 
  In World War II: The Japanese surrender

  Japan concluded a separate surrender ceremony with China in Nanking on September 9, 1945. With this last formal surrender, World War II came to an end.

  Read More

• aftermath
  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: The ruin of Europe and Japan

    The landscape in much of Japan was just as barren, its cities flattened by bombing, its industry and shipping destroyed. Large parts of China had been under foreign occupation for up to 14 years and—like Russia after World War I—still faced several years of destructive civil war. Indeed, World War…

    Read More
• Australian conflict
  • 
    In Australia: World War II

    After the Japanese attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (December 7, 1941), however, the focus shifted homeward. The Japanese victories of the following months more than fulfilled the fantasies that fear and hate had long prompted in Australia. On February 15, 1942, 15,000 Australians…

    Read More
• Axis powers
  • 
    In Axis powers

    Italy, and Japan that opposed the Allied powers in World War II. The alliance originated in a series of agreements between Germany and Italy, followed by the proclamation of an “axis” binding Rome and Berlin (October 25, 1936), with the two powers claiming that the world would…

    Read More
• biological weapon use
  • In biological weapon: Biological weapons in the World Wars

    Nevertheless, Japan, one of the signatory parties to the protocol, engaged in a massive and clandestine research, development, production, and testing program in biological warfare, and it violated the treaty’s ban when it used biological weapons against Allied forces in China between 1937 and 1945. The…

    Read More
• Cairo Conference
  • In Cairo Conference

    …of the goal of stripping Japan of all the territories it had seized since 1914 and restoring Korea to independence. Upon conclusion of the first Cairo Conference, Churchill and Roosevelt flew to Iran for the Tehrān Conference with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. The two Western leaders then returned to Cairo…

    Read More
• Cambodia
  • 
    In Cambodia: World War II and its aftermath

    The effect of the Japanese occupation was less profound in Cambodia than it was elsewhere in Southeast Asia, but the overthrow of the French administration by the Japanese in March 1945, when the war was nearing its end, provided Cambodians with some opportunities for greater political autonomy. Pressed by…

    Read More
• China
  • 
    In China: The Sino-Japanese War

    …Incident, a minor clash between Japanese and Chinese troops near Beiping (Beijing’s name under the Nationalist government), finally led the two countries into war. The Japanese government tried for several weeks to settle the incident locally, but China’s mood was highly nationalistic, and public opinion clamoured for resistance to further…

    Read More
  • 
    In China: Resumption of fighting

    …in the months immediately after Japan’s surrender, it also permitted the import of luxury goods without effective restrictions. As an anti-inflationary measure, it sold gold on the open market. These policies permitted a large gold and U.S. currency reserve, estimated at $900 million at the end of the war, to…

    Read More
• comfort women
  • In comfort women

    …who provided sexual services to Japanese Imperial Army troops during Japan’s militaristic period that ended with World War II and who generally lived under conditions of sexual slavery. Estimates of the number of women involved typically range up to 200,000, but the actual number may have been even higher. The…

    Read More
• German alliance
  • 
    In Germany: World War II

    On the following day the Japanese, nominally Germany’s ally, launched their attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Although they had not bothered to inform Hitler of their intentions, he was jubilant when he heard the news. “Now it is impossible for us to lose the…

    Read More
• Guadalcanal Battle
  • 
    In Battle of Guadalcanal

    …sea clashes between Allied and Japanese forces on and around Guadalcanal, one of the southern Solomon Islands, in the South Pacific. Along with the naval Battle of Midway (June 3–6, 1942), the fighting on Guadalcanal marked a turning point in favour of the Allies in the Pacific War.

    Read More
• Indian independence movement
  • 
    In Subhas Chandra Bose: Activity in exile

    …than a year after the Japanese invasion of Southeast Asia, Bose left Germany, traveling by German and Japanese submarines and by plane, and arrived in May 1943 in Tokyo. On July 4 he assumed leadership of the Indian Independence Movement in East Asia and proceeded, with Japanese aid and influence,…

    Read More
  • 
    In India: The impact of World War II

    …he was eventually transported to Japan and then to Singapore, where Japan had captured at least 40,000 Indian troops during its takeover of that strategic island in February 1942. The captured soldiers became Netaji (“Leader”) Bose’s Indian National Army (INA) in 1943 and, a year later, marched behind him to…

    Read More
• Leyte Gulf
  • 
    In Battle of Leyte Gulf

    …War II that crippled the Japanese Combined Fleet, permitted U.S. invasion of the Philippines, and reinforced the Allies’ control of the Pacific.

    Read More
• Midway Battle
  • 
    In Battle of Midway

    >Japan’s first-line carrier strength and most of its best trained naval pilots. Together with the Battle of Guadalcanal, the Battle of Midway ended the threat of further Japanese invasion in the Pacific.

    Read More
• Myanmar
  • 
    In Aung San

    …contacted in China by the Japanese. They then assisted him in raising a Burmese military force to aid them in their 1942 invasion of Burma. Known as the “Burma Independence Army,” it grew with the advance of the Japanese and tended to take over the local administration of occupied areas.…

    Read More
• Nanjing Massacre
  • 
    In Nanjing Massacre

    …soldiers by soldiers of the Japanese Imperial Army after its seizure of Nanjing, China, on December 13, 1937, during the Sino-Japanese War that preceded World War II. The number of Chinese killed in the massacre has been subject to much debate, with most estimates ranging from 100,000 to more than…

    Read More
• Pacific Islands
  • 
    In Pacific Islands: World War II and its aftermath

    The Japanese were established in the northern Oceania, where they treated their mandates as part of Japan itself. In 1941 they advanced into the rest of Oceania, reaching and controlling most of New Guinea and, at the peak of their advance, much of the Solomons. New…

    Read More
• Pacific War
  • 
    In Pacific War: Japan’s strategy in the Pacific and Southeast Asia

    The Japanese war plan, aimed at the American, British, and Dutch possessions in the Pacific and in Southeast Asia, was of a rather makeshift character. The first draft, submitted by the chiefs of the Army and Navy…

    Read More
• Pearl Harbor attack
  • 
    In Pearl Harbor attack

    …between the United States and Japan.

    Read More
• Philippine invasion
  • 
    In Emilio Aguinaldo: Philippine-American War and Aguinaldo’s role in World War II

    …to private life until the Japanese invaded the Philippines in December 1941. The Japanese used Aguinaldo as an anti-American tool. He made speeches and signed articles. In early 1942 he addressed a radio appeal to U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur—who at that time was with the U.S. garrison holding out against…

    Read More
  • 
    In Bataan Peninsula

    After the Japanese invasion of the Philippines in December 1941 and the fall of Manila to them (January 2, 1942), the defending U.S. and Filipino troops withdrew to Bataan, defeating Japanese efforts to split the forces of U.S. General Douglas MacArthur. His troops fought a fierce delaying…

    Read More
• Potsdam Conference
  • 
    In Potsdam Conference

    …it intended to use against Japan. On July 26 an ultimatum was issued from the conference to Japan demanding unconditional surrender and threatening heavier air attacks otherwise. After Japan had rejected this ultimatum, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    Read More
• Thailand
  • 
    In Thailand: The Phibunsongkhram dictatorship and World War II

    Japan supported Thai claims to the disputed lands.

    Read More
• Truman’s atomic bomb decision
  • In The decision to use the atomic bomb: Truman’s perspective

    …of the American public toward Japan was even more intense and demanded an unambiguous total victory in the Pacific. Truman was acutely aware that the country—in its fourth year of total war—also wanted victory as quickly as possible.

    Read More
• United States
  • 
    In United States: The road to war

    …Hoover’s policy of nonrecognition of Japan’s conquests in Asia. When Japan invaded China in 1937, however, he seemed to begin moving away from isolationism. He did not invoke the Neutrality Act, which had just been revised, and in October he warned that war was like a disease and suggested that…

    Read More
  • 
    In United States: The Truman Doctrine and containment

    …Asian policy upon strengthening occupied Japan, with much better results.

    Read More
• Vietnam occupation
  • 
    In Viet Minh

    …launch guerrilla operations against the Japanese, who occupied the country during World War II. The Viet Minh forces liberated considerable portions of northern Vietnam, and after the Japanese surrender to the Allies, Viet Minh units seized control of Hanoi and proclaimed the independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

    Read More
• Yalta Conference
  • 
    In Yalta Conference

    …Union’s entering the war against Japan within “two or three months” after Germany’s surrender, the U.S.S.R. would obtain from Japan the Kuril Islands and regain the territory lost in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 (including the southern part of Sakhalin Island), and the status quo in pro-Soviet Outer Mongolia would…

    Read More