Japanese History: every shogun, emperor and turning point, from Jomon pottery to today

Jomon pottery and the first settled hunters (c. 14,000 to c. 300 BC (start and end dates vary by source and region))

The Jomon period takes its name, meaning 'cord marked', from the patterned pottery its people made. World History Encyclopedia dates it from about 14,500 to 300 BC, while Japan's national tourism organization dates the 17 World Heritage sites of the north to between 15,000 and 2,400 years ago. Potters built vessels by hand from coils of clay, without a wheel, and fired them in open bonfires. Early pots had rounded bottoms for outdoor cooking, later ones had flat bases, and some of the middle phase carried elaborate flame-like or snake-like decoration. People ate boar, bear, fish, shellfish, yams, walnuts, chestnuts and acorns, and left the remains in shell mounds near their villages.

• The official World Heritage site for the northern Jomon sites describes settled lives based on hunting, fishing and gathering over more than 10,000 years. World History Encyclopedia adds evidence of small-scale gardening, with rice arriving only near the end, around 900 BC.
• Clay figurines called dogu began as flat images of about 3 to 30 centimetres and later became three-dimensional; World History Encyclopedia says some may have been broken deliberately in the belief that illness would pass to the figure, an interpretation rather than a certainty.
• World History Encyclopedia gives population estimates of about 200,000 by 3000 BC, falling back to about 100,000 by the end of the period. These are modern estimates, not counts.

Sources: World History Encyclopedia (Tony Hoang): Jomon Period; Wikipedia: Jomon period; Official site, Jomon Prehistoric Sites in Northern Japan (World Heritage); Japan National Tourism Organization: Jomon Prehistoric Sites in Northern Japan

Sannai-Maruyama, the great Jomon village (c. 3900 to 2200 BC)

Sannai-Maruyama stands on a river terrace in Aomori Prefecture, at the northern tip of Honshu, among what was once oak and nut-bearing woodland. It was lived in from about 3900 to 2200 BC, and its population peaked in the Middle Jomon period. Excavators have recorded 648 pit dwellings across a site of about 40 hectares, making it the largest Jomon settlement yet discovered. They also found storage pits, raised storehouses and long houses, evidence of a community organising its food and building on a large scale. Its most recognisable reconstruction today is a tall six-pillar structure beside a long pit-dwelling.

• The full extent of the settlement came to light in 1992, when Aomori Prefecture surveyed the area for a planned baseball stadium.
• It became a Special National Historic Site in 2000 and in 2021 joined the World Heritage listing of 17 Jomon sites: six in Hokkaido, eight in Aomori, one in Iwate and two in Akita.
• The official World Heritage site places it near an inland bay and river mouth rich in aquatic resources, with broadleaved forest behind. Finds include chestnuts, walnuts, fish and animal bones, and over 2,000 clay figurines, the most at any site in Japan.

Sources: Wikipedia: Sannai-Maruyama Site; Official site, Jomon Prehistoric Sites in Northern Japan: Sannai Maruyama Site; Official site, Jomon Prehistoric Sites in Northern Japan: List of the Component Parts

Emperor Jimmu (legend) (legendary; the chronicles' reign of 660 to 585 BC is tradition, not history)

Kamu-Yamato Iware-biko; Jimmu is his later posthumous name, Legendary first emperor · Yamato

Emperor Jimmu is the first ruler named in the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki, two court histories finished in the early 8th century, more than a thousand years after his supposed lifetime. They make him a descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu, who leads an expedition from Hyuga in Kyushu, conquers Yamato and sets up a palace at Kashihara below Mount Unebi. There is little or no evidence that he existed, and most modern scholars treat him as a legendary figure. The date of 660 BC comes from the Nihon Shoki's own chronology. It is the root of a holiday set on 11 February in 1873, suspended from 1948 to 1966 and then revived as National Foundation Day.

How they came to power: According to legend only, he left Hyuga and fought his way east to Yamato. No evidence outside the chronicles supports this.

How it ended: The Nihongi says he died in the palace of Kashiha-bara at the age of 127, and was buried the next year north-east of Mount Unebi. Chamberlain's 1882 Kojiki says his years were 'one hundred and thirty-seven', and places the tomb on the northern side of Mount Unebi; Aston's own note also records the Kojiki's 137. Both are legend.

• In the myth he descends from the sun goddess Amaterasu through her grandson Ninigi, and also from the storm god Susanoo.
• Aston's 1896 translation of the Nihongi preserves many variant versions of the early myths, introduced with the words 'in one writing it is said', showing how the compilers worked from conflicting traditions.
• According to the Kojiki's own preface, Emperor Tenmu ordered the old records reviewed and had them memorised by a court attendant, Hieda no Are, so these stories reached writing through the court of the line they glorify.

Sources: W. G. Aston (tr., 1896): Nihongi, vol. 1 (Internet Archive full text); Wikipedia: Emperor Jimmu; Wikipedia: Kojiki; B. H. Chamberlain (tr., 1882): The Kojiki, Vol. II Sect. LIV (Wikisource transcription); B. H. Chamberlain (tr., 1882): The Kojiki, Preface (Wikisource transcription)

Yayoi rice farming and metal (conventionally c. 300 BC to AD 300; disputed radiocarbon dates would begin it c. 1000 to 800 BC)

The Yayoi period is defined by the start of intensive wet-rice farming in paddy fields, along with bronze and iron working and weaving. Its name comes from the Yayoi district of Tokyo, where the first artefacts of the type were found in 1884. Farming migrants from the Korean peninsula and elsewhere gradually merged with the Jomon population. Settled farming fed a growing population, estimated by World History Encyclopedia at a peak of about 2,000,000, and it brought granaries, class differences and warfare between clans. At Yoshinogari in Saga Prefecture, Kyushu, a moat of about 2.5 kilometres enclosed some 40 hectares, guarded by fences, ramparts and watchtowers.

• Bronze bells, mirrors and weapons seem to have been used for ceremonies, not everyday work; elite graves held rich goods, while ordinary people were buried closer together with few or none.
• Change was uneven: in the far north, Jomon people were followed by the related Zoku-Jomon culture and not by Yayoi farmers, a separate path. Wikipedia reports studies linking Hokkaido's Jomon populations to the later proto-Ainu, though the wider relationship is called unclear.
• The largest Yayoi settlement known to World History Encyclopedia is Asahi, a trading centre in modern Aichi Prefecture covering about 200 acres (0.8 square kilometres).

Sources: World History Encyclopedia: Yayoi Period; Wikipedia: Yayoi period; Wikipedia: Yoshinogari site; Wikipedia: Jomon period

The gold seal of the King of Na (granted AD 57 by Chinese record; found 1784)

The Book of the Later Han records that in AD 57 an envoy from the Na state of Wa brought tribute to Emperor Guangwu of China and received a seal with a tassel. In 1784 a gold seal was found on Shikanoshima island in Fukuoka Prefecture, and it has been judged to be that same object. Doubts about its authenticity have recurred since the Edo period, but comparison with similar seals has led to wide acceptance. Its five characters read roughly 'King of the Na state of the Wa, of the Han'. Han rulers granted similar seals to other regional rulers to bring them into the Chinese order, and the seal is the earliest evidence of diplomatic contact between China and Japan. It is now a National Treasure, held by the Fukuoka City Museum.

• The seal is about 95 per cent gold, weighs about 108.7 grams and averages 2.347 centimetres a side, close to the Later Han unit of length called the cun.
• Its handle is shaped like a snake and sits on a square base, with the inscription cut in seal script on the underside.
• Chinese records are the earliest written sources for Japan: World History Encyclopedia notes that the Han Shu, completed in AD 82, already described Wa as made up of about a hundred kingdoms.

Sources: Wikipedia: King of Na gold seal; World History Encyclopedia: Yayoi Period; R. Loftus, Willamette University: Queen Himiko and state formation in early Japan (course notes citing G. Barnes)

Himiko (reign began c. 190 (uncertain); died c. 247 or 248)

Himiko (Pimiko), called 'Queen of Wa Friendly to Wei' by the Chinese court, Queen of Yamatai · Wa (location disputed)

Almost everything known of Himiko comes from the Wei Zhi, a Chinese history of about AD 297; early Japanese histories do not name her, though the Nihon Shoki quotes the Wei Zhi on 'the queen of Wa'. It says the land of Wa had suffered seventy or eighty years of warfare before the people agreed on a woman as ruler. She practised what the Chinese author called magic and sorcery, stayed unmarried and was rarely seen, ruling with a younger brother's help from a guarded palace with towers and stockades. In 238, or 239 as the Nihon Shoki's quotation has it, her envoys reached the Wei court with slaves and patterned cloth, and the emperor answered with a title and a gold seal. Whether her realm of Yamatai lay in northern Kyushu or the Kinai region has been argued since the late Edo period; the archaeologist Keiji Imamura calls it the greatest debate over Japan's ancient history.

How they came to power: The Wei Zhi says the people agreed on her as ruler after decades of disorder. Later Chinese histories place the wars in the reigns of the Han emperors Huan and Ling, about 146 to 189.

How it ended: She died about 247 or 248, soon after complaining to the Chinese governor of hostilities with the king of Kunu (or Kuna). The Wei Zhi does not say how she died.

• The Wei Zhi says a mound over a hundred paces across was raised for her, and over a hundred attendants followed her to the grave. Wikipedia reports a prevailing view that this is the Hashihaka tomb in Nara, others look to Kyushu, and nothing is proven.
• A king who followed her was not obeyed, and the Wei Zhi reports more than a thousand killed before her thirteen-year-old relative Iyo, perhaps a miscopy of Toyo, was made queen and order returned.
• Later Chinese histories altered the story: the Book of the Later Han says the king of Great Wa lived in Yamadai, and the Book of Sui gives her two male attendants where the Wei Zhi has one.

Sources: Wei Zhi (c. 297), tr. Tsunoda 1951, excerpted by R. Loftus, Willamette University; R. Loftus, Willamette University: Queen Himiko and state formation in early Japan; Wikipedia: Himiko; World History Encyclopedia: Yayoi Period

The kofun: Japan's giant keyhole tombs (c. 250 to 538)

From about the 3rd to the 6th century, Japan's elite were buried under great earth mounds called kofun, meaning 'old mounds'. An Agency for Cultural Affairs survey of 2001 counted 161,560 across Japan, from small round or square mounds to vast keyhole-shaped tombs with moats. Grave goods included weapons, armour and ornaments, and clay figures called haniwa, in the shape of cylinders, houses, animals and people, decorated the mounds. The largest, the Daisen tomb at Sakai, is 486 metres long and is thought to have taken about 20 years to build in the mid-5th century. The Imperial Household Agency treats it as the tomb of Emperor Nintoku, but this cannot be confirmed.

• The Mozu-Furuichi group on the Osaka Plain, a World Heritage property of 49 kofun, comes from the peak of tomb-building. Wikipedia dates its two clusters from the later 4th century to the early 6th.
• Many of the great tombs are managed by the Imperial Household Agency as imperial mausolea, which limits excavation and is one reason their study has lagged.
• A new stoneware called sue appeared in this period, made on a potter's wheel and fired in kilns at about 1,000 to 1,200 degrees Celsius.

Sources: World History Encyclopedia: Kofun Period; Wikipedia: Mozu Kofun Group (Daisen Kofun); Wikipedia: Kofun period; Nippon.com: Touring Osaka's World Heritage Burial Mounds; Japanese Wiki Corpus (NICT/Kyoto): Kofun (tumulus), citing the Agency for Cultural Affairs survey of 2001

The kami, Amaterasu and the shrine at Ise (beliefs take shape c. 250 to 538; Ise's founding in 4 BC is tradition; first Naiku building under Tenmu (678 to 686), first rebuilding 690 or 692 (sources differ))

Shinto, 'the way of the gods', grew out of older worship of the kami, spirits of the sun, sea, wind and storm, and of some outstanding people. At first no buildings were needed, and worship took place in the open or at sacred spots such as forests. The Nihon Shoki says Princess Yamato-hime, a daughter of Emperor Suinin, travelled through Uda, Omi and Mino looking for a home for the sun goddess Amaterasu before settling at Ise; Wikipedia gives the search 20 years, a figure not in Aston's text. Tradition dates this to 4 BC, but this is legend. The first shrine building at Ise's Naiku is attributed to Emperor Tenmu, and Empress Jito carried out its first ceremonial rebuilding, dated 690 by the local tourism bureau and 692 by Wikipedia. Its main buildings have been rebuilt about every 20 years, with delays in wartime, the present ones in 2013 as the 62nd version.

• In the best-known myth, Amaterasu shuts herself in a cave after her brother Susanoo offends her, and the gods use a mirror to tempt her out; the mirror kept at Ise is held to be that sacred object.
• Tradition makes Yamato-hime the first priestess of Ise, the start of a long line of imperial daughters in the role, but Wikipedia says the Man'yoshu names Princess Oku, Tenmu's daughter, as the first.
• The next rebuilding is due in 2033. World History Encyclopedia reports that each rebuilding uses about 12,000 cypress logs.

Sources: World History Encyclopedia: Ise Grand Shrine; World History Encyclopedia: Kofun Period; Wikipedia: Ise Grand Shrine; W. G. Aston (tr., 1896): Nihongi, vol. 1 (Internet Archive full text); Visit Iseshima Bureau (official): Shikinen Sengu

The five kings of Wa and the Inariyama sword (embassies c. 413 to 478; Inariyama inscription dated to a xin-hai year, usually 471 (some argue 531))

Chinese histories name five kings of Wa in the 5th century: San, Chin, Sai, Ko and Bu. They sent envoys to China's southern courts to win recognition, seeking military titles that included claims over Korean states. In 438 Chin styled himself military governor over six states including Baekje, but the Song court gave him a lesser title and never granted him authority over Baekje. Details of the kings are otherwise unknown, and the Nihon Shoki records no such kings or embassies at all, so matching them with its emperors is uncertain, though Bu, active in 478, is usually identified with Emperor Yuryaku. An inscribed sword from far to the east seems to support this.

• The Inariyama sword was excavated in 1968 in Saitama Prefecture; X-rays in 1978 revealed a gold-inlaid inscription of at least 115 Chinese characters.
• The inscription lists eight generations of a family of sword-bearers' chiefs and names a great king, Waka Takiru, thought to be Yuryaku. Another sword, from Eta Funayama, also seems to carry this name.
• Scholars disagree about how much the rank of the Chinese titles mattered: Wa's generals' rank sat below those given to Goguryeo and Baekje, which some read as lower status and others as simply the order in which embassies began.

Sources: Wikipedia: Five kings of Wa (with table of Chinese records); Wikipedia: Inariyama Sword (translation by Murayama and Miller); World History Encyclopedia: Kofun Period

Buddhism reaches the Yamato court (552 in the Nihon Shoki (other sources say 538; both dates are thought unreliable); civil conflict ended 587)

The Nihon Shoki says that in 552 King Syong-myong of Paekche sent Emperor Kimmei an image of the Buddha in gold and copper, with flags, umbrellas and sutras. The emperor asked his ministers whether to worship it. Soga no Iname argued that all the western lands did so, while Mononobe no Okoshi and Nakatomi no Kamako objected, and the image went to Iname, who made his house at Mukuhara into a temple. When plague followed, his opponents blamed the foreign god, and officials threw the image into the Canal of Naniha and burned the temple. The rivalry between the clans continued until open war in 587, when Soga no Umako defeated and killed Mononobe no Moriya.

• Paekche's memorial, as translated by Aston in 1896, says: 'This doctrine is amongst all doctrines the most excellent.' Whatever the true date, historians accept that Buddhism came through official diplomatic channels in the mid-6th century.
• The Nihon Shoki says a sudden fire consumed the Great Hall after the temple was burned, on a day without cloud or wind. The compilers finished their work in 720, when Buddhism had long had official support.
• Prince Shotoku fought on the Soga side, and tradition credits him with founding Shitennoji after the victory. The Nihon Shoki records work starting on it at Naniha in 593.

Sources: W. G. Aston (tr., 1896): Nihongi, vol. 2 (Internet Archive full text); Wikipedia: Buddhism in Japan; Wikipedia: Soga-Mononobe conflict; World History Encyclopedia (Mark Cartwright): Asuka Period

Prince Shotoku (574 to 621 or 622 (the Nihon Shoki's date, Suiko's 29th year, is read as 621; World History Encyclopedia and Wikipedia give 622))

Umayado no Miko (Mimayado no Toyotomimi); Shotoku Taishi is his later name, Prince and court leader under Suiko · Ikaruga

Prince Shotoku was the second son of Emperor Yomei, with ties to the Soga clan through his family. The Nihon Shoki says Suiko put him in general control of the government in 593, working with Soga no Umako. The chronicle records twelve cap ranks for officials at the end of 603, and in 604 Seventeen Articles that he is said to have written himself. These urged harmony, reverence for Buddhism and obedience to the sovereign, and the first opens in Aston's 1896 translation: 'Harmony is to be valued'. He studied Buddhism with a monk from Koguryo, Hye-cha, and is credited with sutra commentaries and with founding temples including Shitennoji and Horyu-ji. World History Encyclopedia notes the Articles may have been composed as a tribute after his death, and Wikipedia calls him semi-legendary.

How they rose: Born into the imperial family, he was named heir in the first year of his aunt Suiko's reign, and he fought with the Soga in the war of 587. World History Encyclopedia says Soga no Umako chose him, though why is not recorded.

How they died: The Nihon Shoki says he died in the middle of the night at the Palace of Ikaruga, in Suiko's 29th year, and that the whole country grieved. Sources give 621 or 622.

• Legend appears in the chronicle itself: it says his mother gave birth to him at a stable door, that he spoke as soon as he was born, and that he could decide the suits of ten men at once.
• A cult grew around him, and many Kamakura-period images of him were made, some treating him as a saint-like figure or avatar of the Buddha.
• Article 17 says that important matters should not be decided by one person alone, an idea World History Encyclopedia sees as having a lasting influence on later politics.

Sources: W. G. Aston (tr., 1896): Nihongi, vol. 2 (Internet Archive full text); World History Encyclopedia (Mark Cartwright): Prince Shotoku; Wikipedia: Prince Shotoku; Wikipedia: Soga-Mononobe conflict

Empress Suiko (554 to 628; reigned from the end of 592 or start of 593 to 628)

Princess Nukatabe; Toyomike Kashikiya-hime; Suiko is her later posthumous name, Yamato court · Asuka

Suiko was the daughter of Emperor Kimmei and a Soga mother, and widow of Emperor Bidatsu. She is counted as the first empress regnant in the traditional list and the longest-reigning of them. Her reign saw the first relations with Sui China, in 600 by Wikipedia's account (the Nihon Shoki's first embassy is 607), twelve court cap ranks in 603 and the Seventeen Articles in 604. Power is often credited to her nephew Prince Shotoku and to Soga no Umako, but historians point to signs of her own authority. An edict of 594 officially promoted Buddhism, and she was among Japan's first Buddhist monarchs.

How they came to power: In 592 Soga no Umako had Emperor Sushun assassinated, perhaps fearing Sushun would strike first. In the resulting vacuum Suiko was asked to take the throne, the first of several women chosen this way.

How it ended: The Nihon Shoki says she fell ill in the second month of 628 and died the next month, after a total eclipse of the sun. She had named no clear heir, and a dispute over the succession followed.

• In 624 she refused Soga no Umako's request for the imperial territory of Kazuraki, which is cited as evidence that she was independent of him.
• Her title at the time would probably not have been tenno, 'emperor', since most historians think that title came in only under Tenmu and Jito.
• The Nihon Shoki records that in 616 thirty people from the island of Yaku, south of Kyushu, came as emigrants in three groups, and that they stayed until they died.

Sources: W. G. Aston (tr., 1896): Nihongi, vol. 2 (Internet Archive full text); Wikipedia: Empress Suiko; World History Encyclopedia (Mark Cartwright): Asuka Period

The embassies to Sui China (embassies of 607, 608 and 614; part of a series running to 839)

In the seventh month of 607 the Nihon Shoki says the court sent Ono no Imoko to China, with Kuratsukuri no Fukuri as interpreter. He returned the next year with a Chinese envoy, called Pei Shiqing in modern spelling, and twelve attendants. The court built a new residence for them at Naniha and sent thirty decorated boats to meet them. A further embassy under Inugami no Mitasuki followed in 614. Students and monks sailing on these missions brought back Chinese learning that shaped the later reforms, and between 607 and 839, by Wikipedia's count, Japan sent 19 missions to Sui and Tang China in all.

• Takamuko no Kuromaro, Minabuchi no Shoan and the monk Min (Somin) went in 608. Kuromaro and Shoan returned in 640, after 32 years; Min came back in 632. Kuromaro and Min were then made national doctors under the Taika government.
• Wikipedia cites an estimate that about a third of those who set out on these missions never returned home alive.
• Aston's Nihongi calls the destination 'Great Thang', the Tang dynasty's name, though the Sui still ruled: a sign that the compilers wrote later and used the names of their own day.

Sources: W. G. Aston (tr., 1896): Nihongi, vol. 2 (Internet Archive full text); Wikipedia: Japanese missions to Sui China; Wikipedia: Taika Reform; World History Encyclopedia (Mark Cartwright): Asuka Period

Horyu-ji (founded c. 607 by tradition; burned 670; rebuilt into the early 8th century)

Horyu-ji at Ikaruga is traditionally said to have been founded by Prince Shotoku and completed in 607. The Nihon Shoki says fire destroyed the original buildings in 670, and their remains survive underground at a spot called Wakakusa Garan. Rebuilding began almost at once and ran into the early 8th century. World History Encyclopedia counts 48 listed buildings, and the World Heritage listing also takes in the pagoda of nearby Hokki-ji. The main hall, five-storey pagoda, middle gate and corridor date from the late 7th to early 8th century, among the oldest surviving wooden buildings anywhere. Their design has heavy tiled roofs carried on brackets and columns that swell and taper. Tree-ring work suggests some of the main hall's timbers were felled before 670.

• Analysis reported in 2001 showed that the central pillar of the five-storey pagoda came from a tree felled in 594, decades before the fire of 670.
• On 26 January 1949 a fire during repairs badly damaged the Kondo and destroyed its early wall paintings (Asuka period to Wikipedia, 8th century to World History Encyclopedia), and 26 January became a fire prevention day for cultural properties.
• A relic believed to be a fragment of the Buddha's bones lies at the base of the pagoda's central pillar, three metres below the foundation stone's surface.

Sources: World History Encyclopedia (Mark Cartwright): Horyuji; Wikipedia: Horyu-ji; Japan National Tourism Organization: Buddhist Monuments in the Horyu-ji Area; Wikipedia: Buddhist Monuments in the Horyu-ji Area

The coup of 645 and the Taika Reform (coup 645; reform edicts from 646)

By the 640s the Soga clan dominated the court, and in 643 their attack had driven Prince Shotoku's son Yamashiro and his family to kill themselves. In 645 Prince Naka no Oe and Nakatomi no Kamatari struck: the Nihon Shoki describes Soga no Iruka being attacked with swords in the palace before Empress Kogyoku, and she gave up the throne soon after to Prince Karu, who became Emperor Kotoku. Naka no Oe was made crown prince. The edicts of 646, as the chronicle gives them, abolished privately held lands and serfs, and called for capital and provincial administration, population registers and a new tax system. The aim was a centralised state on the Chinese model, under an emperor with direct authority.

• The changes unfolded in steps over many years, and the reform as a whole took decades to become a working system through later codes.
• Taika, meaning 'great reform', was announced as the era name under Kotoku.
• Shortly before Kamatari's death in 669, Emperor Tenji gave him the surname Fujiwara, founding the family that would dominate the Heian court.

Sources: W. G. Aston (tr., 1896): Nihongi, vol. 2 (Internet Archive full text); Taika Reform Edicts (from Aston's Nihongi), Washington State University, archived copy; Wikipedia: Taika Reform; Wikipedia: Fujiwara no Kamatari; World History Encyclopedia (Mark Cartwright): Asuka Period

Defeat at Hakusukinoe (Baekgang) (27 to 28 of the 8th lunar month, 663 (4 to 5 October by the Julian calendar))

After Silla and Tang China overran Paekche in 660, Paekche loyalists asked Japan for help, and the court sent a fleet with their prince Phung-chhyang. In 663 the two sides met at the lower Geum River in Korea, called the Pekchon in the Nihon Shoki. The chronicle says the Tang generals drew up 170 fighting ships in line, and that when a first attack failed, the Japanese and Paekche commanders ordered another without weighing the situation, and were caught between Tang vessels closing from both sides. Paekche's restoration failed, and refugees from Paekche and later Goguryeo moved to Japan.

• Figures differ: Wikipedia's battle summary gives 42,000 Yamato troops and 800 ships against 13,000 Tang troops and 170 ships, with Yamato losses of about 400 ships and 10,000 men. These numbers should be read with caution.
• After the defeat Prince Naka no Oe, later Emperor Tenji, moved the capital to Omi at modern Otsu in 667, against opposition from his retainers by Wikipedia's account, and the Nihon Shoki records a Paekche officer being sent to build a castle in Nagato province in 665.
• Japan's fleets had already gone north: in the fourth year of Empress Saimei's reign (658), the Nihon Shoki says, Abe no Omi led 180 ships against the Yemishi of Aita and Nushiro, people Aston's notes gloss as 'Yemishi or Ainos', an old equation that Wikipedia's Emishi article treats as unsettled, and they submitted.

Sources: W. G. Aston (tr., 1896): Nihongi, vol. 2 (Internet Archive full text); Wikipedia: Battle of Baekgang; Wikipedia: Jinshin War; World History Encyclopedia (Mark Cartwright): Asuka Period

Emperor Tenmu (born c. 630; won the Jinshin War of 672; reigned 673 to 686)

Prince Oama; Ama-no-nunahara-oki-no-mahito; Tenmu is his later posthumous name, Yamato court · Asuka

Tenmu was a son of Emperor Jomei and Empress Kogyoku and a younger brother of Emperor Tenji. As emperor he modelled government on Tang China, distributed titles among family and supporters, and added four new top ranks to the noble title system. He was probably the first ruler of Japan to use the title tenno in his lifetime, shown by a wooden tablet from his reign, and the first described as a divine being. In 681 he ordered a new law code, known as the Asuka Kiyomihara Code. He promoted both Buddhism, through official temples and rites, and the goddess Amaterasu, raising her Ise shrine to preeminence. The Kojiki's preface credits him with starting the review of the old records.

How they came to power: In 671 he reportedly declined the ailing Tenji's offer of the throne, fearing a trap, and retired to Yoshino as a monk. In the sixth month of 672 he fled east, seized mountain passes such as Fuwa, and raised an army against his nephew Prince Otomo, who was defeated and killed himself.

How it ended: His health declined from 685, and the court held great Buddhist rites to win divine favour, but he died in 686. His son Otsu was executed for treason later that year, likely, Wikipedia says, on the orders of Tenmu's widow.

• Later chronicles such as the Nihon Shoki do not count Otomo as an emperor, and it is unclear whether he was ever enthroned, though he was later listed as Emperor Kobun.
• World History Encyclopedia says Tenmu limited the claim to the throne to his own descendants and those of his wife.
• The tenno title's exact origin is unknown: it may come from a Daoist deity linked to the North Star, or from a Tang title that Emperor Gaozong adopted in 674.

Sources: W. G. Aston (tr., 1896): Nihongi, vol. 2 (Internet Archive full text); Wikipedia: Emperor Tenmu; Wikipedia: Jinshin War; World History Encyclopedia (Mark Cartwright): Asuka Period; Wikipedia: Kojiki

Empress Jito (645 to 703; ruled from 686, formally enthroned by 690, abdicated 697)

Uno-no-sarara; Takamanohara-hiro-no-hime; Jito is her later posthumous name, Yamato court · Fujiwara-kyo

Uno-no-sarara, a daughter of Emperor Tenji, married her uncle Tenmu, followed him through the Jinshin War and shared in rule during his last years. After his death she took charge of the court, with the aim of securing the succession for her son Kusakabe. When he died in 689 she became sovereign herself and later named her grandson as heir. In the twelfth month of 694, the Nihon Shoki says, she moved her residence to the Palace of Fujihara. Fujiwara-kyo was the first Japanese capital planned on a square grid, usually said to follow Tang Chang'an, though its central palace may instead follow an older Chinese ideal plan. It remained the capital until 710. Shortly after her reign, in 701, the Taiho Code gave Japan a full body of law on the Chinese pattern.

How they came to power: Her rival Prince Otsu was charged with treason and executed in 686, likely, Wikipedia says, on her orders. A long mourning period followed, and she took the throne after Kusakabe's death; sources give dates between 687 and 690.

How it ended: She abdicated in 697 in favour of her grandson Emperor Monmu, kept power as the first retired sovereign with the title daijo-tenno, and died on 13 January 703 at Fujiwara-kyo.

• The Nihon Shoki ends with her reign in 697. It records more than two dozen of her visits to the Palace of Yoshino, the place from which she and Tenmu had set out in 672.
• In 692 she travelled to Ise against the advice of the minister Miwa no Takechimaro.
• She is the third of eight women in the traditional list of reigning empresses, and in 689 she banned the board game sugoroku.

Sources: W. G. Aston (tr., 1896): Nihongi, vol. 2 (Internet Archive full text); Wikipedia: Empress Jito; Wikipedia: Fujiwara-kyo; Wikipedia: Taiho Code; Wikipedia: Emperor Tenmu

Heijo-kyo: the capital at Nara (ordered 708; capital from 710 to 784, with a break from 740 to 745)

Empress Genmei ordered the capital moved from Fujiwara-kyo in 708, and the move was complete in 710. Heijo-kyo, today's Nara, was laid out on a grid after Chang'an, capital of Tang China, though without its walls, and it covered more than 25 square kilometres. Its central avenue, the Suzaku-oji, ran 3.7 kilometres from the Rajomon gate to the palace and was about 74 metres wide, designed in part for the passage of foreign envoys. The state employed about 7,000 civil servants, and a university in the Confucian tradition was founded. Estimates of its population vary widely: Wikipedia gives a peak of 50,000 to 100,000, while World History Encyclopedia says it may have reached 200,000.

• Its World Heritage listing, Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara, covers eight places: five temples, a shrine, the palace site and a primeval forest.
• Excavation since 1974 has traced the great avenue, and in 2010 a section 70 metres wide and 210 metres long was restored south of the Suzakumon gate.
• For most people the capital was remote: World History Encyclopedia says about 90 per cent of the population lived in rural areas, working with basic tools and facing frequent crop failures and famine.

Sources: World History Encyclopedia (Mark Cartwright): Nara Period; Wikipedia: Heijo-kyo; Wikipedia: Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara

The Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki (Kojiki 712; Nihon Shoki 720)

The Kojiki's preface says Emperor Tenmu had the old records reviewed and had a court attendant, Hieda no Are, memorise them. In 711 Empress Genmei ordered the courtier O no Yasumaro to write down what Are had learned, and the work is dated to 712. The Nihon Shoki followed in 720, finished under Prince Toneri with Yasumaro's help and presented to Empress Gensho. It runs from the creation to the reign of Empress Jito in 697, drawing on now-lost texts from Japan, China and the Korean kingdom of Paekche. Their early sections, including the gods and Emperor Jimmu, are myth and legend, and both works served to give the imperial line direct descent from the gods.

• The Kojiki is usually considered Japan's oldest surviving literary work. It is written in Classical Chinese, with songs and poems in Old Japanese spelled out phonetically in Chinese characters.
• The Nihon Shoki often gives several versions of the same myth side by side, which Aston kept in his 1896 translation.
• In 713 the court also commissioned local records called Fudoki, gathering the kami and legends of the provinces.

Sources: W. G. Aston (tr., 1896): Nihongi, vol. 1 (Internet Archive full text); World History Encyclopedia (Mark Cartwright): Nihon Shoki; Wikipedia: Kojiki; Wikipedia: Nihon Shoki; B. H. Chamberlain (tr., 1882): The Kojiki, Preface (Wikisource transcription)

Emperor Shomu (701 to 756; reigned 724 to 749)

Prince Obito; Shomu is his later posthumous name, Nara court · Heijo-kyo

Shomu's reign was marked by disaster. A smallpox epidemic from 735 to 737 killed an estimated 25 to 35 per cent of the population, by World History Encyclopedia's account, and poor harvests made it worse. In 740 Fujiwara no Hirotsugu rebelled in Kyushu, with support from the Hayato people of the south, and Shomu raised 17,000 men and crushed him within two months. The emperor left Heijo-kyo during the rising, and the capital moved repeatedly in the following years. Turning to Buddhism, he ordered provincial temples across the country in 741 and commissioned the Great Buddha in 743. World History Encyclopedia says the heavy taxation that paid for this added to the burden on farmers.

How they came to power: He was a child when his father, Emperor Monmu, died, so his grandmother Genmei and aunt Gensho held the throne. Gensho abdicated in his favour in 724.

How it ended: He gave up the throne in 749 to become a Buddhist monk, in favour of his daughter Koken. He died at Nara on 4 June 756.

• His consort Komyo, of the Fujiwara, is known as the first imperial consort not born into the imperial household, and a special government office was created for her.
• Forty-nine days after his death, Komyo dedicated over 600 of his treasures to the Great Buddha. They were the origin of the Shosoin repository at Todai-ji.
• A law of 743 tried to encourage land clearance by letting farmers pass newly cleared land to their descendants.

Sources: World History Encyclopedia (Mark Cartwright): Nara Period; Wikipedia: Emperor Shomu; Wikipedia: Todai-ji; Wikipedia: Shosoin

The Great Buddha of Todai-ji (commissioned 743; opened 752; hall rebuilt after later fires)

Emperor Shomu commissioned the Great Buddha in 743, as the head of a national network of provincial temples. The seated bronze figure represents Vairocana, the chief Buddha of the Kegon school, and it stands about 15 metres high and weighs around 500 tons. It was originally covered in gold, then newly discovered in Mutsu province in the north. World History Encyclopedia reports that about 10,000 people attended the ceremony when the temple opened in 752. The temple's hall was then the largest wooden building in the world, according to the same source. Fires and earthquakes have damaged the complex since, so much of what stands today is later rebuilding.

• A legend says the monk Gyoki went to Ise and recited sutras for seven days and nights until an oracle declared Vairocana compatible with the sun goddess Amaterasu. This is tradition, not record.
• The Great Buddha Hall was rebuilt in 1709, and it needed a first restoration from 1904 to 1913, with its present state reached using steel framing between 1974 and 1980.
• The temple burned during the Gempei War, and it was rebuilt under the monk Chogen with Minamoto no Yoritomo's backing.

Sources: World History Encyclopedia (Mark Cartwright): Todaiji; Wikipedia: Todai-ji; World History Encyclopedia (Mark Cartwright): Nara Period

Empress Koken (Shotoku) and the monk Dokyo (718 to 770; reigned 749 to 758 and 764 to 770)

Princess Abe; reigned as Koken, then as Shotoku, Nara court · Heijo-kyo

Koken took the throne in 749 and stepped down in 758 in favour of Emperor Junnin, the ally of her Fujiwara cousin Nakamaro. She began to oppose Nakamaro after her mother's death in 760, and after a monk named Dokyo cured her illness about 761, she made him her close adviser. In 764 Nakamaro rebelled and was captured and executed, and she returned to the throne as Empress Shotoku. Her second reign promoted Buddhism, including a project to make one million miniature pagodas with printed prayers. Dokyo rose to the new rank of Hoo, 'Prince of the Law', and wielded great power.

How they came to power: Her father Shomu named her heir in 738, and she succeeded him in 749 with backing from her mother Komyo and Nakamaro, against a largely hostile Council of State.

How it ended: She died in 770, a year or two after the Usa oracle affair, and the monk then lost his position and was sent away to Shimotsuke. No woman reigned again for about 800 years, by World History Encyclopedia's account.

• An oracle from the Usa shrine said the god Hachiman wished Dokyo to become emperor, but the envoy Wake no Kiyomaro disputed this. Sources differ on the date: Wikipedia's Dokyo article gives 768, its Hachiman article, citing Bender (1979), gives 769.
• Some accounts make Dokyo her lover, and World History Encyclopedia calls it a notorious affair, but the evidence is uncertain: Wikipedia says only that he was potentially an intimate partner.
• Confucian-minded historians later named Dokyo one of 'Japan's Three Great Villains', alongside Taira no Kiyomori and Ashikaga Takauji, for disloyalty to the throne.

Sources: World History Encyclopedia (Mark Cartwright): Nara Period; Wikipedia: Empress Koken; Wikipedia: Dokyo; Wikipedia: Hachiman (citing Bender 1979, Monumenta Nipponica)

The Man'yoshu (compiled after 759, c. 760; most poems from c. 600 to 759)

The Man'yoshu, 'Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves', is the oldest surviving collection of waka, poetry in classical Japanese. Its last datable poem is from 759, and most of its contents come from about 600 onward. Its final compiler is widely believed to be Otomo no Yakamochi, though other theories exist. It holds more than 4,500 poems in 20 books, grouped broadly as songs of banquets and journeys, songs of love and songs of mourning. Many writers are anonymous, more than 2,100 poems in all, and the named or described poets range from the emperor to soldiers and peasants.

• Wikipedia counts 265 long poems and 4,207 short ones, with a few Chinese poems and prose passages; World History Encyclopedia gives 4,496 poems in all, 262 of them long.
• It includes the songs of sakimori, soldiers sent to guard the frontier, and folk songs from the eastern provinces, rare voices from outside the court.
• Later poets took its structure as a model: the division into 20 books was followed in most later collections.

Sources: World History Encyclopedia: Manyoshu; Wikipedia: Man'yoshu; World History Encyclopedia (Mark Cartwright): Nara Period

Emperor Kammu and Heian-kyo (735 to 737 (sources differ) to 806; reigned 781 to 806; Heian-kyo founded 794)

Prince Yamabe; Kammu (Kanmu) is his later posthumous name, Founder of the Heian capital · Heian-kyo (Kyoto)

Kammu moved the court from Nara to Nagaoka in 784, partly to escape court rivalries and the influence of the big Buddhist temples. Nagaoka soon gained a bad name: his adviser Fujiwara no Tanetsugu was assassinated, and floods, an epidemic and deaths in his family followed, which some blamed on the angry spirit of his exiled brother Prince Sawara. In 794 he moved again, to Heian-kyo, 'the capital of peace and tranquillity'. It measured about 4.5 by 5.2 kilometres on a grid, less than a third of the area of Chang'an. Buddhist temples were not allowed in its central part. Japanese reference works treat it as formally the capital until the court moved to Tokyo in 1869.

How they came to power: The eldest son of Prince Shirakabe, later Emperor Konin, he became heir after his half-brother Osabe and Osabe's mother Inoe were confined and died in 775. He took the throne in 781.

How it ended: He died on 9 April 806, still emperor, after 25 years on the throne, and his mausoleum is at Kashiwabara in Fushimi, Kyoto.

• The Shoku Nihongi says his mother, Takano no Niigasa, was a descendant of King Muryeong of Paekche in the tenth generation.
• Wake no Kiyomaro, the envoy who blocked Dokyo, advised Kammu to abandon Nagaoka and look at the Kadono area, the site of the new city, which officials surveyed in 793.
• In 794 he appointed Otomo no Otomaro the first shogun, a title that then meant a general sent to pacify the northern frontier, not a military ruler of Japan.

Sources: World History Encyclopedia (Mark Cartwright): Emperor Kammu; World History Encyclopedia (Mark Cartwright): Heian Period; Wikipedia: Emperor Kammu; Wikipedia: Heian-kyo

Aterui and the Emishi wars (active by 789; died 802)

Aterui, chief of the Isawa Emishi, Emishi leader · Isawa, northern Honshu

The Emishi were a people of northern Honshu, regarded by the Yamato court as barbarians, and the court had been pushing into their land for generations. Aterui led the Isawa band in what is now southern Iwate Prefecture. In 789, at the battle of Sufuse Village, or Koromo River, Emishi fighters trapped about 4,000 imperial soldiers under Ki no Kosami who had crossed the Kitakami River, and the army lost about a thousand men, many of them drowned. A further expedition followed in 794, under Otomo no Otomaro with Tamuramaro as a deputy, though few details survive. In 801 Sakanoue no Tamuramaro campaigned again, with 40,000 men by the Wikipedia article's figure, and in 802 he built Fort Isawa in the heart of Aterui's territory. Aterui and his fellow leader More surrendered that spring with more than 500 warriors.

How they rose: Nothing is known of his life before the fighting of 789, when he appears as the chief of the Isawa band.

How they died: Tamuramaro brought Aterui and More to the capital and pleaded for them, but the court had them executed in Kawachi Province. Wikipedia's thinly sourced article names Moriyama and gives 13 September 802, which may be a lunar date; only the year 802 is secure.

• Tamuramaro was the second person to hold the title Sei-i Taishogun. A legend says he lit huge lanterns on hilltops and seized the curious Emishi who came to look.
• Before this, according to Wikipedia, the court had generally deported captives and enticed warriors to join their families in the west, and had not killed captured warriors. Its Aterui article is thinly sourced and should be read with care.
• The Nihon Shoki already records barriers against the Yemishi on the northern frontier in the mid-7th century, and Aston's 1896 notes gloss the name as 'Yemishi or Ainos', an old equation Wikipedia's Emishi article treats as unsettled; many Emishi later remained in Tohoku under the court.

Sources: W. G. Aston (tr., 1896): Nihongi, vol. 2 (Internet Archive full text); Wikipedia: Aterui; Wikipedia: Sakanoue no Tamuramaro; Wikipedia: Emishi; Japanese Wiki Corpus (NICT/Kyoto): The subjugation of the Emishi, citing the Shoku Nihongi and Nihon Kiryaku

Saicho, Kukai and the new Buddhism (voyage to China from 804; Saicho died 822; Kukai died 835)

Saicho (767 to 822) and Kukai (774 to 835) both travelled to China with the official embassy of 804. Saicho had already built a small shrine on Mount Hiei near Kyoto in 788; he studied several branches of Buddhism in China, brought back over 200 manuscripts, and on his return founded the Tendai school, based on the Chinese Tiantai school and the Lotus Sutra. Its headquarters, Enryaku-ji, became one of the most important centres of learning in Japan. Kukai studied esoteric Buddhism in China under the master Hui-kuo and founded the Shingon school, centred on Mount Koya, where followers used rituals and mandalas. In 823 Emperor Saga granted him the Toji temple in Kyoto, a sign that Shingon had official acceptance.

• Kukai, also called Kobo Daishi, became a saint in popular belief. Tradition credits him with many minor miracles and even with inventing Japanese writing, and these are tradition, not record.
• World History Encyclopedia credits him with establishing Japan's longest and most famous pilgrimage, a circuit of about 1,600 kilometres stopping at 88 temples.
• Buddhist schools grew into powerful political players in the Heian period: monks were forbidden to carry weapons or kill, but World History Encyclopedia says they could pay novices and mercenaries to fight for them.

Sources: World History Encyclopedia (Mark Cartwright): Saicho; World History Encyclopedia (Mark Cartwright): Kukai; World History Encyclopedia (Mark Cartwright): Heian Period; Wikipedia: Saicho; Wikipedia: Kukai

Sugawara no Michizane (1 August 845 to 26 March 903)

Sugawara no Michizane, revered as Tenjin (Tenman-Tenjin), Scholar and minister · Heian-kyo and Dazaifu

Michizane came from a family of scholars and rose as a poet in both Japanese and Chinese. He won Emperor Uda's favour during a dispute in 888 with Fujiwara no Mototsune, and Uda promoted him rapidly from 891 as part of an effort to limit Fujiwara power. Named ambassador to China in the 890s, he instead backed ending the embassies in 894, officially because the Tang dynasty was in decline. Some historians argue that he also wanted to avoid being sent away from the centre of power. The last embassy had sailed in the 830s, and formal relations with China were not resumed in the Heian period.

How they rose: His grandfather and father were court scholars, and his father ran a school for future officials. Michizane's term as a provincial governor ended in 890, and he returned to court and reached the senior third rank by 897.

How they died: After Uda abdicated, Fujiwara no Tokihira accused Michizane of favouring Prince Tokiyo for the throne. In 901 he was demoted to a minor post at Dazaifu in Kyushu, and he died there in exile in 903.

• After his death the palace was struck by lightning and the city suffered floods. The court blamed his vengeful spirit and built a shrine for him, Kitano Tenmangu.
• He is revered today in Shinto as Tenjin, god of learning.
• With Taira no Masakado and Emperor Sutoku, he is often counted among the 'Three Great Onryo', the vengeful spirits of Japan.

Sources: World History Encyclopedia (Mark Cartwright): Heian Period; Wikipedia: Sugawara no Michizane; Wikipedia: Japanese missions to Sui China

Kana and the Kokinshu (Kokinshu ordered c. 905, finished c. 920; Tsurayuki governor of Tosa until 935)

Heian courtiers developed kana, a way of writing Japanese with Chinese characters used mostly for sound, which opened the way to diaries, poetry and fiction in the native language. Around 905 Emperor Daigo ordered an anthology conceived by his father Uda, the Kokin Wakashu or Kokinshu, compiled by four court poets led by Ki no Tsurayuki. It was the first of the 21 imperial poetry collections, and the first to arrange itself into seasonal and love poems, shaping the form of Japanese poetry until the late 19th century. Tsurayuki's Japanese preface is seen as the start of Japanese literary criticism. It stood next to a Chinese preface by Ki no Yoshimochi.

• Tsurayuki was Governor of Tosa from 930 to 935 and is generally credited with the Tosa Diary, which appeared anonymously in a woman's voice.
• The last poem is said to have been added in 914, though the finished form dates to about 920. One compiler, Ki no Tomonori, died before it was complete.
• The anthology's emphasis on the seasons still influences Japanese poetry today.

Sources: World History Encyclopedia (Mark Cartwright): Heian Period; Wikipedia: Kokin Wakashu; Wikipedia: Ki no Tsurayuki

Taira no Masakado (feuding from c. 931; rebellion 939 to 940; died 940)

Taira no Masakado, self-styled Shinno ('New Emperor'), Provincial warlord · Kanto

Masakado belonged to the Kanmu branch of the Taira, descended from children of Emperor Kammu who were not eligible for the throne. He built his power as a provincial magnate in eastern Japan, where he fought a long family feud, which an early account says began in 931 over a woman, though her identity is uncertain. In 939 he attacked a government outpost in Hitachi Province and captured the governor, then conquered Shimotsuke and Kozuke and claimed the title Shinno, 'New Emperor'. It is described as the first recorded uprising against the central government in Kyoto. It shows how much power armed provincial families now held far from the capital.

How they rose: A son of Taira no Yoshimochi (also read Yoshimasa), he fought relatives and neighbours in the Kanto in the 930s, including an ambush at Nomoto in 935.

How they died: The court put a bounty on his head. His cousin Taira no Sadamori, whose father he had killed, and Fujiwara no Hidesato killed him in battle in Shimosa in early 940, and took his head to the capital.

• A tale says his head found its way to Shibasaki, the fishing village that later became Edo, where it was buried. A grave marker stands in Otemachi in today's Tokyo.
• People in the area came to honour him as a demigod and to appease him as a vengeful spirit, one of the 'Three Great Onryo'.
• A legend says a great swarm of butterflies appeared in Kyoto as he prepared his revolt, an omen of battle.

Sources: World History Encyclopedia (Mark Cartwright): Heian Period; Wikipedia: Taira no Masakado; Wikipedia: Sugawara no Michizane

Sei Shonagon (c. 966 to 1017 or 1025)

Sei Shonagon (court name; her own name is unknown, possibly Kiyohara no Nagiko), Court lady and author · Heian-kyo

Sei Shonagon served Empress Teishi, a wife of Emperor Ichijo, joining the court in 993. She wrote The Pillow Book, a personal account of court life completed about 1002, full of humorous observations, sharp opinions and catalogues of plants, places and amusing human relations. Its opening section sets out the best moments of each season. Her name is a court nickname: Sei comes from her family name Kiyohara, and Shonagon refers to a government post, though neither her father nor her known husbands held it. Most of what is known about her comes from her own writing.

How they rose: She was the daughter of Kiyohara no Motosuke, a scholar and noted poet, from a family of middle-ranking courtiers. She married Tachibana no Norimitsu at 16, and at about 27 she went to serve Teishi.

How they died: Little is known of her later life, and sources give her death as 1017 or 1025. The cause and place are unknown.

• She was part of a group of literary women employed around Teishi, who lived from 976 to 1001.
• Her contemporary Murasaki Shikibu wrote about her somewhat scathingly in her own diary, while conceding her literary gifts.
• World History Encyclopedia says the book's title may refer to a poet's handbook, which would suit its many lists of topics.

Sources: World History Encyclopedia (Mark Cartwright): The Pillow Book; Wikipedia: Sei Shonagon; World History Encyclopedia (Mark Cartwright): Heian Period

Fujiwara no Michinaga (966 to 3 January 1028)

Fujiwara no Michinaga, called the Mido Kampaku, Fujiwara regent · Heian-kyo

Michinaga led the Fujiwara at the height of their power. The clan ruled by marrying daughters to emperors and serving as regents for the children who followed. His daughter Shoshi married Emperor Ichijo, though Ichijo already had an empress, Teishi; Kenshi married the future Emperor Sanjo, Ishi married Go-Ichijo and Kishi married Go-Suzaku. He pressured Sanjo to retire in 1016, then ruled as regent for the young Go-Ichijo. He was called the Mido Kampaku, a title meaning he was regent in all but name: he never formally took the post of kampaku, though he served as sessho, regent for a child, in 1016 and 1017. Later he handed office to his son Yorimichi.

How they rose: A son of the regent Kaneie, he stood behind two elder brothers, who both died in 995. His nephew Korechika then contested the succession, but a scandal in 996, likely arranged by Michinaga, ruined him after he and his brother ambushed the retired Emperor Kazan, and an arrow struck Kazan's sleeve.

How they died: He became a monk at his own temple, Hojo-ji, in 1019. He died on 3 January 1028, and is said to have called out to the Buddha Amida for entry to Paradise.

• His diary, the Mido Kanpakuki, describes the court at the height of Fujiwara power, and a volume in his handwriting is a National Treasure.
• Genji, the hero of The Tale of Genji, is believed to be partly based on him, and he invited its author to serve his daughter Shoshi.
• He purchased the villa at Uji that his son Yorimichi later turned into the Byodo-in.

Sources: World History Encyclopedia (Mark Cartwright): Heian Period; Wikipedia: Fujiwara no Michinaga; Wikipedia: Murasaki Shikibu; Wikipedia: Byodo-in

Murasaki Shikibu and The Tale of Genji (c. 973 to c. 1014, or as late as 1025; Genji written over about a decade from around 1000)

Murasaki Shikibu (descriptive name; personal name unknown, possibly Fujiwara no Kaoruko), Novelist and lady-in-waiting · Heian-kyo

Murasaki Shikibu wrote The Tale of Genji in Japanese over about a decade, beginning while married or soon after she was widowed in 1001; World History Encyclopedia puts its completion around 1020. It follows the life and loves of Prince Genji, an emperor's son made a commoner, and then his descendants, a span of some 70 years, and it is noted for its characters and its picture of court life. Heian women were traditionally kept from learning Chinese, the written language of government, but she became fluent in the classics. In her diary she says she learned by listening to her brother's lessons. Married in her twenties, with a daughter, she lost her husband after two years, and she probably began or continued the novel around that time.

How they rose: Raised in her learned father's household, she was invited in about 1005 by Fujiwara no Michinaga to serve his daughter Empress Shoshi, probably because of her reputation as a writer.

How they died: After five or six years of service she left court and most likely retired with Shoshi to the Lake Biwa region, where she is recorded in 1013. Most scholars date her death to about 1014, others to as late as 1025.

• 'Murasaki Shikibu' is not her real name; Shikibu is a title linked to a ministry, and Fujiwara no Kaoruko, named in a 1007 diary entry by Michinaga, is only a possibility.
• She kept adding scenes from court life to the novel while serving Shoshi.
• Her diary gives a rare personal account of feeling depressed and listless after being widowed.

Sources: World History Encyclopedia (Mark Cartwright): Tale of Genji; Wikipedia: Murasaki Shikibu; World History Encyclopedia (Mark Cartwright): Heian Period; Wikipedia: Fujiwara no Michinaga

The Byodo-in and the fear of the last age (temple founded 1052; Phoenix Hall completed 1053)

By Wikipedia's account the Byodo-in at Uji began in 998 as the country villa of a courtier, Minamoto no Shigenobu, and Fujiwara no Michinaga bought it from his widow; World History Encyclopedia has Michinaga building the villa himself. In 1052 Michinaga's son Yorimichi made it a Buddhist temple. That was the year many believed marked the start of mappo, the degenerate last age of Buddhism, and aristocrats and monks turned with new devotion to Pure Land teaching, which offered rebirth in Amida's paradise. The next year the Amida Hall, today called the Phoenix Hall, was completed, with its statue of Amida by the sculptor Jocho beside a garden pond. The hall is a National Treasure, and the temple is part of a World Heritage listing for Kyoto, Uji and Otsu.

• The temple is today jointly run by the Jodo-shu and Tendai-shu schools.
• Pure Land belief centred on Amida, the Buddha who could help followers on the hard path to enlightenment. Buddhism, Shinto and other beliefs were practised side by side, often by the same people.
• A similar ideal shaped the temples of the northern Fujiwara family at Hiraizumi in the following century, where Motsu-ji and Kanjizaio-in keep gardens in the 'Pure Land' style.

Sources: Wikipedia: Byodo-in; World History Encyclopedia (Mark Cartwright): Heian Period; Japan National Tourism Organization: Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto (Kyoto, Uji and Otsu Cities); Wikipedia: Hiraizumi; World History Encyclopedia (Mark Cartwright): Byodo-in

Taira no Kiyomori (1118 to 20 March 1181; de facto ruler from 1167)

Taira no Kiyomori, Daijo-daijin, Taira clan · Heian-kyo

Kiyomori led the Taira clan to power as the old court order weakened. Since 1087, when Emperor Shirakawa abdicated and ruled on from retirement, ex-emperors had competed with the Fujiwara for control, a system called insei or cloistered rule. Warrior families became tools in these feuds. In 1156 Kiyomori and Minamoto no Yoshitomo together put down the Hogen Rebellion, and in 1160 he defeated Yoshitomo in the Heiji Rebellion. In 1167 he became the first courtier of a warrior family appointed daijo-daijin, chief minister, and he dominated the government. In 1179 he staged a coup against his rivals, and in 1180 his two-year-old grandson became Emperor Antoku.

How they came to power: Born in Heian-kyo in 1118, the first son of Taira no Tadamori, he took over the clan in 1153 when his father died. Victory in 1156 and 1160 left him head of the strongest warrior clan in the capital.

How it ended: He died of fever on 20 March 1181, as the Gempei War spread. The Tale of the Heike says his fever was so high that anyone who came near was burned, a literary image and not a medical record.

• He arranged in 1171 for his daughter Tokuko to marry Emperor Takakura, and their son was the future Antoku.
• He lost the support of the retired emperor Go-Shirakawa, who is said to have plotted against him in 1177, and in 1180 he made a failed attempt to move the court to the Kobe area.
• Confucian-minded historians named him one of 'Japan's Three Great Villains', and that judgement owes much to later views of loyalty to the throne.

Sources: World History Encyclopedia: Genpei War; World History Encyclopedia (Mark Cartwright): Heian Period; Wikipedia: Taira no Kiyomori; Wikipedia: Emperor Shirakawa

The Gempei War (1180 to 1185)

The Gempei War pitted the Minamoto against the Taira, and it broke out in 1180 after Kiyomori put his infant grandson Antoku on the throne and Prince Mochihito called for resistance. Minamoto no Yoritomo took control of the east, and his cousin Kiso Yoshinaka beat a Taira army at Kurikara in 1183 and occupied Kyoto, driving the Taira out with Antoku. Yoritomo then turned on Yoshinaka, who died after defeats at Uji and Seta. Yoritomo's brother Yoshitsune defeated the Taira at Ichinotani in 1184 and pursued them by sea. At Dannoura in the Strait of Shimonoseki in 1185 the Taira were destroyed, and the commander Tomomori threw himself into the sea. Kiyomori's widow followed, carrying the six- or seven-year-old emperor.

• The Taira burned Onjoji, Todai-ji and Kofuku-ji for supporting their enemies, which outraged the court and the Fujiwara.
• The war overlapped with a great whirlwind in 1180, a two-year famine in the Yowa era and a great earthquake in the Genryaku era, in 1185 by Wikipedia's chronology though World History Encyclopedia says 1184. Kamo no Chomei described them in his Hojoki of 1212.
• Army numbers are doubtful: World History Encyclopedia reports 70,000 Taira against 200,000 under Yoritomo near Mount Fuji, and these figures should be read as rough at best. Yoritomo's government at Kamakura followed, and later literature and theatre retold the end at Dannoura.

Sources: World History Encyclopedia: Genpei War; Wikipedia: Genpei War; Wikipedia: Hojoki; Wikipedia: Genryaku; National Diet Library, Japan Search: Hojoki (An Account of My Hut)

Minamoto no Yoritomo (1147 to 1199; shogun 1192 to 1199)

Minamoto no Yoritomo; childhood name Onitakemaru, Minamoto clan, first Kamakura shogun · Kamakura

Yoritomo was the third son of the Minamoto leader Yoshitomo, who was killed after the failed Heiji rising of 1159 to 1160. From his base at Kamakura, a coastal town protected by hills and sea, he led the Minamoto against the Taira in the Gempei War of 1180 to 1185, which ended at the sea battle of Dannoura. He then built a military government, the bakufu, beside the imperial court rather than replacing it. Its key officers were stewards (jito) on estates and military governors (shugo) in the provinces, loyal vassals who kept order across Japan. Warrior rule in some form would last until 1868.

How they came to power: Spared at about 13, he was exiled to Izu in the care of Hojo Tokimasa and married Tokimasa's daughter Masako. He answered Prince Mochihito's call to arms in 1180, lost his first major battle at Ishibashiyama, then raised a new army and took control of the Kanto while his half-brothers Yoshitsune and Noriyori won the battles in the west. The court appointed him shogun in 1192.

How it ended: He died on 9 February 1199, aged 51, two days after being ordained as a Buddhist monk, according to Wikipedia. World History Encyclopedia attributes the death to a riding accident. His son Yoriie succeeded him, but real power soon passed to the Hojo family of his widow.

• The title shogun was not new: it had been a temporary rank for commanders campaigning against the Emishi in the north. Yoritomo turned it into a standing office, with the young Emperor Go-Toba granting it in return for military protection.
• A surviving order of 1187 shows him settling a dispute over a steward's post in Hizen province, judging the rival claims and confirming the winner, while leaving the estate proprietor's authority over the rice levy in place.
• Yoritomo's forebear Yoriyoshi built a Hachiman shrine at Yui in 1063, and Yoritomo moved it to its present site in Kamakura. The National Diet Library dates the move to 1180; World History Encyclopedia and Wikipedia say 1191. The Minamoto claimed the war god Hachiman as their patron.

Sources: Columbia University, Asia for Educators: Selected Documents of the Kamakura Bakufu (from J. P. Mass); World History Encyclopedia: Kamakura Period; World History Encyclopedia: Minamoto Clan; Wikipedia: Minamoto no Yoritomo; National Diet Library: Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Shrine

Hojo Masako (1157 to 1225)

Hojo Masako, the 'nun shogun' (her birth name is unknown; Masako was assigned later), Hojo clan, widow of Yoritomo · Kamakura

Masako was the eldest child of Hojo Tokimasa, a warrior of Izu, and married the exiled Yoritomo around 1177 against her father's wishes. She bore the second and third shoguns, Yoriie and Sanetomo, yet outlived both as murder and purges consumed the family. After Yoritomo's death in 1199 she became a Buddhist nun but did not retire from politics, and her contemporaries called her the 'nun shogun'. With her brother Yoshitoki she forced their father out of power in 1205. When Sanetomo was killed in 1219 they chose the infant Kujo Yoritsune as the next shogun, which left Masako effectively in charge until her death.

How they rose: Her marriage tied the Hojo to the Minamoto cause. As mother of the shogun and daughter and sister of the regents (shikken), she held a position no office could fully describe, and in 1218 the court gave her Junior Second Rank.

How they died: She died on 16 August 1225, aged about 68, of causes not given in the sources used here. The Hojo went on to hold the regency for the rest of the Kamakura period.

• When Retired Emperor Go-Toba rose against the Hojo in 1221, the shogunate's official chronicle, the Azuma Kagami, reports that Masako had a speech read to the vassals reminding them that they owed everything to Yoritomo. The chronicle was written by the regime she led, so it may flatter her role.
• Go-Toba's attempt failed and he was exiled to the distant Oki Islands, where he spent the remaining 18 years of his life writing poetry.
• She was not an isolated case of a woman holding authority under the bakufu: a shogunal order of 1215 confirms a widow as steward (jito) of three districts in Kozuke province, following her late husband's will.

Sources: Columbia University, Asia for Educators: Selected Documents of the Kamakura Bakufu (Document 24, a woman confirmed as jito); World History Encyclopedia: Kamakura Period; Wikipedia: Hojo Masako

The samurai: myth and evidence (c. 1185 to 1600, and retold ever since)

The word samurai comes from a verb meaning 'to serve', and the class grew from private armies protecting nobles' estates in the Heian period. In the early medieval centuries the prized skills were horsemanship and archery; the sword became the emblem of the samurai only from the 17th century. Warfare was as bloody as anywhere else, and money was often a prime motive for fighting, even though many examples of real loyalty survive. Bushido was not one fixed code: the values grouped under that name changed considerably over the centuries. The image of a unified bushido was largely built after the fighting ended, and spread abroad through Nitobe Inazo's Bushido: The Soul of Japan of 1899.

• The term bushido is rare in pre-modern writing. One of its first clear appearances is the Koyo Gunkan of 1616, a military chronicle of the Takeda clan.
• Hagakure, now treated as a founding text of bushido, was dictated between 1709 and 1716 by a retired retainer in a time of peace. It circulated little beyond Saga domain until young nationalists took it up in the 1930s.
• According to World History Encyclopedia, samurai made up only about 5 to 6 percent of a population of some 18 million around 1600, though the same publisher's Edo Period article gives 15 million for 1600 and about 7 percent warriors. From 1591 they could no longer be both farmers and warriors.

Sources: Columbia University, Asia for Educators: Excerpts from Hagakure; World History Encyclopedia: Samurai; Wikipedia: Bushido

Zen takes root: Eisai and Dogen (1191 to 1253)

Zen reached Japan as a distinct school through monks who went to China looking for something the established Tendai school did not give them. Eisai (1141 to 1215) returned in 1191 with certification in the Linji line, known in Japan as Rinzai, and founded Shofuku-ji in Kyushu. Opposed in Kyoto, he moved to Kamakura in 1199, where Hojo Masako allowed him to build Jufuku-ji. Dogen (1200 to 1253) studied in China from 1223, came home in 1227 or 1228 to teach sitting meditation, and after moving to Echizen in 1243 founded Eihei-ji in what is now Fukui prefecture, one of the two head temples of the Soto school. The regent Hojo Tokiyori built Kencho-ji in Kamakura in 1253, and Zen austerity found a following among the samurai.

• Eisai never gave up his status as a Tendai monk and kept practising Tendai esoteric rites until he died. A distinctly Japanese Zen, free of other schools' teachings, was left to later teachers.
• Eisai is credited with bringing green tea seeds back from China and wrote a book on drinking tea for health, the Kissa Yojoki. The Azuma Kagami records him treating the shogun Sanetomo's hangover with a bowl of tea.
• The two schools differ in method: Rinzai training is associated with koan study aimed at moments of breakthrough, while Soto, following Dogen, treats seated practice and realization as one and the same.

Sources: Columbia University, Asia for Educators: Excerpts from Dogen's How to Practice Buddhism (Bendowa); Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Japanese Zen Buddhist Philosophy; World History Encyclopedia: Kamakura Period; Wikipedia: Eisai; Wikipedia: Dogen

Nichiren (1222 to 1282)

Nichiren (dharma name from 1253; earlier Rencho); posthumously Nichiren Dai-Bosatsu, Buddhist reformer · Kamakura, Izu, Sado and Minobu

Nichiren taught that the Lotus Sutra alone held the highest truth of Buddhism and that chanting its title, Namu Myoho Renge Kyo, was the effective path to Buddhahood in this life for anyone, whatever their class or learning. He gave his first public sermon at Seicho-ji (Kiyosumi-dera), where he had first studied, on the 28th day of the fourth month of 1253, a date tradition treats as the founding of his sect. Jacqueline Stone notes that the content of that lecture is not known and that he had no intention of founding a new sect. In 1260 he submitted a treatise to Hojo Tokiyori, the shogunate's de facto leader, the Rissho Ankoku Ron, arguing that the country's disasters came from false teachings, especially Honen's Pure Land movement. Most of what is known of his life comes from his own writings, counted in one collection as 523 complete works and 248 fragments. His followers grew into one of Japan's largest Buddhist traditions, with more than forty registered organizations today.

How they rose: He studied the main Buddhist schools of his day between 1233 and 1253 and came to believe in the Lotus Sutra's supremacy. He arrived in Kamakura in 1254 and sought official attention by attacking rival schools.

How they died: He fell ill in 1282 and died late that year at a disciple's home at Ikegami in Musashi province, aged 60; Wikipedia gives the date as 13 October, which appears to be the traditional-calendar day. Emperor Go-Kogon granted him the title Nichiren Dai-Bosatsu in 1358.

• His treatise drew no official reply but a backlash from other schools' clergy; he was exiled to Izu for two years and then to Sado Island from 1271 until his pardon in 1274.
• Tradition says that a bright object in the sky stopped his execution at Tatsunokuchi in 1271. Stone says its historicity is open to question and that some scholars think the passages describing it are later additions, so it should be read as legend.
• Scholars remain divided over him: critics have called him intolerant and nationalistic, while others present him as a social reformer. Since the Second World War, scholarly biographers have worked to separate him from sectarian hagiography and from the nationalist images of the imperial period, according to Jacqueline Stone.

Sources: Columbia University, Asia for Educators: Excerpts from Nichiren's Rissho Ankoku Ron (from Sources of Japanese Tradition); Jacqueline I. Stone, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies (1999): Biographical Studies of Nichiren; Wikipedia: Nichiren

The Mongol invasions and the 'divine wind' (1274 and 1281)

After letters demanding tribute went unanswered from 1268, Kublai Khan sent a fleet of some 800 to 900 ships from Korea in November 1274, which plundered Tsushima and Iki and landed at Hakata Bay. It withdrew within days. In 1281 a far larger force returned, but samurai fought it from behind a stone wall built around Hakata Bay after the first attack and raided it from small boats. In mid-August 1281 a typhoon wrecked much of the fleet off Takashima, killing perhaps half to two-thirds of the force according to World History Encyclopedia. Prayers had been ordered at shrines and temples, and the storms became known as kamikaze, the 'divine wind', though the historian Thomas Conlan argues that the defenders and the invaders' own lack of coordination mattered more than the storms.

• Figures vary widely. World History Encyclopedia gives 16,600 to 40,000 men in 1274 and 4,400 ships and about 100,000 men in 1281, the ship count coming from Chinese records; Wikipedia gives 28,000 to 30,000 and 140,000. The historian Thomas Conlan estimates only about 3,000 on each side at the 1274 battle, while Japanese historians estimate 6,000 defenders. Conlan and the archaeologist Kenzo Hayashida think the 1281 fleet's size was exaggerated.
• The 1274 storm is the less certain of the two: a courtier's diary mentions a reverse wind and the History of Yuan a great storm, but it is unclear whether it struck at Hakata Bay or at sea on the way home. The withdrawal may also reflect supply problems or a reconnaissance purpose.
• Excavations at Takashima since the 1980s have produced a commander's bronze seal, a helmet, ceramic bombs and a huge wooden anchor made from Fujian materials. Roughly finished anchors and crudely made jars suggest the fleet was assembled in a hurry, and in the 1920s the Hakata wall was dug up partly to serve a nationalist story of miraculous rescue.

Sources: Archaeology magazine (Archaeological Institute of America): Relics of the Kamikaze; Archaeology magazine: Second 'Kamikaze' Shipwreck Discovered; World History Encyclopedia: The Mongol Invasions of Japan, 1274 and 1281; Wikipedia: Mongol invasions of Japan

Ashikaga Takauji (1305 to 1358; shogun 1338 to 1358)

Ashikaga Takauji; also Minamoto no Takauji, Ashikaga clan, first Muromachi shogun · Kyoto

Takauji was a Kamakura general sent to Kyoto in 1333 against Emperor Go-Daigo's rebellion, but he changed sides and seized the city, while Nitta Yoshisada took Kamakura and the Hojo regime fell. Go-Daigo's Kenmu Restoration of 1333 to 1336 tried to bring back rule by the court, and many samurai grew disillusioned with it. Takauji broke with the emperor, was driven from Kyoto to Kyushu in 1336, regrouped and defeated the imperial loyalists at Minatogawa near Kobe that summer. He installed Emperor Komyo, while Go-Daigo set up a rival court at Yoshino. The split between Northern and Southern Courts lasted until 1392, and the Ashikaga shogunate survived until 1573.

How they came to power: He served the Hojo regime as a general, then made himself the champion of samurai unhappy with Go-Daigo's government, assigning lands to his followers without court permission. Columbia's introduction to the Kemmu Code dates his becoming shogun to 1336; most accounts give 1338.

How it ended: He died in Kyoto on 7 June 1358, aged 52, of causes not given in the sources used here. His last years were marked by a war with his own brother Tadayoshi from 1350 to 1352, ending in Tadayoshi's death by poison, which World History Encyclopedia says was most likely arranged by Takauji.

• The Kemmu Code of 1336, drafted for the new regime, was a foundational legal document for the Muromachi shogunate and came with the decision to move the shogun's capital from Kamakura to Kyoto.
• The Zen master Muso Soseki, who enjoyed his favour, praised him for calm in battle, mercy and generosity. That is the verdict of a friend, and the same man fought both his emperor and his brother.
• An anonymous sign painted in Kyoto in the 1330s mocked the age as one of night raids, forged documents and severed heads, according to the account given by World History Encyclopedia.

Sources: Columbia University, Asia for Educators: Excerpts from the Kemmu Shikimoku, 1336; World History Encyclopedia: Muromachi Period; Wikipedia: Ashikaga Takauji

The real ninja: shinobi, not superheroes (c. 1336 to 1868; most active in the Warring States period, 1467 to 1568)

The word 'ninja' became the usual term only in the mid-20th century, according to Yamada Yuji of Mie University; the commonest historical word was shinobi, 'the secretive ones'. Because their work was secret, written records are relatively few. Shinobi gathered intelligence on terrain, supplies and castle layouts, and carried out sabotage and arson. The best-known communities were Iga and Koka, neighbours only 20 to 30 kilometres apart near Kyoto, whose autonomous peasant-warriors formed leagues to defend themselves and hired out their services. Far from being deadly rivals as fiction has it, the two were linked by marriage and fought together when Oda Nobukatsu attacked Iga in 1579.

• No medieval text describes a ninja's outfit in detail. The all-black costume comes from Japanese art of the early 19th century and may borrow a stage convention in which a character dressed in black is understood to be invisible.
• The surviving ninjutsu manuals date from the peaceful Edo period, the most famous being the Bansenshukai compiled by Fujibayashi in 1676, so they describe the arts after their wartime heyday.
• Yamada says people in Iga and Koka farmed in the mornings and trained in the afternoons. Tradition has Iga and Koka men escorting Tokugawa Ieyasu over the mountains to safety in 1582, after which he used them as guards at Edo Castle.

Sources: Nippon.com: Espionage and Sabotage: The Truth About the Ninja (Yamada Yuji, Mie University); Nippon.com: Beyond Fiction: The Real Ninja; World History Encyclopedia: Ninja; Wikipedia: Ninja

Zeami (c. 1363 to c. 1443)

Zeami Motokiyo; also Kanze Motokiyo; childhood name Oniyasha, Noh actor and playwright · Kyoto and Sado

Zeami was born near Nara, the son of Kanami, who led a theatre troupe in the Kyoto region. The teenage shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu saw the troupe perform at Imakumano in 1374 and became its patron, an unusual honour for actors. Zeami took over the company when his father died in 1384 and wrote between 30 and 50 plays, along with treatises such as the Fushikaden, the first Japanese works on the practical aesthetics of performance. Noh grew from older temple rites and popular entertainments, and uses slow stylized movement, masks and a bare square stage. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy credits his artistry with bringing Noh to its highest flourishing, and his treatises make yugen, or grace, its highest principle.

How they rose: He made his name as a child performer in front of Yoshimitsu, receiving patronage from 1374, and competed with rival actors such as Inuo for the shogun's favour.

How they died: Later shoguns were cooler: Yoshimochi preferred other performers, and Yoshinori, shogun from 1429, turned hostile. Zeami was exiled to Sado Island in 1434. His end is uncertain. Some accounts have him pardoned and back on the mainland after Yoshinori's murder in 1441, while the-noh.com says no one knows when or where he died and suggests Sado. The year 1443 comes from Kanze family tradition.

• His last recorded work, finished about two years into the exile, gives a first-person account of it in a stoic tone.
• In the medieval period women were not permitted to perform Noh, so men played all roles, both male and female.
• Nogaku was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List in 2008. Scholars still debate how far his plays' Zen themes reflect his personal beliefs.

Sources: World History Encyclopedia: Noh Theatre; Wikipedia: Zeami Motokiyo; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Japanese Aesthetics; The Noh.com: Zeami; Wikipedia: Noh

Sesshu (c. 1420 to c. 1506)

Sesshu Toyo, Zen monk and ink painter · Kyoto, Ming China and western Japan

Sesshu was born in Bitchu province into a samurai family named Oda and entered the Kyoto temple of Shokoku-ji at about 12 or 13. The temple was closely tied to the ruling Ashikaga, and there he studied painting under the monk Tensho Shubun. By then he had left Kyoto for the service of the western daimyo Ouchi Masahiro, whose wealth came partly from trade with China. In 1467, the year the Onin War broke out, he joined an Ouchi trade and diplomatic mission to Ming China, returning in 1469, and he visited monasteries and studied Chinese painting. Merging what he saw with Japanese ink traditions, he produced works now designated National Treasures, including the Winter Landscape of about the 1470s and the Splashed Ink Landscape of 1495.

How they rose: He rose through Zen monastic training rather than a court workshop, and his standing grew once he returned from China. Nippon.com says his rough style had found little favour among Kyoto intellectuals, and that he was the only Japanese painter of his time to be recognized in China.

How they died: He died around 1506, aged about 86; Wikipedia gives 26 August of that year. The sources used here do not state the cause.

• The 1495 Splashed Ink Landscape, a hanging scroll in the Tokyo National Museum, is painted in the haboku or 'splashed-ink' technique.
• His influence was so wide that many later schools of painting named him as their founder, and six of his works are National Treasures, the most for any single artist.
• Scholars are also looking past his famous masterpieces: the art historian Masatomo Kawai has lectured at Columbia on the smaller-scale paintings Sesshu may have made in everyday life.

Sources: Columbia University, Mary Griggs Burke Center for Japanese Art: Beyond National Treasures: What Sesshu Toyo Painted in Daily Life; Wikipedia: Sesshu Toyo; Nippon.com: Sesshu, ink painter; Encyclopedia of World Biography (Encyclopedia.com): Toya Sesshu

The Ryukyu Kingdom (1429 to 1609, as a kingdom independent of Japan and a tributary of China)

The Ryukyu islands were not part of Japan in this age. Their people saw themselves as distinct and spoke a related but different language. Three rival kingdoms on Okinawa Island, the Sanzan, dated from 1314 by Wikipedia and 1322 by World History Encyclopedia, were united under Sho Hashi in 1429 into a kingdom that sat within China's tribute system while exchanging missions with China, Korea and Japan. Its ships carried goods such as copper, swords, silk, spices and ceramics between ports. A bronze bell cast for King Sho Taikyu in 1458 and inscribed by a Japanese Zen monk praises the kingdom as a bridge between nations. The royal castle at Shuri, built in the mid or late 14th century on a hill 120 metres above sea level, mixes Chinese and Japanese architectural elements with local limestone and coral.

• Shuri, four other castle sites and sacred places were registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Gusuku Sites, in 2000. Seifa Utaki, among them, is regarded as the place of creation in Ryukyu mythology.
• Ryukyu's independence ended in stages: the Shimazu clan of Satsuma invaded in 1609 with Tokugawa approval, and Japan formally annexed the islands as Okinawa Prefecture in 1879. Under Satsuma it kept nominal independence.
• The islanders have genetic and cultural links to the ancient Jomon and the Ainu, according to World History Encyclopedia.

Sources: World History Encyclopedia: The Ryukyu Castles of Okinawa; Wikipedia: Ryukyu Kingdom; Mark McNally, University of Hawaii Center for Japanese Studies: seminar abstract on the Bankoku Shinryo no Kane of 1458; Nippon.com: Shuri Castle: At the Heart of the Former Ryukyu Kingdom; Wikipedia: Bridge of Nations Bell

The Onin War (1467 to 1477 by the standard account; c. 1465 to 1478 by Thomas Conlan's reckoning)

Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa named his brother Yoshimi as heir in 1464, then had a son, Yoshihisa, in 1465, producing a succession crisis on top of rivalries among the great lords. Eastern and Western armies led by Hosokawa Katsumoto and Yamana Sozen fought in the capital from 1467, and most of Kyoto was destroyed. Both commanders died in 1473, yet the fighting dragged on until the survivors left for their home provinces. Power flowed to regional lords, the daimyo, in what became known as gekokujo, 'those below overthrowing those above'. The Warring States period that followed lasted about a century.

• The Chronicle of Onin, the basis of the usual story, was written about a generation after the war and blames the 'feckless' Yoshimasa and his 'greedy' wife Hino Tomiko. It is not an eyewitness account, and those judgements should be read with care.
• Thomas Conlan of Princeton has mapped verifiable encounters from military documents. He finds fighting began in the west in 1465, ran through 1478, and was concentrated in western Japan and around the ports of Hyogo and Sakai rather than Kyoto alone.
• Yoshimasa kept building his retreat through the aftermath. Plans for the Ginkakuji date from 1460; World History Encyclopedia says it was finished in 1483, while Wikipedia says work on its main hall began only in 1482 and gives completion as 1490. It became a Zen temple after his death that year.

Sources: Princeton University (Thomas Conlan): The Onin War; World History Encyclopedia: Sengoku Period; World History Encyclopedia: Ginkakuji; Wikipedia: Onin War; Wikipedia: Ginkaku-ji

Sen no Rikyu (1522 to 1591)

Sen no Rikyu; childhood name Yoshiro; Buddhist name Soeki, Tea master · Sakai and Kyoto

Rikyu was born in the port of Sakai, the son of a warehouse owner, and at 19 began studying tea under Takeno Joo. He served Oda Nobunaga as tea master from the 1570s and then Toyotomi Hideyoshi. He shrank the tea room to as little as one and a half tatami mats and preferred simple, rustic, locally made objects to the costly Chinese pieces then in fashion. Though he did not invent the aesthetic of wabi, he did more than most to develop it within tea. His restraint stood in sharp contrast to the gilded tea room in Hideyoshi's Fushimi Castle, described by World History Encyclopedia.

How they rose: Wealth and Sakai's merchant culture opened the door, and study of Zen and tea made his name. Tea masters of his day often acted as advisers, diplomats and negotiators for rulers, and Rikyu was one of them.

How they died: He died in Kyoto on 21 April 1591 under Hideyoshi's sentence, by tradition by seppuku at his residence in the Jurakudai palace. Nippon.com says no document of the time confirms the seppuku, which Edo-period reverence for it made into accepted fact. The reason for his fall may never be known for certain.

• Raku tea bowls began with his collaboration with a tile-maker named Raku Chojiro.
• Tea had its political uses: warlords used gatherings as discreet settings for sensitive conversation, which helps explain how a merchant's son could gain such access.
• The year before his death, his disciple Yamanoue Soji was executed on Hideyoshi's orders after the siege of Odawara. A key record of his teachings, the Southern Record, is credited to a disciple whose very existence some scholars doubt.

Sources: World History Encyclopedia: Japanese Tea Ceremony; Wikipedia: Sen no Rikyu; Nippon.com (Tanaka Sendo): Sen no Rikyu: Appreciation of Nature Fused with Aesthetic Sense; World History Encyclopedia: Toyotomi Hideyoshi

Oda Nobunaga (1534 to 1582; dominant from 1568)

Oda Nobunaga, Oda clan, warlord · Owari, Kyoto and Azuchi

Nobunaga was the son of a minor lord in Owari who inherited Nagoya Castle and overcame rival houses in the 1550s. His surprise attack at Okehazama in 1560 killed the far stronger Imagawa Yoshimoto. He took Kyoto in 1568, installed Ashikaga Yoshiaki as a puppet shogun and exiled him in 1573, ending the Ashikaga line. He adopted matchlock guns early, set up his headquarters at Azuchi Castle on Lake Biwa in 1579, abolished road tolls that fed rival lords, and began confiscating peasants' weapons in 1576. He also destroyed Buddhist institutions that sided with his enemies, including Enryaku-ji on Mount Hiei in 1571.

How they came to power: He rose by battle and diplomacy from his father's small base, and his reputation for ruthlessness dates from ordering the murder of his own brother in 1557. His personal seal read Tenka Fubu, roughly 'a unified realm under military rule'.

How it ended: On 21 June 1582 his vassal Akechi Mitsuhide attacked him at the Honno-ji temple in Kyoto for reasons that remain unknown. Trapped there, Nobunaga is said to have killed himself. Toyotomi Hideyoshi soon defeated Mitsuhide at Yamazaki.

• The death toll on Mount Hiei is disputed. World History Encyclopedia gives 25,000, but the contemporary estimates are far lower: Luis Frois wrote of about 1,500, and the courtier Yamashina Tokitsugu of 3,000 to 4,000. The archaeologist Yasuaki Kaneyasu finds only two buildings clearly burned in 1571, though the excavations did not cover the whole mountain.
• His two main Japanese biographies, which World History Encyclopedia dates to 1598 and 1622, glorify him and insert legends. The Jesuit Luis Frois offers an outside view, but the historian Dan Sherer argues that the image of Nobunaga as broadly anti-Buddhist comes from over-reliance on Frois, and that his dealings with most religious institutions were largely cordial.
• He favoured Christian missionaries, seeing advantage in European trade and technology, and allowed Valignano to found a Christian school at Azuchi.

Sources: World History Encyclopedia: Oda Nobunaga; World History Encyclopedia: Christianity in Japan; Wikipedia: Siege of Mount Hiei; Dan Sherer, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 52 (2025): Prayer for the Devil: Religion and the Regime of Oda Nobunaga

Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537 (some sources 1536) to 1598; supreme from 1582)

Toyotomi Hideyoshi; born Kinoshita Hiyoshimaru; titled Taiko, Toyotomi, unifier of Japan · Osaka and Kyoto

Hideyoshi was born into a peasant family, joined Oda Nobunaga's army and rose to be his leading general. After Nobunaga's death in 1582 he destroyed the killer, Akechi Mitsuhide, and outmanoeuvred the Oda heirs. Commanding some 200,000 men, he brought in western Japan, Shikoku and Kyushu from 1585, and in 1590 he took Odawara after a 100-day siege, removing the last obstacle. His 1588 sword hunt disarmed farmers, and his 1591 ruling kept warriors, farmers, artisans and merchants in separate classes, though practice was less rigid than the theory. His land surveys of 1582 to 1598 measured rice output to set taxes, and these reforms shaped Japan into the 19th century.

How they came to power: Lacking high birth, he courted legitimacy through the emperor. He paid for court ceremonies, rebuilt the palace, took the Fujiwara name and then Toyotomi, and called himself Taiko, 'retired regent'.

How it ended: He died of natural causes on 18 September 1598, leaving a five-year-old son, Hideyori. He had earlier cast aside his nephew and heir Hidetsugu, and forced him to kill himself.

• The 1588 sword-hunt order said the collected weapons were to make nails for a Great Buddha. A commentary printed with it says this was only the ostensible purpose, and that the real aim was to prevent peasant uprisings.
• He issued an edict expelling Christian missionaries in 1587 but enforced it half-heartedly. In 1597 he had 26 Christians crucified at Nagasaki.
• He built the first version of Himeji Castle in 1581, as well as Osaka Castle and Fushimi. He also surrounded Kyoto with an earth and bamboo rampart about 22.5 kilometres long.

Sources: Columbia University, Asia for Educators: Edicts of Toyotomi Hideyoshi: Collection of Swords, 1588; World History Encyclopedia: Toyotomi Hideyoshi; Wikipedia: Toyotomi Hideyoshi

Guns and Jesuits: the Portuguese arrive (1543 to c. 1600)

In 1543 three Portuguese merchants aboard a Chinese junk were wrecked on Tanegashima, and the firearms they carried spread quickly through a country at war. The Japanese called such foreigners nanbanjin, 'southern barbarians'. Francis Xavier landed at Kagoshima in 1549 with Jesuit companions and three Japanese converts, among them Anjiro, who had fled a murder charge. Early preaching won few converts, so Xavier turned to lords and the wealthy, dressing in fine robes as Buddhist clergy did. By the end of the 16th century Japan had the largest number of Christians anywhere outside Europe, according to World History Encyclopedia.

• Before leaving for Japan, Xavier wrote in a letter to Ignatius of Loyola in 1549 that the islanders were "very eager to learn what they do not know" (Coleridge's edition, 1890).
• Nobunaga's victory at Nagashino in 1575 is often credited to 3,000 guns firing in three rotating ranks. Researchers, starting with the amateur historian Fujimoto Masayuki in 1980, have argued that the three-rank tactic is a later invention. The original Shincho Koki says 1,000 guns, and some manuscripts were rewritten to say 3,000.
• Alessandro Valignano later brought the first printing press to reach Japan, and local artisans cut Japanese printing blocks for it. It produced catechisms and Bibles and also mathematics and history texts.

Sources: Fordham University, Modern History Sourcebook: St. Francis Xavier, Letter on the Missions, 1549; World History Encyclopedia: Christianity in Japan; World History Encyclopedia: Medieval Japan; Wikipedia: Battle of Nagashino

The invasions of Korea (1592 to 1598)

In spring 1592 Hideyoshi sent about 158,000 warriors and 9,200 mariners across the strait, with another 100,000 in reserve in Kyushu. Busan fell at once, Seoul was taken on 12 June and Pyongyang on 23 July. Then Admiral Yi Sun-sin's navy, with its few covered 'turtle ships', harried Japanese supply by sea, while local 'righteous armies' harassed the invaders and a Ming army came to Korea's aid. Talks failed and a second, more limited invasion began in 1597, stalling along a line of coastal forts. Japanese forces withdrew after Hideyoshi's death in 1598.

• Casualty figures vary widely: World History Encyclopedia says at least 125,000 Koreans died, while the figure given on Wikipedia's page is more than 1,000,000 Korean civilian and military deaths. Such totals are estimates, and the gap shows how uncertain they are.
• World History Encyclopedia says 60,000 to 70,000 Koreans were taken to Japan as prisoners, and that Korean farming took two centuries to recover. Diplomatic and trade relations resumed from 1607.
• Japanese merchants profited: Shimai Soshitsu of Hakata, a trader in sake and moneylender, supplied provisions to Hideyoshi's armies, and the testament he left for his heirs survives.

Sources: Columbia University, Asia for Educators: Codes of Merchant Houses: The Testament of Shimai Soshitsu; World History Encyclopedia: The Japanese Invasion of Korea, 1592-8; Wikipedia: Imjin War

The Battle of Sekigahara (21 October 1600)

Hideyoshi's heir Hideyori was five when his father died, and a Council of Five Elders was meant to govern for him. Tokugawa Ieyasu, the strongest of them, gradually moved to take power. Daimyo split into an Eastern Army under Ieyasu and a Western Army organized by Ishida Mitsunari in Hideyori's name, with Mori Terumoto as nominal commander. They met at Sekigahara on 21 October 1600, and defections on the Western side, above all that of Kobayakawa Hideaki, decided it. Mitsunari was captured and executed on 6 November, and Ieyasu redistributed land to reward allies and weaken enemies. In 1603 he became shogun.

• The familiar drama of Hideaki wavering until Ieyasu's guns fired on him is under question. Modern Japanese researchers including Shiramine Jun argue, from letters and troop positions, that he had changed sides by the start of the battle.
• The 1893 Army General Staff map of the battle lines, long reproduced in histories, has been judged unreliable by Shiramine.
• Spanish accounts say 19 cannon from the Dutch ship De Liefde served the Tokugawa side. That ship had reached Bungo only that April, the first Dutch vessel to arrive in Japan, and it brought the Englishman William Adams with it. The cannon claim rests on these accounts.

Sources: National Diet Library: Japan-Netherlands Exchange in the Edo Period, Beginning of Exchange; World History Encyclopedia: Tokugawa Ieyasu; Wikipedia: Battle of Sekigahara

Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543 to 1616; shogun 1603 to 1605)

Tokugawa Ieyasu; born Matsudaira Takechiyo, Tokugawa shogunate, first shogun · Edo and Sunpu

Ieyasu was born at Okazaki Castle into the Matsudaira, a warrior family, and spent part of his childhood as a hostage in other clans' hands. He rose as Oda Nobunaga's ally and then served Hideyoshi, who moved him in 1590 to the Kanto, where he made Edo his base. After Sekigahara in 1600 he confiscated enemies' lands and moved other lords away from their home regions. In 1603 he had the emperor appoint him shogun. The Tokugawa held about 30 percent of the land directly, while other daimyo families governed the rest in return for accepting Tokugawa authority.

How they came to power: He won by patience, alliance and timing. As the strongest of the Five Elders after Hideyoshi's death he gathered eastern lords around him and won at Sekigahara. He gave up the title of shogun in 1605 so that it would pass to his son Hidetada, establishing it as hereditary, and went on governing from Sunpu.

How it ended: In 1614 he found an excuse to attack Hideyori at Osaka. In the second campaign, in 1615, Hideyori was killed and the castle destroyed. Ieyasu died at Sunpu on 1 June 1616, aged 73 by modern reckoning (World History Encyclopedia says 75), and his spirit was enshrined at a mausoleum at Nikko.

• The Laws of Military Households of 1615, issued a year before his death, set basic rules for lords and warriors. They became one of the most important Tokugawa legal documents.
• A document written by an unidentified retainer records Ieyasu's view of the four hereditary status groups, samurai, peasants, artisans and merchants. It is a second-hand record of what he thought, not his own words.
• He granted a trading pass to the Dutch in 1609 as a counterweight to the Portuguese, and the castaway ship De Liefde of 1600 gave him early contact with William Adams and the Dutch.

Sources: Columbia University, Asia for Educators: Laws of Military Households (Buke Shohatto), 1615; Columbia University, Asia for Educators: Tokugawa Ieyasu on Military Government and the Social Order; National Diet Library: Japan-Netherlands Exchange in the Edo Period, Beginning of Exchange; World History Encyclopedia: Tokugawa Ieyasu; Wikipedia: Tokugawa Ieyasu

Izumo no Okuni (c. 1578 (one source says 1571) to c. 1613 (death year disputed))

Izumo no Okuni, Dancer, founder of kabuki · Izumo and Kyoto

Few firm details of Okuni's life survive. She is said to have grown up near the Izumo shrine, the daughter of a blacksmith, and to have served there as a shrine maiden (miko). Around 1603 she was dancing on the dry bed of the Kamo river in Kyoto and at Kitano Shrine, with a troupe she trained herself, many of its members outcasts. One of her popular pieces brought back the spirit of a real samurai, Nagoya Sansaburo, who had died in 1603. Onlookers called this new style kabuki. The traditional date for its beginning is 1603, and the evidence for Okuni herself is thin enough that even her origins are uncertain.

How they rose: She reportedly came to Kyoto soliciting contributions for her shrine, as was customary, and won fame with an adaptation of the nembutsu dance. She went on to perform for ladies of the imperial court.

How they died: She retired and disappeared around 1610. Her death is disputed, with 1610, 1613 and 1640 proposed on Wikipedia and 1658 by EBSCO.

• In 1629 the shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu banned women from the kabuki stage, citing morals and fights among men over the actresses. Young men replaced them and were banned in turn.
• Kabuki's all-male tradition has lasted to the present. Specialists in women's roles are called onnagata.
• By the later 17th century kabuki was one of the new urban arts alongside bunraku puppet theatre, and the leading playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon wrote in this world.

Sources: World History Encyclopedia: Edo Period; Wikipedia: Izumo no Okuni; EBSCO Research Starters: First Kabuki Dance Dramas; Wikipedia: Kabuki

Miyamoto Musashi (1582 or 1584 (sources differ) to 1645)

Miyamoto Musashi; also known as Niten, Swordsman, writer and ink painter · Harima, Kumamoto

Musashi called himself a samurai of Harima province, and his adopted son Iori says he was born near Himeji Castle, though another tradition places his birth in Mimasaka. He learned swordsmanship from his adoptive father Munisai. According to his own Book of Five Rings, he won his first duel at 13 and more than 60 fights in all without a loss. After years as a travelling swordsman he lived as a guest of various lords, and in his last years he was at Kumamoto with the Hosokawa family. The real evidence is thin but real: his writings, two letters to lords, a dozen or so ink paintings and some swords and guards that he made himself.

How they rose: He made his name in duels at Kyoto from about age 21. By 24 he had written the 28 articles of the Heidokyo and founded the Enmei-ryu school of swordsmanship under the name Tenkaichi, 'Greatest in the Realm'.

How they died: He died on 13 June 1645 in Higo province, the Kumamoto region, after years given over to Zen and ink painting, having finished the Book of Five Rings in his last years. The sources used here do not give a cause of death.

• Budo World says he fought at Sekigahara in 1600 on the losing side under Ukita Hideie, but his own book does not mention it.
• His duel with Sasaki Kojiro at Ganryu-jima, dated 1612 or 1610, is the most famous episode of his life. The tale that he arrived late to enrage his opponent is called a fabrication by Nippon.com, and the Budo World article calls the common version a fiction that became history.
• Today's image comes largely from Yoshikawa Eiji's novel of the early Showa period, itself drawing on a biography (the Nitenki, 1776) written around 130 years after Musashi's death.

Sources: Nippon.com: Master Swordsman Miyamoto Musashi: The Man Behind The Book of Five Rings; University of Tsukuba, Budo World: Miyamoto Musashi; Wikipedia: Miyamoto Musashi

Farmers, famine and the great cities (1603 to 1868)

Japan's population roughly doubled from 15 million to 30 million between 1600 and 1720, as peace let farmers work without armies crossing their fields. Society was officially ranked in hereditary groups: warriors at about 7 percent of the people, then farmers, artisans and merchants. In practice merchants, ranked last, grew rich as trade expanded. Warriors moved to castle towns and turned from fighters into administrators. Edo became the political centre, Osaka the merchant capital and Kyoto the home of the court and aristocratic culture.

• Famine remained a real threat. The worst was the Tenmei famine of the 1780s, when frost, heavy rain and a volcanic eruption destroyed crops. EBSCO's reference account dates the crisis to 1786 and 1787 and gives up to 130,000 deaths, while Wikipedia dates it 1782 to 1788 and reports a national population fall of more than 920,000 between 1780 and 1786.
• The same account says shogunate officials gave little help and made matters worse through corruption, and that riots and uprisings forced officials out, bringing both greater repression and reform.
• Merchant houses wrote their own codes, echoing warrior house codes. The Okaya house of Nagoya issued one in 1836, showing how commerce thrived in spite of merchants' low official rank.

Sources: Columbia University, Asia for Educators: Codes of Merchant Houses: The Code of the Okaya House (1836); EBSCO Research Starters: Tenmei Famine; World History Encyclopedia: Edo Period; Wikipedia: Great Tenmei famine

Tokugawa Iemitsu (1604 to 1651; shogun 1623 to 1651)

Tokugawa Iemitsu, Tokugawa shogunate, third shogun · Edo

Iemitsu was the grandson of Ieyasu and the first of his line with no experience of war. Under the system of alternate attendance (sankin kotai), daimyo divided their time between Edo and their domains, while wives and heirs stayed permanently in Edo as, more or less, hostages. It was formalized for outer lords in 1635 and for hereditary vassals in 1642, within an expanded version of the Laws of Military Houses. The cost could reach up to 40 percent of a lord's income. Lords built mansions in the hills around the castle, supplying them drew in merchants and artisans, and by the end of the century Edo held around a million people and was the largest city in the world.

How they came to power: His father Hidetada abdicated in his favour in 1623 but kept great influence until his death in 1632, so it is unclear which early policies were whose. Iemitsu then secured power by accusing his younger brother Tadanaga of insanity and forcing him to kill himself.

How it ended: He died in 1651. The sources used here do not state the cause. The system he formalized lasted until the end of the Edo period.

• The endless travel required the five great highways, the gokaido, which were developed in the early 17th century to move lords and their retinues.
• Lords who needed cash squeezed farmers or developed new land, irrigation and cash crops such as cotton, silk and paper. This helped create a national commercial economy.
• It was after crushing the Kyushu rebellion of the late 1630s that he restricted foreign contact most sharply, leaving the Dutch at Dejima as the only Europeans allowed.

Sources: World History Encyclopedia: Tokugawa Iemitsu; World History Encyclopedia: Edo Period; Wikipedia: Sankin-kotai; Columbia University, Asia for Educators: The Edict of 1635 Ordering the Closing of Japan

Sakoku: the 'closed country' (1635 to 1853)

An edict of 1635 to the officials at Nagasaki forbade Japanese ships from leaving for foreign countries and ordered death for any Japanese who tried to go abroad or came back after living overseas. By 1639 the Portuguese were expelled and the Dutch alone among Europeans could come. They were kept on Dejima, a tiny fan-shaped artificial island in Nagasaki harbour. Yet Japan was never sealed. Chinese merchants traded at Nagasaki, Tsushima dealt with Korea, Matsumae with the Ainu, and Satsuma with Ryukyu, which it had invaded in 1609. The fear behind the policy was partly strategic and partly about Christianity's challenge to loyalty.

• The word sakoku itself was not the Tokugawa government's. Shizuki Tadao coined it in 1801 while translating the German traveller Engelbert Kaempfer, who had come to Japan in 1690 as a physician for the Dutch.
• The Dutch relationship began by accident, with De Liefde running aground in Bungo in 1600. The Dutch opened a trading post at Hirado in 1609 before being moved to Dejima.
• Dejima still gave a small number of Japanese a window on developments in the outside world.

Sources: Columbia University, Asia for Educators: The Edict of 1635 Ordering the Closing of Japan; National Diet Library: Japan-Netherlands Exchange in the Edo Period, Beginning of Exchange; MIT Visualizing Cultures: Black Ships and Samurai; World History Encyclopedia: The Ryukyu Castles of Okinawa; Wikipedia: Sakoku

The Shimabara Rebellion and the hidden Christians (17 December 1637 to 15 April 1638; the faith stayed banned until 1873)

From Francis Xavier's arrival in 1549 Christianity spread widely in Japan, and Catholic missionaries put the number of Christians at around a quarter of a million. Bans followed. In Shimabara, the lord Matsukura Katsuie raised taxes steeply to build a castle and persecuted Christians, and famine made things worse. In December 1637 masterless samurai and mostly Catholic peasants rebelled, supposedly led by a youth of 16 called Amakusa Shiro, and they made their stand at Hara Castle. After the rising was crushed in April 1638, Shiro and an estimated 30,000 to 37,000 rebels and sympathizers were killed.

• Estimates of the rebel force run from 20,000 to 37,000, against 100,000 to 200,000 on the shogunate's side. Its causes were mixed: the treatment of Christians, recent famine and a harsh local lord, who was himself later investigated and executed.
• To expose believers, authorities made people tread on a fumi-e, a block bearing a Christian image. Those who refused were pressed to recant and killed if they would not.
• The Hidden Christian Sites in the Nagasaki Region, inscribed by UNESCO in 2018, have 12 components, among them the remains of Hara Castle and Oura Cathedral. Secret believers passed on their faith, sometimes with a Mary disguised as the Buddhist deity Kannon, until the ban was officially lifted in 1873.

Sources: Columbia University, Asia for Educators: Edicts of Toyotomi Hideyoshi on Christianity, 1587; World History Encyclopedia: Christianity in Japan; MIT Visualizing Cultures: Black Ships and Samurai; Wikipedia: Shimabara Rebellion; Japan Tourism Agency: The 12 Components of World Cultural Heritage

Matsuo Basho (1644 to 1694)

Matsuo Basho; born Matsuo Kinsaku, later Matsuo Chuemon Munefusa; earlier pen names Sobo and Tosei, Poet · Iga, Edo and the roads of Japan

Basho was born near Ueno in Iga province to a family of samurai descent. As a young man he served Todo Yoshitada, who shared his love of linked verse. After Yoshitada's death in 1666 he left and later settled in Edo, where he was teaching twenty disciples by 1680. He then withdrew from city literary life to a hut named after the basho plant, practising Zen and wandering; after it burned, disciples gave him a second hut. On 16 May 1689 he left Edo with his student Kawai Sora for the northern provinces, the journey behind The Narrow Road to the Deep North, first published in 1702 after his death, which helped establish haibun, a form joining haiku to prose.

How they rose: He gained recognition in Edo's literary circles for a simple, natural style, and in 1674 he received secret teachings from the master Kitamura Kigin.

How they died: He died in Osaka on 28 November 1694, aged about 50. The sources used here do not state the cause.

• The word haiku came centuries later. Basho wrote hokku, the 5-7-5 opening verse of a linked sequence, and he himself thought his best work lay in linked verse rather than in stand-alone poems. Haruo Shirane of Columbia calls the Narrow Road his great masterpiece, in which he takes on the pose of the travelling priest of Noh.
• His hut burned down in the winter of 1682 and his mother died early the next year, one low point that lay behind his restless travels.
• He belongs to the brilliant Genroku age of 1688 to 1704, with the novelist Ihara Saikaku and the playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon.

Sources: Academy of American Poets: Matsuo Basho; World History Encyclopedia: Tokugawa Tsunayoshi; Wikipedia: Matsuo Basho; Columbia University, Asia for Educators: Basho's Narrow Road to the Deep North (Haruo Shirane and Donald Keene)

Shakushain (war 1669 to 1672; birth date unknown; killed 1669)

Shakushain, Ainu chief · Shibuchari, Hokkaido

New World Encyclopedia says the Ainu once traded with the Japanese as equals, but were pushed north over the centuries as the Japanese came to dominate the relationship. In the first half of the 17th century the shogunate gave the Matsumae clan exclusive rights to trade with the Ainu, and in 1665 the Matsumae set the exchange rate to the Ainu's disadvantage. In 1669 a local fight over resources in the Shibuchari river basin, between Shakushain's people and an Ainu group led by Hae, grew into a general rising after members of Hae's delegation to the Matsumae died of smallpox and word spread that they had been poisoned. A study built from Japanese sources reports that it opened with the killing of some 270 Japanese who were visiting Ainu villages, so that figure reaches us from one side only. The authorities, alarmed, sought relief armies from the main island. Fighting lasted into 1670, with a final settlement in 1672.

How they rose: He led his people in the Shibuchari basin and proved able to bridge regional differences among Ainu communities, according to the historian Brett Walker.

How they died: His forces surrendered at the end of 1669 and he was killed by Matsumae warriors. The details of the killing are told differently, and the sources opened here do not settle them.

• The peace bound the Ainu to swear allegiance to Matsumae. Though Ainu groups stayed autonomous, Matsumae set up 60 new trading posts and imposed trade prices that reportedly brought some settlements close to famine.
• Walker calls the war a watershed in the conquest of Hokkaido, because the shogunate now took a direct role and did not leave the matter to the local clan.
• The Japanese names for the war, 'the Ainu Uprising of the ninth year of Kanbun' or 'Shakushain's Revolt', treat it as a rebellion, while the study cited here describes it as a war between the Ainu and the Japanese.

Sources: Journal article on J-STAGE: Shakushain's Revolt of 1669: A study of a war between the Ainu and the Japanese; New World Encyclopedia: Ainu; Wikipedia: Shakushain's revolt

Ukiyo-e: pictures of the floating world (c. 1670s to 1868)

Ukiyo first meant the 'fleeting world' in Buddhist thought, but it came to refer to the pleasure quarters where prostitution was legal and restricted, and to the entertainment business around them. Working conditions for the women there were terrible. Hishikawa Moronobu made some of the earliest ukiyo-e in the 1670s, paintings and single-colour prints of beautiful women, and in a book of 1683 he claimed to have invented the form. Colour was added gradually, with several woodblocks in use by the 1740s and the full-colour print succeeding through Suzuki Harunobu in the 1760s. Late 18th-century masters such as Utamaro and Sharaku made portraits of beauties and actors, and Hokusai and Hiroshige then turned to landscape.

• The prints reached Europe, where Japonisme became a strong trend from the 1870s and influenced Degas, Manet and Monet.
• Woodblock printing in Japan went back much further, to the Hyakumanto Darani of 770, but until the 17th century it was reserved largely for Buddhist images and seals.
• The Library of Congress exhibition The Floating World of Ukiyo-e draws on Japanese prints, books and drawings from the 17th to the 19th centuries, with sections on beauties, actors and landscapes.

Sources: Library of Congress: The Floating World of Ukiyo-e; World History Encyclopedia: Edo Period; Wikipedia: Ukiyo-e; JAANUS (Japanese Architecture and Art Net Users System), hosted by Columbia University: ukiyo-e

The Forty-Seven Ronin (1701 to 1703; attack in the early hours of 31 January 1703; seppuku 20 March 1703)

In 1701, under the fifth shogun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, Asano Naganori, lord of Ako, attacked the official Kira Yoshinaka inside Edo Castle during preparations for a ceremony. Kira was only slightly hurt, but violence there was a capital offence: Asano was ordered to kill himself and his domain was confiscated, leaving his retainers masterless. Led by chief retainer Oishi Yoshio, a group secretly planned revenge and on 31 January 1703 killed Kira at his Edo mansion. They took his head to Asano's grave at Sengakuji and waited for the authorities. The shogunate ordered them to commit seppuku after an investigation, and 46 of them died on the 4th day of the 2nd month of the Japanese calendar, which is 20 March 1703. The 47th man, Terasaka Kichiemon, was spared, and accounts differ on whether he was sent away as a messenger or ran away.

• Why Asano attacked Kira is not actually known. World History Encyclopedia notes there is no evidence Kira was a bad person or had done wrong, and that Asano, not Kira, started the violence.
• The famous play Kanadehon Chushingura of 1748 is fiction set in the 14th century and built on a tale from the Taiheiki, with details drawn from the incident. It is often confused with what happened, including its love subplots.
• English readers long relied on A. B. Mitford's Tales of Old Japan (1871), which invited them to take its version as accurate history. His version long served as a standard account, though many of its details are now questioned.

Sources: World History Encyclopedia: Chushingura; World History Encyclopedia: Tokugawa Tsunayoshi; Wikipedia: Forty-seven ronin; A. B. Mitford, Tales of Old Japan (1871), Project Gutenberg: includes his translations of documents on the ronin; Wikipedia (Japanese): Ako jiken

Women and the Great Learning for Women (oldest surviving version 1729; read through the Edo period)

The Onna Daigaku, or Great Learning for Women, set out a strict neo-Confucian code for daughters and wives. It tells a bride to honour her parents-in-law above her own parents, and to look on her husband as her lord. It is traditionally credited to the scholar Kaibara Ekken (1630 to 1714), known for accessible manuals of conduct in plain Japanese, but its oldest surviving version dates to 1729, after his death, and Wikipedia describes it only as frequently attributed to him. Such works show what moralists wanted rather than what every woman did. Women's rights had also shifted over time: earlier, in the Kamakura period, women could own estates and even serve as stewards.

• Other women's lives appear in very different sources. In the legal pleasure quarters of the cities, working conditions were terrible, though the entertainment business built around them thrived.
• Ekken wrote conduct manuals for lords, warriors, children and families too, in everyday Japanese rather than difficult scholarly language.
• Medieval evidence shows that the ideal and practice long differed by place and status: inheritance, property, divorce and freedom of movement all varied with region and a husband's rank, though divorce favoured the man.

Sources: Columbia University, Asia for Educators: Excerpts from The Great Learning for Women (Onna Daigaku); World History Encyclopedia: Edo Period; World History Encyclopedia: Daily Life in Medieval Japan; World History Encyclopedia: Kamakura Period; Wikipedia: Onna Daigaku

Hokusai (1760 to 10 May 1849)

Katsushika Hokusai; childhood name Tokitaro; at least thirty art names, Painter and printmaker · Edo

Hokusai was born in the Katsushika district of Edo to an artisan family, though his exact birth date is uncertain. He worked in a lending library and for a woodcarver before joining the studio of the print designer Katsukawa Shunsho at 18, publishing his first prints of kabuki actors in 1779. After Shunsho's death he explored other schools and studied European copper engravings. His series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, published around 1831 to 1833, revived his career after personal troubles in the late 1820s. The British Museum's 2017 exhibition showed how productive his last thirty years were.

How they rose: He rose through apprenticeship and constant reinvention, changing his name with his styles. By 1800 he was working as Katsushika Hokusai, the second part meaning 'north studio' in honour of the North Star.

How they died: He died in Edo on 10 May 1849, aged 88 by Western count (about 90 by Japanese reckoning), and was still making paintings right up to the end. The sources used here do not state the cause.

• The Great Wave pairs deep Western-style perspective with imported Prussian blue pigment, a sign of how he adapted European methods. The British Museum acquired an impression in 2008.
• Around 1824 to 1826 employees of the Dutch East India Company commissioned paintings from him in a European-influenced style, a group now in the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden.
• The Fuji series responded to a domestic travel boom and to his personal interest in the mountain, whose spiritual meaning connected to his quest for long life in old age.

Sources: Journal review on PubMed Central: Hokusai: beyond the Great Wave (British Museum exhibition, 2017); Wikipedia: Hokusai; Encyclopedia of World Biography (Encyclopedia.com): Katsushika Hokusai

Dutch learning and National Learning (c. 1771 to 1825)

Two scholarly movements reshaped late Tokugawa thought, pulling in opposite directions. In 1771 the physician Sugita Genpaku and Maeno Ryotaku set about translating a Dutch anatomy book after seeing a dissection and comparing it with the book's plates; their Kaitai Shinsho appeared in 1774. That work helped found Rangaku, or Dutch learning. Native Studies (Kokugaku) meanwhile grew from the same philological interest in ancient texts and sought to recover Japan's oldest ones, such as the eighth-century Kojiki, which had become nearly unintelligible. Its leading figure was Motoori Norinaga (1730 to 1801), who devoted himself to the Kojiki and its language.

• Foreign scholars also learned from Japan: the German Engelbert Kaempfer, physician to the Dutch from 1690 to 1692, collected information with help from the interpreter Imamura Eisei and wrote The History of Japan.
• Critical study of ancient texts fed imperial loyalism, since the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki pointed to the divine descent of the imperial family. World History Encyclopedia counts this among the long-term causes of the Meiji Restoration.
• In 1825 the Mito scholar Aizawa Seishisai wrote Shinron (New Theses), urging a larger political role for the emperor and a firm stand against Western 'barbarians' after foreign ships entered Japanese waters.

Sources: Columbia University, Asia for Educators: Excerpts from Shinron by Aizawa Seishisai; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Japanese Philosophy; National Diet Library: Japan-Netherlands Exchange in the Edo Period, Study of Japan by Foreigners; World History Encyclopedia: Meiji Restoration; Wikipedia: Sugita Genpaku

Sakamoto Ryoma (3 January 1836 to 10 December 1867)

Sakamoto Ryoma, Tosa samurai and activist · Tosa, Edo, Nagasaki and Kyoto

Ryoma was born in Tosa on Shikoku, second son of a country samurai family of low rank but with wealth from a mercantile branch. He trained as a swordsman in Edo in 1853, the year of Perry's arrival, and joined Tosa's loyalists in 1861 before leaving the next year. He went on to work for Katsu Kaishu of the shogun's navy, who ran the Kobe naval training centre and convinced him Japan must learn from abroad. In 1865 he founded the Kameyama Shachu trading company in Nagasaki, and in 1866 he helped bring about the secret alliance between Satsuma and Choshu. His eight-point plan of 1867 called for power to return to the emperor and for a national assembly.

How they rose: He rose by connections rather than rank, moving between domains at odds with one another. He carried word of Satsuma's refusal to fight Choshu to Choshu's leaders, and he endorsed Kido Takayoshi's written summary of their secret oral pact.

How they died: He was assassinated on 10 December 1867 at a soy sauce shop in Kyoto, with Nakaoka Shintaro of Tosa. Nippon.com reports countless theories and considers the Mimawarigumi, a police force loyal to the shogunate, most likely responsible.

• Tosa leader Goto Shojiro used the eight-point plan in a petition urging the shogun Yoshinobu to return power, which he did on 9 November 1867.
• His only experience of combat came in 1866, when his company's men were aboard the warship Union in a battle off Shimonoseki.
• His modern fame owes much to his lively letters and to Shiba Ryotaro's novel Ryoma ga yuku, serialized from 1962 to 1966. Marius Jansen's scholarly study of 1961 brought him to English readers. The heroic image is partly a product of that later writing.

Sources: Nippon.com: Sakamoto Ryoma: The Samurai Who Dreamed of a Modern Japan; Wikipedia: Sakamoto Ryoma; World History Encyclopedia: Meiji Restoration

Commodore Perry and the black ships (8 July 1853 to 31 March 1854)

American interest in Japan grew with whaling in the North Pacific, the acquisition of California and the need for coaling stations on the route to China. On 8 July 1853 Matthew Perry brought four warships, including two steam frigates, to Uraga near Edo, carrying a letter from President Millard Fillmore addressed to the emperor, who was in practice little more than a figurehead. He left within ten days, promising to return. About six months later he came back with a larger squadron with more than 100 mounted guns: six ships by Columbia's count, nine by MIT Visualizing Cultures and Wikipedia. On 31 March 1854 the shogunate signed the Treaty of Kanagawa, opening Shimoda and Hakodate to American ships and allowing a consul.

• The treaty secured ports for supply and refuelling and protection for shipwrecked sailors, not the commercial trade Americans wanted. A full commercial treaty came only in 1858.
• Perry's gifts were chosen to impress, including a working model of a steam locomotive, a telescope and a telegraph.
• Earlier American visits had failed. Ships in the 1830s were turned away, and Perry's approach relied openly on a display of firepower, as the State Department's Office of the Historian notes.

Sources: Columbia University, Asia for Educators: Letters from Fillmore and Perry to the Emperor of Japan, 1852-1853; Fordham University, Modern History Sourcebook: Commodore Perry: When We Landed in Japan, 1854; US Department of State, Office of the Historian: The United States and the Opening to Japan, 1853; MIT Visualizing Cultures: Black Ships and Samurai; Wikipedia: Perry Expedition

The fall of the Tokugawa (1858 to June 1869)

The Treaty of Amity and Commerce of 1858, negotiated by Townsend Harris, set low tariffs on imports and placed foreigners outside Japanese law. Anger fed a violent movement of shishi, 'righteous warriors'. The chief minister Ii Naosuke answered with the Ansei Purge, and in 1860 he was assassinated near Edo Castle. Satsuma men killed a foreign merchant and Choshu fired on foreign ships; Western retaliation convinced both domains that expelling foreigners by force was impossible. They allied in 1866. Shogun Yoshinobu stepped down on 9 November 1867, and the Boshin War began at Toba-Fushimi in January 1868. Edo Castle surrendered peacefully, and the last holdouts gave up at Hakodate in June 1869.

• World History Encyclopedia estimates about 120,000 men were mobilized in the Boshin War, of whom about 8,200 died. It compares that with the American Civil War of the same decade, in which about 620,000 died.
• Japanese officials chose the Harris Treaty partly because they had watched Britain force open China. The State Department's history says they decided it was better to open willingly than be compelled.
• Historians once read the Restoration through modernization theory as a textbook step from 'traditional' to 'modern'. That approach has largely been discredited since the 1970s.

Sources: US Department of State, Office of the Historian: The United States and the Opening to Japan, 1853; Nippon.com: Sakamoto Ryoma: The Samurai Who Dreamed of a Modern Japan; World History Encyclopedia: Meiji Restoration; Wikipedia: Boshin War

Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835 to 1901)

Fukuzawa Yukichi, Writer and educator · Tokyo

Fukuzawa was born in Osaka into a low-ranking samurai family of the Nakatsu domain and grew up critical of the rigid class system. He crossed the Pacific on the Kanrin Maru with the shogunate's mission to the United States in 1860 and travelled through Europe in 1862. His Conditions in the West, published in instalments from the late 1860s, sold around 250,000 copies, and his pamphlets An Encouragement of Learning (1872 to 1876) argued that status should come from education and not from birth. He refused government posts after the Restoration and stayed an independent teacher and writer. An 1885 editorial known as Leaving Asia, which urged Japan to align itself with the Western powers and distance itself from its neighbours, remains the most debated part of his legacy.

How they rose: He studied Dutch at Nagasaki and Osaka, and his domain sent him to Edo in 1858 to open a school of Dutch studies. A visit to the new treaty port of Yokohama showed him that the foreigners there spoke English, so he taught himself that too and worked as a translator for the shogunate.

How they died: He had a second stroke on 25 January 1901 and died on 3 February. The lower house of the Diet passed a resolution recognising his contribution to the country.

• The school he founded in Edo in 1858 switched to English studies in 1863, took the name of the Keio era in 1868, and became Keio University.
• His father, a Confucian scholar, thought arithmetic was a tool of merchants and beneath a samurai; he died in 1836 when Fukuzawa was an infant.
• His portrait appeared on Japan's 10,000-yen banknote from 1984 to 2024.

Sources: Columbia University, Asia for Educators: Excerpts from the Autobiography of Fukuzawa Yukichi; Keio University: History; Wikipedia: Fukuzawa Yukichi

Emperor Meiji (Reigned 1867 to 1912 (born 1852))

Mutsuhito, posthumously Emperor Meiji, Emperor of Japan · Kyoto and Tokyo

Mutsuhito inherited the throne as a boy in early 1867, and the leaders of the Restoration governed in his name. In 1868 Edo was renamed Tokyo, meaning eastern capital, and he soon travelled there for the first time. His reign produced the Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors of 1882, the Rescript on Education of 1890 and the constitution of 11 February 1889, in force from 29 November 1890. That constitution called the emperor sacred and inviolable, gave him supreme command of the army and navy, and created a two-chamber Diet, whose lower house was elected at first by about 450,000 male taxpayers, roughly 1 percent of the population. By his death Japan had an elected parliament, modern industry, a strong army and navy, and victories over China and Russia.

How they came to power: He was the son of Emperor Komei and an imperial concubine, Nakayama Yoshiko, and succeeded when Komei died in January 1867. Within a year the Satsuma and Choshu leaders had proclaimed imperial rule in his name.

How it ended: He suffered from diabetes, nephritis and gastroenteritis and died of uremia on 29 July 1912, aged 59. His son Yoshihito succeeded him as Emperor Taisho.

• He was born on 3 November 1852 in a small house on his maternal grandfather's property, because birth was then thought to pollute the palace.
• Ito Hirobumi led a mission abroad in 1882 to study constitutions; the drafters took advice from the German legal scholars Rudolf von Gneist and Lorenz von Stein.
• His state funeral on 13 September 1912, at the army's Aoyama drill ground, was the first emperor's funeral service held in Tokyo.

Sources: National Diet Library: The Constitution of the Empire of Japan (text); Columbia University, Asia for Educators: The Meiji Restoration and Modernization; Wikipedia: Emperor Meiji; Wikipedia: Meiji Constitution; Wikipedia: Universal Manhood Suffrage Law

The Meiji Restoration and the end of the samurai (January 1868 to September 1877)

In November 1867 the last shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, offered to hand power to the emperor, but activists from Satsuma and Choshu wanted the shogunate removed by force, and in January 1868 they seized the palace in Kyoto and proclaimed imperial rule restored. The Boshin War that followed mobilised about 120,000 men, of whom about 8,200 died, a low toll for so large a change. The Charter Oath of April 1868, issued in the name of the 15-year-old emperor, promised assemblies and open discussion. Lords were asked to give up their domains in 1869, and in 1871 the domains became prefectures of a central state. The last and most serious samurai revolt, led by Saigo Takamori of Satsuma, was crushed by the new government between January and September 1877.

• The emperor did not rule directly: he was expected to accept the advice of the group that had overthrown the shogun, many of them men from the lower samurai ranks.
• The conscription law of 1873 divided Japan into six military districts and drew conscripts by lot, with seven years of active and reserve service.
• The first draft of the Charter Oath was written by a junior councillor, Yuri Kimimasa, in January 1868, and a colleague softened its language the next month.

Sources: Columbia University, Asia for Educators: The Charter Oath (of the Meiji Restoration), 1868; Columbia University, Asia for Educators: The Meiji Restoration and Modernization; World History Encyclopedia: Meiji Restoration; Wikipedia: Satsuma Rebellion; Wikipedia: Charter Oath

Hokkaido, the Ainu and the end of the Ryukyu Kingdom (1869 to 1899)

In 1869 the government set up the Hokkaido Development Commission to guard against Russia, give work to former samurai and open up resources. Ainu land went to Japanese settlers, and the Hokkaido Former Aborigines Protection Act of 1899 aimed to assimilate the Ainu, who were given Japanese citizenship and were labelled former aborigines. In the south, Ryukyu had been a vassal of Satsuma since the invasion of 1609 while also sending tribute to China. Tokyo made it a domain in 1872, and in March 1879 an official, Matsuda Michiyuki, arrived with policemen and soldiers and told the court that the domain was abolished and Okinawa Prefecture created. King Sho Tai left Shuri Castle, and China protested the annexation.

• The 1899 Act gave Ainu farmers small plots that the state could take back if they were not farmed within a set period; it stayed on the books until May 1997.
• Ainu were ordered to stop religious practices such as animal sacrifice and the custom of tattooing during the settlement of Hokkaido.
• Japan and China discussed dividing the Ryukyu islands in talks from 1880, after mediation by the former US president Ulysses S. Grant.

Sources: Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Cultural Survival: The Ainu: Beyond the Politics of Cultural Coexistence; EBSCO Research Starters: Japan Enacts a Law to Protect the Ainu People; Wikipedia: Ainu people; Wikipedia: Ryukyu Disposition

The First Sino-Japanese War (25 July 1894 to 17 April 1895)

Qing China sent 2,700 to 2,800 troops to Korea in June 1894 at the Korean king's request to help put down the Tonghak peasant uprising; Japan answered with 8,000, and war began that July. Japan won at Pyongyang on 15 September and at sea off the Yalu River two days later, then took Port Arthur in November. The Treaty of Shimonoseki, signed on 17 April 1895, ended China's tributary relationship with Korea, required an indemnity of 200 million taels, and ceded Taiwan, the Penghu Islands and the Liaodong Peninsula. Russia, Germany and France then forced Japan to give back Liaodong in the Triple Intervention. Qing officials on Taiwan declared a republic on 23 May 1895 to resist the cession, and a Japanese campaign of about five months followed.

• Japanese losses are given as 1,132 killed in action and 285 dead of wounds against 11,894 dead of disease, so sickness killed about ten times as many as battle.
• Chinese losses are given as about 35,000 killed or wounded.
• Japanese troops killed civilians after taking Port Arthur in November 1894. Estimates, unconfirmed, are in the thousands, and many abroad doubted the first reports.

Sources: Columbia University, Asia for Educators: Key Points in Korea and Imperialism; Wikipedia: First Sino-Japanese War; Wikipedia: Treaty of Shimonoseki

The Russo-Japanese War (8 February 1904 to 5 September 1905)

Russia and Japan had quarrelled for years over Manchuria and Korea, and in February 1904 Japan opened the war with a surprise attack on the Russian fleet at Port Arthur. Japan won a run of hard battles on land, including Port Arthur and Mukden, and destroyed the Russian fleet in the Tsushima Strait on 27 and 28 May 1905. Both sides were exhausted, and US President Theodore Roosevelt helped broker talks at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The treaty of 5 September 1905 recognised Japan's interests in Korea, and handed over the lease on Liaodong, the South Manchuria Railway and the southern half of Sakhalin. Japan had expected a large indemnity and did not get one, and anger at the terms set off the Hibiya riots in Tokyo that month.

• Totals vary by source: about 43,300 to 71,453 dead on the Russian side and about 80,378 to 86,100 on the Japanese side, including deaths from disease.
• The Japanese public knew of the victories but less about how far the war had overstretched the country's money and men.
• Scholars see the war as a turning point because an Asian power had beaten a major European one.

Sources: Columbia University, Asia for Educators: Treaty of Portsmouth; US Department of State, Office of the Historian: The Treaty of Portsmouth and the Russo-Japanese War; Wikipedia: Russo-Japanese War; Wikipedia: Treaty of Portsmouth

Korea under Japanese rule (Protectorate 1905, annexed 1910, to 1945)

Korea became a Japanese protectorate on 17 November 1905, Emperor Gojong was forced to abdicate in 1907, and the annexation treaty was sealed on 22 August 1910 and took effect on 29 August. In its first years the colony was policed through the military police. On 1 March 1919 a nationwide protest began, and estimates of those taking part run from about 800,000 to 2 million. The toll of the crackdown is disputed: Korean records count 7,509 killed, 15,961 wounded and 46,948 arrested over a year, while Japanese figures give 553 killed, 1,409 wounded and 8,437 arrested. From 1939 an assimilation policy pressed Koreans to take Japanese-style names, and wartime mobilisation followed.

• In 1911 Koreans were barred from taking Japanese names; the 1939 order, issued on 10 November, reversed that policy as assimilation became the aim.
• Columbia's Asia for Educators describes colonial rule as a contradictory experience, harsh on dissent, with changes that also reshaped Korean society.
• The 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations calls the pre-1910 treaties already null and void, a compromise wording: Seoul held the annexation void from the start, which Tokyo contested.

Sources: Columbia University, Asia for Educators: Key Points in Korea and Imperialism; Wikipedia: Korea under Japanese rule; Wikipedia: Japan-Korea Treaty of 1910; Wikipedia: March First Movement

Taisho democracy, Seito and the vote for men (1911 to 1928 (Emperor Taisho reigned 1912 to 1926))

Under Emperor Taisho, who reigned from 1912 to 1926 with Crown Prince Hirohito as regent from 1921, political parties and popular movements grew stronger. In 1911 Hiratsuka Raicho and four other women founded Seito (Bluestocking), a women's literary magazine that questioned the ideal of the good wife and wise mother; its last issue appeared in February 1916. The rice riots of 1918 forced the elder statesmen to appoint Hara Takashi, the first commoner to be prime minister and head of the first true party cabinet. The law of 1925 gave the vote to all men aged 25 and over, raising the electorate from roughly 3 million to 12.5 million, and the first election under it was held on 20 February 1928. Women were left out, and the Peace Preservation Law, passed the same year as the suffrage law, gave the state a tool against dissent.

• Historians usually date the movement from about 1905 to 1932, starting with the Hibiya riots against the Treaty of Portsmouth.
• In the first election under male suffrage, in 1928, proletarian parties won eight seats: four for the Shakai Minshuto, two for the Rodo Nominto, one for the Nihon Ronoto and one for another party.
• Hiratsuka's opening essay in Seito's first issue said that woman had once been the sun and was now the moon, and she handed the editorship to Ito Noe in 1915.

Sources: Wikipedia: Taisho Democracy; National Diet Library, Modern Japan in Archives: Taisho Democracy, Outline; National Diet Library, Modern Japan in Archives: Emergence and Growth of Proletarian Political Parties; National Diet Library, Modern Japan in Archives: First Election with Universal Manhood Suffrage; Wikipedia: Seito (magazine)

The Great Kanto Earthquake and the killing of Koreans (1 September 1923, with killings in the following weeks)

The earthquake struck at 11:58 on 1 September 1923, with a magnitude of about 8.0 and an epicentre some 100 km southwest of Tokyo. Fires driven by strong winds did much of the damage, destroying over half of Tokyo and nearly all of Yokohama, leaving about 2.5 million people homeless and 105,385 dead or missing. Martial law was declared on 2 September, and false rumours that Koreans were poisoning wells and setting fires spread. Vigilantes, soldiers and police then killed Koreans, Chinese, Japanese mistaken for Koreans, and left-wing activists. Counts differ widely: official reports that September said five Koreans, police later confirmed 248, an inquiry by the Government-General of Korea found 832 killed or missing, and an investigation by Korean students found 2,613. A 2009 report for a government disaster panel, written by academic committee members, attributed 1 to several percent of the roughly 100,000 dead and missing to such killings; the historian Tessa Morris-Suzuki reports a consensus of several thousand; and other estimates run from 6,000 to 9,000.

• Modern analysis suggests three linked shocks within minutes: the main rupture in Kanagawa, then shocks under Tokyo Bay and in Yamanashi.
• A Yokohama dockworkers union with Korean members, led by the Japanese organiser Yamaguchi Seiken, gave out food and water on the first day, and the rumours are traced to looting by Japanese in Yokohama that was wrongly attributed to Koreans.
• On 30 August 2023, Chief Cabinet Secretary Matsuno Hirokazu said the government had not located records that establish the facts, a position critics in Japan dispute. In 2017 Tokyo Governor Koike Yuriko stopped sending a message of condolence to the annual memorial, saying there were differing opinions about what happened.

Sources: Wikipedia: Great Kanto Earthquake; Wikipedia: Kanto Massacre; Christian Science Monitor: For Koreans in Japan, this little-known massacre still carries weight; AFP via TerraDaily: Japan's Kanto massacre, 100 years on; The Asia Business Daily: Yomiuri Shimbun on the government report and the Kanto killings

Hirohito (Reigned 1926 to 1989 (born 1901))

Hirohito, posthumously Emperor Showa, Emperor of Japan · Tokyo

Hirohito became emperor on 25 December 1926, and his reign saw the rise of the military, war in China from 1937 and war with the United States and Britain from 1941. He formally sanctioned the decision to go to war on 1 December 1941, and on 15 August 1945 a radio broadcast in his voice told the country of the surrender. Historians agree that he was involved in some way in strategy, but how far is disputed: the historians Herbert Bix and Mark Felton say he personally sanctioned some operations in China, while the journalists Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster describe him as outraged by war crimes. He was never prosecuted, because MacArthur thought a cooperative emperor would help the occupation. The 1947 constitution made him the symbol of the state and of the unity of the people, and he reigned for nearly 42 more years.

How they came to power: He was the eldest son of Crown Prince Yoshihito, born on 29 April 1901 in Tokyo. He became regent on 25 November 1921 because of his father's illness, and succeeded on his father's death.

How it ended: Doctors found duodenal cancer during surgery in September 1987, and he collapsed a year later. He died on 7 January 1989, aged 87, and his son Akihito succeeded him.

• He is the longest-reigning emperor in Japanese history whose reign is not legendary, at over 62 years.
• A rescript of 1 January 1946 denied that the emperor was a living god; MacArthur praised it the same day.
• On the night of 14 August 1945 army officers tried a coup to stop the surrender, but the recording of his speech was hidden and survived.

Sources: National Diet Library: Emperor, Imperial Rescript Denying His Divinity; National Diet Library: The Constitution of Japan (text); US National Archives: Surrender of Japan (1945); Wikipedia: Hirohito

The Mukden Incident and the seizure of Manchuria (18 September 1931 to February 1936)

On 18 September 1931 an explosion damaged a Japanese-owned railway near Mukden, and the Kwantung Army blamed Chinese nationalists and invaded Manchuria. Later findings hold that Japanese officers set it off as a pretext, a plan associated with Colonel Itagaki Seishiro and Lieutenant Colonel Ishiwara Kanji. In March 1932 the state of Manchukuo was set up with the former Qing emperor Puyi as head of state. The League of Nations' Lytton Report of 2 October 1932 rejected Japan's claims, the Japanese delegation walked out, and Japan gave notice of withdrawal on 27 March 1933. At home, between 26 and 29 February 1936 about 1,500 soldiers led by young officers killed several officials in Tokyo before the revolt was put down.

• US Secretary of State Henry Stimson responded with what became the Stimson Doctrine, under which the United States would not recognise agreements that limited free commerce in the region.
• The rural depression helped shape young soldiers' support for expansion, since many recruits came from areas where poverty was widespread.
• After the February 1936 revolt, 19 men were executed by firing squad and dozens were imprisoned.

Sources: US Department of State, Office of the Historian: The Mukden Incident of 1931 and the Stimson Doctrine; Columbia University, Asia for Educators: The World at War, 1931-1945; Wikipedia: Mukden incident; Wikipedia: Lytton Report; Wikipedia: February 26 incident

The "comfort women" system (1932 to 1945)

The first station for a Japanese naval brigade opened in Shanghai after the incident of 1932, and numbers rose quickly after 1937; a War Ministry report of September 1942 lists 400 stations. No survey established how many women were taken, and estimates tabulated by the Asian Women's Fund run from 20,000 (Hata Ikuhiko, 1999) and 90,000 (Hata, 1993), through 45,000 to 200,000 (Yoshimi Yoshiaki, 1995), up to 360,000 to 410,000 (Su Zhiliang, 1999). The women came from Korea, China, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia and elsewhere. The Japanese government's 1993 Kono Statement said recruitment was mainly by private recruiters at the military's request, that in many cases women were recruited against their will, and that officials at times took part directly. A government reply in 2007 said no evidence had been found that the army or military officials seized women by force, and South Korea's government later said it would not seek to renew the 2015 agreement but wanted Japan to do more.

• Kim Hak-sun of South Korea came forward in August 1991 as the first woman to tell her story publicly, after the Japanese government had denied state involvement that June.
• Chief Cabinet Secretary Kato Koichi said in July 1992 that an inquiry had found government involvement in setting up and running the stations, and offered an apology.
• In an agreement of 28 December 2015, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo offered apologies and Japan agreed to pay 1 billion yen into a fund for survivors; several survivors protested the deal, saying they wanted a sincere apology and not money.

Sources: Asian Women's Fund: Statement by Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono, 4 August 1993; Asian Women's Fund: Statement by Chief Cabinet Secretary Koichi Kato, 6 July 1992; Asian Women's Fund: Number of Comfort Stations and Comfort Women; Asian Women's Fund: The Establishment of Comfort Stations; Wikipedia: Comfort women

Unit 731 (1936 to 1945 (Ishii's program began in the early 1930s))

Army doctor Ishii Shiro began biological weapons work in the early 1930s, and from 1936 he ran a larger program at a new base at Pingfang outside Harbin in Manchukuo. The unit carried out lethal experiments on prisoners and spread disease in Chinese towns as field tests. Totals are uncertain because records were destroyed. For deaths in its experiments, EBSCO says at least 3,000, and the historian Sheldon Harris estimated 10,000 to 12,000 prisoners, as reported by Judith Miller. For field attacks, EBSCO reports estimates from 30,000 to more than 500,000; Miller reports Harris at 300,000 to 500,000, and Wikipedia gives him as over 200,000. The United States gave Ishii and others immunity, apparently in return for their data, and he died in 1959 without being tried.

• The Soviet Union tried twelve Japanese for biological warfare at Khabarovsk in December 1949, six of them from Unit 731.
• On 28 August 2002 the Tokyo District Court acknowledged that Japan had carried out biological warfare in China, but rejected compensation, citing the postwar treaties.
• Sources differ on Tokyo's stance. EBSCO says Japan admitted the experiments in the 1980s, and Wikipedia says the government has never officially acknowledged its biological warfare. The Asahi Shimbun, as quoted by China's state-run China Daily, said in 2025 that the government accepts the unit existed but has neither confirmed nor denied its activities, citing a lack of documents. In 2018 the National Archives of Japan released the names of 3,607 members.

Sources: US National Archives, Researching Japanese War Crimes: Introductory Essays; EBSCO Research Starters: Unit 731; Wikipedia: Unit 731; Judith Miller, via History News Network: When Germ Warfare Happened; China Daily (Chinese state media): Japan's wartime horrors remain on Chinese soil, quoting the Asahi Shimbun

The invasion of China and Nanjing (7 July 1937 to 1945; Nanjing fell on 13 December 1937)

Full-scale war began after Chinese and Japanese forces clashed at the Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing on 7 July 1937. After heavy fighting at Shanghai, Japanese troops took the capital, Nanjing, on 13 December, and mass killings of prisoners and civilians and mass rape followed for weeks. Figures differ with the area, dates and people counted: the Tokyo tribunal's judgment gave over 200,000, and its verdict on Matsui Iwane upwards of 100,000; the 1947 Nanjing tribunal and the Chinese government give 300,000 or more; Kasahara Tokushi estimates more than 100,000 and close to 200,000; Hata Ikuhiko about 40,000; some of the lowest published estimates are near 10,000. In a government-backed joint study released in 2010, the Chinese side cited over 300,000 and the Japanese side cited estimates of 20,000, 40,000 and up to 200,000. Japan's Foreign Ministry says on its website, as quoted by Al Jazeera and Wikipedia, that the killing of noncombatants and looting cannot be denied, but that the correct number is difficult to determine.

• An international committee led by the German John Rabe ran a safety zone in the city, and he estimated 50,000 to 60,000 killed; American missionaries' letters and photographs are preserved at Yale Divinity Library.
• General Matsui Iwane, commander at Nanjing, was sentenced to death by the Tokyo tribunal; Prince Asaka, a member of the imperial family who had a command there, was granted immunity and not tried.
• The debate rests largely on burial records: burial societies testified at Tokyo to over 155,000 bodies, and critics and defenders of those figures disagree over how far they can be accepted.

Sources: Yale Divinity Library: The Nanking Massacre Project; History News Network (AFP): New study on Nanking fails to bridge Japan, China history divide; Wikipedia: Death toll of the Nanjing Massacre; Al Jazeera: China marks 75 years since Nanjing Massacre (quotes the Foreign Ministry); Wikipedia: Nanjing Massacre

Forced and mobilised labour in the empire (1939 to 1945)

With its labour short for war production, Japan mobilised workers from across the empire under the National Mobilization Act. A South Korean government commission that sat from 2004 to 2015 documented 798,043 Koreans sent to Japan between 1939 and 1945, and researchers estimate that over 10 percent of Koreans mobilised died or disappeared; Korean historians also cite about 670,000 conscripted into labour in 1944 and 1945. A joint study by historians including Himeta Mitsuyoshi and Mark Peattie puts Chinese civilians mobilised at over 10 million, and the US Library of Congress estimate for labourers (romusha) on Java runs from 4 to 10 million. More than 100,000 civilians and prisoners of war died building the Burma Railway.

• Japan's delegate at UNESCO said in July 2015 that many Koreans and others were brought against their will and forced to work at some Meiji industrial sites in the 1940s; Foreign Minister Kishida Fumio then said this did not mean forced labour.
• On 30 October 2018 South Korea's Supreme Court, by 11 to 2, upheld awards against New Nippon Steel of 100 million won to each of four plaintiffs, holding that the 1965 agreement did not end individual claims. The Japanese government protested, saying the 1965 agreement settled the matter.
• According to the Japanese military's own record, as cited by researchers, nearly 25 percent of 140,000 Allied prisoners held in its camps died.

Sources: Duro and Palmer, Cambridge University Press: Japan's Forgotten Korean Forced Laborers; American Journal of International Law: Yeo Woon Taek v. New Nippon Steel Corporation; Wikipedia: Slavery in Japan; Wikipedia: Hashima Island; Wikipedia: Japan-South Korea trade dispute

Tojo Hideki (Prime minister 18 October 1941 to July 1944 (born 1884, died 1948))

Tojo Hideki, Prime Minister of Japan · Tokyo

Tojo was a career army officer who served as chief of staff of the Kwantung Army in 1937 and as Army Minister from July 1940. He became prime minister on 18 October 1941, days after Konoe Fumimaro's resignation, and his government took Japan to war with the United States and Britain that December. He held the army ministry at the same time and, from February 1944, also the post of army chief of staff. His government enforced censorship and used the Kempeitai military police against dissent, and it promoted the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere as the aim of the war. He was forced out in July 1944 after the loss of Saipan.

How they came to power: He rose through the army and led operations in China in 1937 as Kwantung Army chief of staff. When Konoe resigned in October 1941 over the deadlock with the United States, Tojo was chosen to succeed him.

How it ended: He shot himself on 11 September 1945 as US soldiers surrounded his house, but survived. The Tokyo tribunal found him guilty on 12 November 1948, and he was hanged on 23 December 1948.

• His last statement apologised for atrocities committed by the Japanese military.
• US Army records declassified later say his ashes were scattered over the Pacific from an aircraft; his name is enshrined at Yasukuni Shrine.
• He was one of seven men sentenced to death at Tokyo; sixteen others received life terms.

Sources: University of Virginia Law Library: Pacific War Crimes Trials Digital Archive; Wikipedia: Hideki Tojo; Wikipedia: International Military Tribunal for the Far East

Pearl Harbor and the Pacific War (7-8 December 1941 to 2 September 1945)

US sanctions and Japan's war in China led to months of failed talks, and Japan's fleet sailed on 26 November 1941. On 7 December, 353 aircraft from six carriers attacked Pearl Harbor, killing 2,403 people and sinking four battleships, as Japan also struck the Philippines, Malaya and Hong Kong. At Midway in June 1942 Japan lost four fleet carriers and about 3,000 men. Okinawa was fought from April 1945: the Cornerstone of Peace monument listed 242,046 names of those who died there in the war as of 2023, of whom 149,634 were Okinawans, and Wikipedia's sources put civilian deaths in the battle between 40,000 and 150,000. Japan signed the surrender on 2 September 1945 aboard USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

• A cabinet decision of 10 December 1941 named the conflict the Greater East Asia War, covering both China and the Western Allies; Japan presented it as freeing Asia from the West.
• Prime Minister Abe's 2015 statement says more than three million Japanese died in the war.
• Japan sent out its naval attack group on 26 November 1941, just before receiving the Hull note, which stated the US wish that Japan withdraw from China and French Indochina.

Sources: Wikipedia: Attack on Pearl Harbor; Wikipedia: Battle of Midway; Wikipedia: Battle of Okinawa; International Business Times: Full text of the Abe statement, 14 August 2015; Wikipedia: Pacific War

Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the surrender (6 and 9 August 1945; surrender announced 15 August)

After the Potsdam Declaration of 26 July called for the unconditional surrender of Japan's armed forces, the US B-29 Enola Gay dropped a uranium bomb on Hiroshima at about 8:15 a.m. on 6 August 1945, and a second bomb fell on Nagasaki on 9 August. Totals remain uncertain because records and whole families were lost; the Radiation Effects Research Foundation gives acute deaths within two to four months of 90,000 to 166,000 in Hiroshima and 60,000 to 80,000 in Nagasaki, while the US Manhattan Engineer District's figures were lower, at 66,000 and 39,000. The US Department of Energy's history suggests about 70,000 at first in Hiroshima, over 100,000 by the end of 1945 and possibly 200,000 within five years. The emperor recorded his acceptance of the Allied terms, and it was broadcast on 15 August.

• Historians still debate whether the bombings were necessary, what part they played in ending the war, and what other choices the United States had.
• About twenty American airmen held prisoner in Hiroshima were among the dead, according to the US Department of Energy's history.
• The 1950 Japanese census counted about 280,000 people who said they were exposed to the bombings and survived.

Sources: Radiation Effects Research Foundation: Frequently Asked Questions; Avalon Project, Yale Law School: The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Chapter 10; US Department of Energy, OSTI: The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima, August 6, 1945; Columbia University, Asia for Educators: The Potsdam Declaration; US Department of Energy, OSTI: Japan Surrenders, August 10-15, 1945

The Allied occupation of Japan (2 September 1945 to 28 April 1952)

General Douglas MacArthur took charge of the occupation in September 1945; Britain, the Soviet Union and China had an advisory role, but the final authority was his. The first phase, through 1947, dismantled the army, held war crimes trials, purged wartime officials and introduced land reform for tenant farmers, and MacArthur also tried to break up the big business groups, the zaibatsu. The first women entered the Diet in 1946. As the Cold War deepened, US policy shifted toward reviving the economy, a change known as the Reverse Course. The Treaty of San Francisco, signed by 49 nations on 8 September 1951, took effect on 28 April 1952 and ended the occupation, while a security treaty signed the same day kept US forces in Japan.

• Columbia's introduction to the later 1960 treaty says the Japanese delegation was pressed to accept the security treaty and acquiesced reluctantly.
• Directives of January 1946 began the purge of wartime officials from public office, but most of those purged were allowed back into public life by 1951.
• Italy and China were not invited to the San Francisco conference; the Soviet delegate Andrei Gromyko attended and set out his government's objections.

Sources: US Department of State, Office of the Historian: Occupation and Reconstruction of Japan, 1945-52; Columbia University, Asia for Educators: Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security (1960); Wikipedia: Occupation of Japan; Wikipedia: Treaty of San Francisco

The Tokyo Trial (29 April 1946 to 12 November 1948; executions 23 December 1948)

The tribunal convened on 29 April 1946 in the former War Ministry in Tokyo, with 11 judges, and tried 28 military and political leaders for crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity, reaching back to the invasion of Manchuria in 1931. The verdicts of November 1948 sentenced seven men to death, including Tojo Hideki and Matsui Iwane, and sixteen to life. Three of those given life died in prison, and the other thirteen were paroled between 1952 and 1958. Another 42 suspects, including the future prime minister Kishi Nobusuke, were never tried. The occupation decided that Emperor Hirohito and the imperial family would not be prosecuted or called to testify.

• Justice Radhabinod Pal of India wrote a judgment rejecting the court's legitimacy as victor's justice and would have acquitted all the accused; Justice Delfin Jaranilla of the Philippines thought the penalties too lenient.
• The court did not address the coercion of "comfort women", and Unit 731's leaders escaped prosecution, apparently in exchange for data given to the United States.
• The University of Virginia Law Library keeps a digital archive of the trial's records, including defence briefs, judgments and personal papers.

Sources: University of Virginia Law Library: Pacific War Crimes Trials Digital Archive, About; US National Archives, Researching Japanese War Crimes: Introductory Essays; Wikipedia: International Military Tribunal for the Far East; Wikipedia: Comfort women

The 1947 constitution (Adopted 3 November 1946, in force 3 May 1947)

The Japanese government at first planned only limited changes to the Meiji Constitution, so MacArthur had his staff write a draft in less than a week and presented it to surprised officials on 13 February 1946. The final text was adopted on 3 November 1946 and took effect on 3 May 1947. Article 1 makes the emperor the symbol of the state, with his position derived from the will of the people. Article 9 renounces war as a sovereign right. Article 14 bans discrimination by race, creed, sex or social status, and Article 24 bases marriage on mutual consent and equal rights.

• The articles on equality between men and women were written by Beate Sirota, a member of the occupation staff.
• Amendment needs a two-thirds vote in both houses and a referendum; despite efforts to revise Article 9 it remains the oldest unamended national constitution.
• Japan founded the Self-Defense Forces in 1954, and in 2014 the Abe government reinterpreted Article 9 to widen their role, followed by security legislation in 2015.

Sources: National Diet Library: The Constitution of Japan (text); National Diet Library, Birth of the Constitution of Japan: Outline, Part 1; US Department of State, Office of the Historian: Occupation and Reconstruction of Japan, 1945-52; Wikipedia: Constitution of Japan; Wikipedia: Article 9 of the Constitution of Japan

Yoshida Shigeru (Prime minister 1946 to 1947 and 1948 to 1954 (born 1878, died 1967))

Yoshida Shigeru, Prime Minister of Japan · Tokyo

Yoshida led the government from May 1946 to May 1947 and again from October 1948 to December 1954, for most of the occupation. On 8 September 1951 he signed the Treaty of San Francisco for Japan. His approach, later called the Yoshida Doctrine, put the rebuilding of the economy first and relied on the alliance with the United States for security. The security treaty divided opinion: Columbia's Asia for Educators describes a struggle between left and right, with moderate conservatives in the middle and nationalists wanting a stronger military and more independence from Washington. He also served as his own foreign minister from 1948 to 1952.

How they came to power: A career diplomat, he served as vice minister of foreign affairs and as ambassador to Italy until 1932, and the army blocked him as foreign minister in 1936. He was arrested in April 1945 over his links with Prince Konoe.

How it ended: He died at Oiso in Kanagawa on 20 October 1967, aged 89.

• He was born on 22 September 1878 in Tokyo.
• The Yoshida Doctrine emerged in 1951 and shaped Japanese foreign policy into the 21st century.
• He joined the Liberal Democratic Party in 1957, after leaving office.

Sources: Columbia University, Asia for Educators: Article 9 and the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty; Wikipedia: Shigeru Yoshida; Wikipedia: Yoshida Doctrine; Wikipedia: Treaty of San Francisco

Manga, anime and the Nobel writers (1952 to 1994)

Tezuka Osamu, born in Toyonaka near Osaka in 1928, trained as a doctor but chose manga and animation, and his long story comics changed the form. His character Atom, known abroad as Astro Boy, became hugely popular from 1952, and the Astro Boy TV series of 1963 set the first successful production model for Japanese animation. He died of stomach cancer in 1989. In 1968 Kawabata Yasunari won the Nobel Prize in Literature, cited for narrative mastery that expressed the essence of the Japanese mind. Oe Kenzaburo followed in 1994, cited for a poetic imagined world that condensed life and myth.

• Tezuka's official biography says his wartime experience gave him an intense sense of the preciousness of life, which is why he first aimed to become a physician.
• He put the character for insect into his pen name because of his boyhood love of insects.
• Tezuka is often called the God of Manga and is compared with Walt Disney, who was a major early inspiration.

Sources: Tezuka Osamu Official: About Tezuka Osamu; NobelPrize.org: Yasunari Kawabata, Facts; NobelPrize.org: Kenzaburo Oe, Facts; Wikipedia: Osamu Tezuka

The economic miracle (c. 1955 to 1973)

By about 1955 income per person had recovered to prewar levels, and the economy then grew rapidly until the oil crisis of 1973. Between 1957 and 1973 Japan's GNP grew at an annual rate of around 10 percent. Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato's Income Doubling Plan, launched under his 1960 to 1964 government, promised to double the economy in ten years. Japan benefited from a shift in US policy toward rebuilding it and from the fixed exchange rates of the Bretton Woods system. In 1964 it joined the OECD, the only member from its region until Australia joined in 1971.

• The Income Doubling Plan was conceived by the economist Shimomura Osamu and carried out by Ikeda.
• Before the war, light industry and agriculture had remained the backbone of the economy despite industrialisation.
• Ikeda had entered the Ministry of Finance in 1925 and was born in Hiroshima Prefecture.

Sources: Columbia University, Asia for Educators: Article 9 and the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty; Wikipedia: Japanese economic miracle; Wikipedia: Hayato Ikeda

Minamata disease (Identified 1956; government recognition of the cause 26 September 1968)

In 1956 the first patient with a neurological illness of unknown cause was reported at Minamata in Kumamoto Prefecture. The cause was methylmercury in wastewater from a Chisso Corporation chemical plant, which built up in the fish and shellfish that local people ate. The plant's discharge had run since 1932 and continued until 1968, and the government formally recognised the link on 26 September 1968, four months after Chisso stopped the process. A second outbreak was found in the Agano River basin in Niigata Prefecture in 1965. Government figures for the end of March 2001 show 2,955 certified patients, of whom 2,265 were on the Yatsushiro Sea coast.

• On 21 April 1956 a five-year-old girl was examined at Chisso's own factory hospital, one of the first recorded cases.
• Over 10,000 people had received financial compensation from Chisso by the early 2000s, far more than the number officially certified.
• Cats in the area showed symptoms so severe that locals gave the illness a name involving dancing cats.

Sources: Ministry of the Environment, Japan: Minamata Disease, The History and Measures, Summary; Ministry of the Environment, Japan: Minamata Disease, The History and Measures, Chapter 2; Wikipedia: Minamata disease

Kishi Nobusuke and the 1960 security treaty protests (1959 to July 1960)

Kishi Nobusuke, a former official in Manchukuo and wartime cabinet minister, was held as a suspected Class A war criminal, released without trial in 1948 and elected to the Diet in 1953. He helped found the Liberal Democratic Party and became acting prime minister on 31 January 1957 and prime minister on 25 February. His government revised the 1951 security treaty, signing the new Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security on 19 January 1960. Protests grew into the largest in Japan's modern era, and in June hundreds of thousands surrounded the Diet almost daily. On 15 June a clash in the Diet compound left a University of Tokyo student, Kanba Michiko, dead; a planned visit by US President Eisenhower was cancelled, and Kishi resigned, leaving office on 19 July.

• A second, shorter round of protests took place in 1970 at the treaty's automatic renewal.
• Kishi's successor, Ikeda Hayato, took office on 19 July 1960 and is best known for his Income Doubling Plan.
• The Liberal Democratic Party was formed in 1955 and led the party system named after that year, known as the 1955 System.

Sources: Columbia University, Asia for Educators: Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security (1960); Wikipedia: Anpo protests; Wikipedia: Nobusuke Kishi; Wikipedia: 1955 System

The Shinkansen and the 1964 Tokyo Olympics (1 to 24 October 1964)

The Tokaido Shinkansen opened on 1 October 1964, the world's first high-speed rail line, built for up to 210 km/h, though regular running was held to 160 km/h at first and 210 km/h came with the timetable of November 1965. Nine days later Emperor Hirohito opened the Tokyo Olympics, held from 10 to 24 October with 5,137 athletes from 93 nations in 163 events. Tokyo had been awarded the 1940 Games, but they were passed to Helsinki as a result of Japan's war in China. The final torchbearer, Sakai Yoshinori, was born in Miyoshi, Hiroshima Prefecture, on 6 August 1945, and he was chosen to symbolise postwar reconstruction and peace.

• Tokyo was chosen on 26 May 1959 at the IOC session in Munich, over bids from Detroit, Brussels and Vienna.
• Of the 5,137 athletes, 680 were women.
• The line runs 515.4 km between Tokyo and Shin-Osaka, a trip of 3 hours 10 minutes on the fastest trains from November 1965.

Sources: Wikipedia: 1964 Summer Olympics; Olympedia: 1964 Summer Olympics Overview; World Athletics: 1964 Olympic flame torchbearer Yoshinori Sakai dies; Wikipedia: Tokaido Shinkansen; Associated Press via Bay News 9: Man born in Hiroshima lights 1964 Tokyo Olympic cauldron

Okinawa returns to Japan (Signed 17 June 1971, in effect 15 May 1972)

After the war the Ryukyu Islands stayed under US administration. Under Prime Minister Sato Eisaku, the reversion agreement was signed simultaneously in Washington and Tokyo on 17 June 1971 by William Rogers and Aichi Kiichi. The Diet approved it on 24 November 1971, and Okinawa returned to Japan on 15 May 1972. US military bases remained on the island, a burden that a later prime minister, Noda Yoshihiko, acknowledged around the 40th anniversary. Sato had announced the Three Non-Nuclear Principles in 1967, against making, possessing or bringing in nuclear weapons, and he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974.

• Sato held office from 1964 to 1972, and his 2,798 consecutive days stood as the record until Abe Shinzo passed it in 2020.
• The Nobel committee cited his contribution to stabilising the Pacific rim and his signing of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
• In his Nobel lecture Sato named the return of the Ogasawara and Okinawa islands among the achievements of his time in office.

Sources: NobelPrize.org: Eisaku Sato, Facts; NobelPrize.org: Eisaku Sato, Nobel Lecture; Wikipedia: 1971 Okinawa Reversion Agreement; Wikipedia: Eisaku Sato; Wikipedia: Shinzo Abe

The bubble and the Lost Decades (1986 to 1991, with stagnation for decades afterward)

After the Plaza Accord of 22 September 1985 brought down the US dollar against the yen and other currencies, easy credit fed speculation in land and shares, and stock and property prices soared from 1986. On 29 December 1989 the Nikkei 225 index closed at a record 38,915.87. The Bank of Japan tightened policy, and by August 1990 the index had fallen to half its peak; other asset prices began to drop by late 1991. The stagnation that followed came to be called the Lost Decade, and the name stretched to 20 and then 30 years as weak growth went on. GDP grew only 1.14 percent a year from 1991 to 2003, and about 1 percent a year in real terms between 2000 and 2010.

• A widely repeated estimate valued the grounds of Tokyo's Imperial Palace above all the real estate in California.
• The Plaza Accord was signed by France, West Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.
• The Nikkei did not close above its 1989 record until 22 February 2024, when it ended at 39,098.68.

Sources: Wikipedia: Japanese asset price bubble; Wikipedia: Lost Decades; Wikipedia: Plaza Accord; Associated Press via Bay News 9: Japan's Nikkei stock index breaks its 1989 record

Akihito and Naruhito (Akihito 1989 to 2019; Naruhito from 1 May 2019)

Akihito, Heisei era, now Emperor Emeritus; Naruhito, Reiwa era, Emperors of Japan · Tokyo

Akihito succeeded his father Hirohito on 7 January 1989, the Heisei era began the next day, and he reigned as the 125th emperor. His reign was marked by statements of remorse to Asian countries, beginning with China in April 1989, and in October 1992 he made the first visit to China by a Japanese emperor. He abdicated on 30 April 2019, citing his age and declining health. His elder son Naruhito succeeded him on 1 May 2019, opening the Reiwa era. Naruhito studied history at Gakushuin University and at Merton College, Oxford, writing a thesis on traffic on the upper Thames, and in 1993 he married the diplomat Masako Owada; their one child is Princess Aiko.

How they came to power: Akihito, born on 23 December 1933, was Hirohito's eldest son and heir. He married Michiko Shoda, a commoner, in April 1959, in the first imperial wedding shown on Japanese television, watched by about 15 million people.

How it ended: Akihito gave up the throne in 2019 and lives as Emperor Emeritus; Naruhito reigns today. Both were alive when this entry was written.

• The name Heisei is an expression of achieving peace.
• On 17 July 2026 the Diet revised the Imperial House Law so that women of the family can keep their status after marriage and the family can adopt male-line men from the former branches; male-line succession stays, which leaves Princess Aiko outside the line.
• The Crown Prince, Akishino (Fumihito), is Naruhito's younger brother and next in line.

Sources: Imperial Household Agency: Personal Histories; Wikipedia: Akihito; Wikipedia: Naruhito; Jiji Press via Adnkronos: Japan Revises Imperial House Law for 1st Time in 79 Years

The Kono and Murayama statements (4 August 1993, 15 August 1995, 14 August 2015)

On 4 August 1993 Chief Cabinet Secretary Kono Yohei announced a government study of the "comfort women", acknowledging military involvement and coercion in many cases and offering apologies. On 15 August 1995 Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi issued a cabinet-approved statement saying that Japan, through colonial rule and aggression, caused great damage and pain, and expressed deep remorse and a heartfelt apology. In 2014 the Abe government reviewed how the Kono Statement was drafted, and Abe said in March that it would not be revised. His own statement of 14 August 2015 said Japan had repeatedly expressed remorse and apology, and that future generations with no part in the war should not be predestined to apologise, while still facing history squarely.

• During his first term in 2007, Prime Minister Abe said he did not believe women were coerced by the army.
• The Murayama Statement was issued as a cabinet decision, a more binding form than a cabinet understanding.
• Prime ministers after Murayama issued anniversary statements of their own, Koizumi Junichiro in 2005 and Abe Shinzo in 2015.

Sources: Asian Women's Fund: Statement by Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono, 4 August 1993; Wikipedia: Murayama Statement; Wikipedia: Kono Statement; Asian Women's Fund: Statement by Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, 15 August 1995; International Business Times: Full text of the Abe statement, 14 August 2015

1995: the Kobe earthquake and the Tokyo sarin attack (17 January and 20 March 1995)

At 5:46 a.m. on 17 January 1995 an earthquake of magnitude 7.3 on the Japanese scale, 6.9 on the moment scale, struck near Kobe, with the first reading ever of the top intensity of 7. It killed 6,434 people by the figure Nippon.com reports, damaged about 640,000 houses and set off about 300 fires. On 20 March members of the religious group Aum Shinrikyo, led by Asahara Shoko, released sarin on three Tokyo subway lines in the morning rush hour, killing 14, severely injuring 50 and causing vision problems for nearly 1,000 others. Over 200 members were arrested, and thirteen senior figures, including Asahara, were sentenced to death and later executed.

• Older wooden houses that were not built to resist earthquakes were among the buildings worst hit in Kobe, and the quake damaged 120 of the 150 quays in the port.
• The group had already used sarin in the Matsumoto attack nine months earlier.
• Seven of the condemned were executed on 6 July 2018.

Sources: Nippon.com: 25 Years after Disaster, Looking Back on the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake; Headquarters for Earthquake Research Promotion: The 1995 Southern Hyogo Prefecture Earthquake; Wikipedia: Kobe earthquake; Wikipedia: Tokyo subway sarin attack

The Ainu win recognition (1997 to 2020)

In 1997 a court decision on the dam at Nibutani in Hokkaido became the first in Japanese case law to acknowledge the Ainu as an indigenous people, and in May that year the 1899 Former Aborigines Protection Act was replaced by an Ainu Cultural Promotion Law. Critics said the new law offered no recognition of land or resource rights. Pressure rose after the United Nations declaration on indigenous rights of 2007, and on 6 June 2008 the Diet passed a non-binding resolution calling on the government to recognise the Ainu as indigenous. In 2019 the Diet passed an act doing so. The National Ainu Museum opened at the Upopoy complex in Shiraoi on 12 July 2020.

• Official surveys in Hokkaido received 11,450 Ainu responses in 2023, but unofficial estimates of 2002 run to 200,000 or more, because of near-total assimilation.
• When asked in May 2008, Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo said the government was not in a position to conclude that the Ainu were indigenous.
• Linguists have counted very few native speakers of Ainu: fewer than 15 by one estimate in 1993.

Sources: Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Cultural Survival: The Ainu: Beyond the Politics of Cultural Coexistence; EBSCO Research Starters: Japan Enacts a Law to Protect the Ainu People; Wikipedia: Ainu people; Wikipedia: Hokkaido Former Aborigines Protection Act

The 2011 earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima (11 March 2011)

At 14:46 on 11 March 2011 a magnitude 9.0 earthquake, the largest recorded in Japan, struck about 130 km off the Oshika Peninsula. The tsunami may have reached up to 40.5 metres at Miyako in Iwate. Japan's National Police Agency listed 15,899 dead and 2,526 missing on 10 March 2021. By March 2026 the agency's totals were 15,901 dead and 2,519 missing. The tsunami also knocked out the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, where three reactor cores largely melted within three days. The accident was rated level 7, the top of the international scale, and over 100,000 people were evacuated.

• The World Nuclear Association says there have been no deaths or cases of radiation sickness from the accident; it also records that the government in 2018 acknowledged a connection between the death from lung cancer of one former plant worker and radiation exposure.
• The maximum shaking, intensity 7 on the Japanese scale, was recorded at Kurihara in Miyagi Prefecture.
• Tepco began discharging treated water into the sea on 24 August 2023 after government approval, with IAEA staff monitoring at the site.

Sources: Japan Meteorological Agency: The 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, Portal; National Police Agency of Japan, Emergency Disaster Countermeasures Headquarters: damage table; World Nuclear Association: Fukushima Daiichi Accident; Wikipedia: 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami; Jiji Press via Adnkronos: 2,519 Still Unaccounted for 15 Yrs after Huge Quake, Tsunami

Abe Shinzo (Prime minister 2006 to 2007 and 2012 to 2020 (born 1954, died 2022))

Abe Shinzo, Prime Minister of Japan · Tokyo

Abe was prime minister from September 2006 to September 2007, and again from 26 December 2012 to 16 September 2020. On 24 August 2020 he passed Sato Eisaku's record of 2,798 consecutive days in office. He tried to counter economic stagnation with the policy known as Abenomics, with mixed results, and he passed security legislation in 2015 that allowed the Self-Defense Forces wider deployment overseas. He helped save the Trans-Pacific Partnership with a new agreement in 2018. His December 2013 visit to Yasukuni Shrine, where convicted Class A war criminals are enshrined, and his statements on wartime history drew criticism from China and South Korea, and scandals over alleged favouritism arose in his fourth cabinet.

How they came to power: He was born in Tokyo on 21 September 1954 into a political family, the son of the LDP politician Abe Shintaro and a grandson of Kishi Nobusuke. He entered the Diet in 1993.

How it ended: He was shot near Yamato-Saidaiji Station in Nara on 8 July 2022 while campaigning. The gunman, Yamagami Tetsuya, held a grudge against the Unification Church over his family's financial ruin and linked Abe to it, and on 21 January 2026 he was sentenced to life in prison.

• He was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis at 17, and he announced in 2020 that he would resign because of health concerns.
• In 2014 he approved a reinterpretation of Article 9 that gave more powers to the Self-Defense Forces.
• He and President Park Geun-hye of South Korea reached an agreement on the "comfort women" on 28 December 2015.

Sources: Wikipedia: Shinzo Abe; Wikipedia: Assassination of Shinzo Abe; International Business Times: Full text of the Abe statement, 14 August 2015

From Suga to Takaichi (16 September 2020 to today)

Suga Yoshihide, prime minister from 16 September 2020 to 4 October 2021, dealt mainly with COVID-19 and held the delayed Tokyo Olympics in the summer of 2021. Kishida Fumio governed until 1 October 2024, hosted the G7 summit in May 2023, and stepped down after the LDP slush fund scandal. Ishiba Shigeru took office on 1 October 2024, and in the snap election that followed the LDP coalition lost its lower house majority; he announced on 7 September 2025 that he would step down. Takaichi Sanae became prime minister on 21 October 2025, the first woman in the post. In the general election of 8 February 2026 the LDP won 316 of 465 seats by Nippon.com's count, or 315 in AFP's report of the official results, the most by any party since the war either way.

• After the Komeito party left the coalition, Takaichi formed a new one with the Japan Innovation Party.
• Early in her term a remark about a possible Chinese attack on Taiwan set off a diplomatic crisis with China.
• The result gave the LDP a two-thirds majority alone, above the previous record of 308 won by the Democratic Party of Japan in 2009.

Sources: Wikipedia: Sanae Takaichi; Nippon.com: A Landslide for Takaichi's LDP, House of Representatives Election Results; AFP via The Star: Japan election results confirm super-majority for Takaichi's party; Associated Press via KJZZ: Japan's Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba to resign; Wikipedia: Fumio Kishida