Brief Japanese History

The period from 1603 to 1867 was called Edo Period or Tokugawa Period. This started when there 250 warring daimyos. There was one called Oda Nobunaga which tried to unify the lands, it got the Central daimyos unified but their ruler died. So a former general Hideyoshi took over and moved the capital to a fishing village called Edo. The general then died, but before he set up a ruling faction until his son was old enough to take the throne. When his song took the throne, his power was challenged by others but he beat them at the Battle of Sekigahara. He then took the title Shogun, military dictator. He then took up Edo as his headquarters for his Shogunate. By 1612 all remaining daimyos were to swear loyalty to Ieyasu, the general's son. After that, they set up laws about taxing, building, etc. Then in 1615 they even put up that no fortifications could be built and marriages must be allowed. To further this, he created three classes; Shimpan, related to the Tokugawa; Fudai, loyal to the Tokugawa; finally Tozama, independent since before 1600. In 1623 the term samurai was formed when Edo became a military force in Japan. From 1600 to 1720 the population had grown from 12 million to 31 million people, in the time called the Edo Golden Age. From then all, peasants and some samurai practiced birth control to limit the population. There then came a famine in 1783-4 which was then fallowed by the eruption of Mount Asama in central Japan. This ruined crops and rivers in the area. In the 18th century peasants began to revolt, not a revolution but to lower taxes. By the 19th century western power was growing and the isolation was becoming threatened. In 1806 a Russian force destroyed a settlement and this to the Japanese was an Oman for what was to come. In 1833 more crop failures came to affect Japan. In 1837, increasing British, French and other foreigners came into Japanese ports. Foreign affairs reached a crisis point in 1853, when American naval officer Matthew Calbraith Perry led an expedition into Edo Bay. He was trying to imply with his ships to make the Shogun sign a treaty. He signed but it only opened a few ports, then a second one was signed which opened more. By the end of the 50's, they had diplomatic relations with the west.

In 1868 a coup set in and brought to power a younger emperor named Meiji. He abolished the office of shogun. This then set into force a civil war called the Boshin Civil War. They made the old Edo system look feudal even though they still looked it, with keeping the peasants at the bottom and making them carry out burdens. The restoration has to deal with, that the new leaders were more open to new ideas with the west than the old Edo had been. Meiji then set into a modernization of his military and industry.

After the modernization, Japan was sent into war against Russia in the war that became known as Russo-Japanese War in 1905. The war started when they expanded into Asia. The Japanese won the war after the Russians were coming to invade and a Storm came and knocked them out of any chances. They named the stormed "Divine Wind", which means Kamikaze, which they would bring back in the 40's against the Americans in the Pacific.

Japan joined World War I (1914-1918) on the side of Britain and its allies. They had limited action, one thing they did was take the German port of Jiaozhu. In 1918 they joined the allies in the anti-Bolshevik forces in Siberia. They kept their forces there until 1922. This war brought a boom to the Japanese economy.

After the boom, they hit a decline during the 20's after some recessions and the Kanto Earthquake. That caused the agricultural prices to drop and it grew worse from the Great Depression in the west. These drops in the economy caused great distrust with the higher up political leaders, saying that they reacted to slow to the crisis. They were looking for better leadership.

Even though they were in hardship, the Japanese military started to launch political expansions. Their reasoning was to protect their treaty in Manchuria and parts of China that the Chinese Nationalist might take over. Due that the Nationalists were communists; the Japanese Officers felt that an alliance might be formed with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Others thought it was for economic gain. On September 18, 1931, officers of Japan's Kwangtung army blew up tracks in Manchuria that they didn't not occupy. Afterwards they held all of the land around it. The United States and Britain condemned Japan for its violation of the Kellogg-Briand Pact but did little to stop the occupation. In 1933 the league requested Japan cease all hostilities in China. Instead, Japan withdrew fro the League. In 1933, a truce was set up with China between China and Manchuria. In 1936, Japan signed an anti-communists pact with Germany and a year later, the same pact with Italy. On July 7, 1937, a Chinese