A Brief History According to the earliest official accounts, the eighth-century Kojiki (“Record of Ancient Matters”) and Nihon-shoki (“Chronicles of Japan”), the islands of Japan were born of a marriage between the god Izanagi and his sister Izanami. They also — but only later — gave birth to the sun, in the form of the goddess Amaterasu, who endowed the Japanese imperial family with its regalia of bronze mirror, iron sword, and jewel. The mirror is kept to this day at the Shinto shrine of Ise-Shima. Before you dismiss all this as the mere “myth” of Japan’s origins, remember that the Japanese continued to trace the imperial dynasty directly back to those deities until Emperor Hirohito in 1946 denounced “the false conception that the emperor is divine. ” Many followed Japan’s best-known novelist Yukio Mishima in deploring this formal break with tradition, and the creation myth has persisted in the popular imagination, side by side with more realistic versions of Japan’s origins. Prehistory and Early Chronicles As evidenced by bones, weapons, and pottery most recently uncovered by archeologists, the Asian equivalent of Neanderthal Man crossed a now-submerged land bridge from eastern Siberia to what is now Sakhalin Island and northern Japan some 100,000 years ago. These migrants, who later settled throughout the Japanese archipelago, were the ancestors of the present-day Ainu, whose Caucasoid facial and body hair distinguished them from subsequent immigrants from China, Manchuria, Korea, and perhaps the Malay Peninsula. It was the growth and military assertion of the newcomers that drove the “hairy people” (as they were labeled) back north to their present concentration in Hokkaido. The oldest Stone Age settlements to be discovered (10,000 b.c. ) are known as Jomon (“cord pattern”), after the style of their handmade pottery, which was among the earliest to be found anywhere in the world and of rich and imaginative design. Their inhabitants dwelled in sunken pits and lived from hunting, fishing, and the gathering of roots and nuts. It wasn’t until the third century b.c. that techniques of rice cultivation (and wheel-made pottery) arrived from Korea, along with irrigation methods that are still in use today. The scarcity of flatlands suitable for cultivation made it possible for a small aristocratic elite to gain quick control of the food resources. This set the pattern of hierarchic rule that was to prevail right up to the last half of the 19th century (some would claim, in economic terms at least, that it still persists today). Although there are no reliable accounts of this period, third-century Chinese documents speak of a Japanese priestess-queen, Himiko, ruling over a land of law-abiding people who enjoyed alcohol and were divided into classes distinguished by tattoo marks. Five centuries later, Japan’s own Kojiki and Nihon-shoki chronicles describe the creation of the imperial dynasty in the year 660 b.c. : the first emperor, Jimmu (“Divine Warrior”) — great grandson of the Sun Goddess’s grandson — embarked on an expedition of conquest from Kyushu along the Inland Sea coast to the Yamato plain of the Kinki region (near modern-day Nara). Plausible chronicling, laced with a dose of mythology, begins with the arrival of Korean scribes at the Japanese court around a.d. 400, at a time when Japan also had a military foothold in southern Korea. The state of Yamato, as early Japan was known, was organized into uji, or clusters of clans, together with subordinate guilds of farmers, fishermen, hunters, weavers, and potters, all subject to the dominant uji of the imperial family. Chinese Influences The Japanese were forced out of the Korean peninsula in the sixth century, but not before the Koreans had bequeathed to the Yamato court copies of the sacred images and scriptures of Chinese Buddhism. Just as Christianity introduced Mediterranean culture into northern Europe, so Buddhism brought Chinese culture into Japanese society. Throughout the seventh and eighth centuries numerous Japanese monks, scholars, and artists made the perilous trip west across the Sea of Japan to study Chinese religion, history, music, literature, and painting — later to be brought back for further development in Japan. An outstanding figure of this time was Prince Shotoku, who in 604 developed the “Seventeen-Article Constitution,” outlining a code of human conduct and the ideals of state as a basic law for the nation. He also established relations with the Sui dynasty in China. Through him, the Japanese imperial court developed Chinese patterns of centralized government, with its formal bureaucracy of eight court ranks. The Chinese calendar was used to calculate the year of Japan’s foundation by counting back the 1,260 years of the Chinese cosmological cycle. Thus, 660 b.c. is still the official date celebrated nationwide. At this early stage in its history Japan was already (for the most part) only nominally ruled by the emperor. De facto power was exercised by the militarily and economically strongest family. The Sogas had promoted Buddhism as an imperially sanctioned counterweight to the native Shinto religion, along with the new Chinese customs, to weaken the influence of their more conservative rivals. But they in turn were ousted in a.d. 645 by Nakatomi Kamatari, founder of the great Fujiwara clan, which was to rule Japanese affairs for hundreds of years and provide prominent advisers to the emperor even up to the 19th century. The Nara Period Another of the new ideas was to set up a permanent residential capital for the imperial court, initially at Naniwa (present-day Osaka) and then a little to the east, at Nara, in 710. Laid out like a chessboard (nearly half the size of China’s similarly designed capital, Chang’an), Nara had its imperial palace at the northern end, with court residences, Buddhist monasteries, and Shinto shrines stretching to the south. In those peaceful years, without threat of foreign invasion or civil war, there were no city ramparts. The era known as the Nara Period was marked by the religious fervor of the Buddhist monks and also by their accompanying artistic achievements. The Japanese were attracted more to Buddhism’s ritual and art than to its complex philosophy, rendered all the more difficult because its texts were, for several centuries, available only in Chinese, the language of a small court elite. Buddhist monks initiated great progress in Japanese architecture, bronze-casting, bridge-building, and sculpture. To this day, historians of Chinese art find the best surviving examples of Tang-dynasty architecture among the seventh- and eighth-century temples in and around Nara. By marrying his daughters to sons of the reigning emperor and then engineering timely abdications, a Fujiwara contrived always to be father-in-law, uncle, or grandfather behind the throne. Very often the emperor was only a minor, so that the Fujiwara patriarch acted as regent. He then persuaded the emperor to abdicate soon after his majority, and the regency would continue for the next youthful incumbent. The important thing was to have the emperor’s sanction for the regent’s political decisions. Very few emperors were reluctant to submit to Fujiwara domination. The burden of his spiritual functions as high priest of Shinto and the tasks of administration led the emperor to welcome an early abdication, frequently to retire to a life of Buddhist meditation and scholarship. The Fujiwara resented the Buddhist clergy’s great and growing influence in imperial affairs. There were too many monasteries in and around Nara. It was time to move the capital. The Golden Heian Era The geomancers in 794 decided that Heian-kyo (modern Kyoto) would be an auspicious site for the imperial family. It was indeed — until 1869. Grants of tax-free land over the years had been made to Buddhist temples and members of the court aristocracy. The most powerful families thus carved out for themselves whole regions that were to become the fiefdoms of Japanese feudalism. By the end of the eighth century the clans had created a hierarchy of shiki, or rights, from the highest to the lowest ranks of society. The aristocrat or court patron lent his prestige to a powerful provincial proprietor, who employed a competent estate-manager to oversee smallholders, who in turn worked their farms with dependent laborers. This elaborate structure of interdependent rights and obligations was to serve Japanese society right into the 20th century. Meanwhile, Heian court life blossomed in an effusion of aesthetic expression. Princes and princesses judged the merits of birds, insects, flowers, roots, or seashells. Literary party games held in ornate palace gardens required each guest to compose a small poem as his wine cup floated toward him along a miniature winding channel of water. Expeditions were organized to the best viewing points for the first spring cherry blossoms, and special pavilions were built to watch the rising of the full moon. Every gesture, from the most banal opening of an umbrella to the sublimest act of lovemaking, had its appropriate ceremonial. Conversation often took the form of elegant exchanges of improvised verse. The changing role of Chinese culture in Japanese life was epitomized in the language itself. In the absence of an indigenous alphabet, Japanese scholars had with the greatest difficulty tried to adapt the complex ideograms of monosyllabic Chinese to the essentially polysyllabic Japanese. Thus developed the katakana system used as a vehicle for writing Buddhist names and concepts. After rival Fujiwara factions had been struggling for years to gain control of the imperial throne, they turned to the Taira and Minamoto armies in 1156 to wage the four-year war that heralded the end of the golden age of the Heian court. The Taira, controlling the region along the Inland Sea, defeated the Minamoto armies based in the Kanto province east of the capital. Over the next 20 years, the Minamoto clan acquired new strength by offering better guarantees to local landowners — and their armies — than they could expect from court. Eventually a new offensive, the decisive Gempei War, was launched in 1180. Five years later, the Taira were overthrown after being defeated in the straits between western Honshu and Kyushu, at the titanic sea battle of Dannoura — which has a place in Japanese annals comparable to Waterloo or Stalingrad. Enter the Shoguns Japan’s austere, ruthless, but statesmanlike new ruler, Yoritomo Minamoto, set up his government in Kamakura (just south of modern Tokyo), well away from the “softening” influence of court life that had been the undoing of his predecessor, Kiyomori. First of the national rulers to take the title of sei-i tai-shogun (“barbarian-subduing great general”), Minamoto expanded and consolidated his power by confiscating lands from some of the defeated Taira and redistributing them to his samurai vassals. Minamoto died in 1199, and the feudal structure passed intact to the tutelage of his widow’s family, the Hojo, who were content to play regent to a figurehead shogun, in much the same way as the Fujiwara had done with the emperor. The fiction of Japanese imperial power had become infinitely extendable. The emperor at Kyoto — still seconded by a Fujiwara regent at court — legitimized a Minamoto who was himself a military dictator controlled by a Hojo regent. In a country where form and substance were inextricably interrelated, two things counted in politics: symbolic authority and real power. Neither could exist without the other. A thwarted Mongol invasion in 1274 weakened the Kamakura regime. The fighting brought none of the usual spoils of war that provincial warlords and samurai had come to expect as payment. And the treasury was empty after earthquake, famine, and plague had crippled the economy. Buddhist monasteries were using their private armies to support imperial ambitions to bring power back to Kyoto. Worst of all, the Kamakura warriors, resenting the way the Kyoto court referred to them as “Eastern barbarians,” sought refinement in a ruinous taste for luxury: extravagant feasts, rich costumes, and opulent homes. Kamakura was falling apart. Creative Turmoil The subsequent power struggle at first split the country into two imperial courts, and then effective control of Japan was splintered for two centuries among scores of daimyo (feudal warlords). Eventually, the Ashikaga family shoguns settled down in Kyoto’s Muromachi district, which gave its name to the new creative period that followed. The gruff, bluff warriors’ taste for art — calligraphy, landscape painting, the tea ceremony, music, dance, and theater — coincided with a renewed interest in things Chinese, above all the teachings of Zen Buddhism. Although Zen had been present in Japan since the 12th century, its ascendancy began under the Kamakura regime, which found the mystic Chinese philosophy admirably suited to Japanese sensitivity, impressionism, and love of form and ritual. The Ashikaga shoguns and their samurai were greatly attracted by an essentially anti-intellectual doctrine that transmitted its truth from master to disciple by practical example rather than scholarly study of texts. Enlightenment (satori) was to be achieved through self-understanding and self-discipline, combining tranquillity and individualism. After their savage battles, the warriors recuperated through meditation in the peace of a Zen monastery rock garden. From 1467 to 1568, civil war constantly raged up and down the country among some 260 daimyo, from which a dozen finally emerged victorious. They had fought with mass armies of infantry rather than relying on the old cavalry elite. Although swords, bows, and arrows remained the mainstays of warfare, suddenly matchlocks, muskets, and cannons made their appearance. The Europeans had arrived. In 1543 Portuguese explorers reached Tanegashima Island, off southern Kyushu, followed over the next decade by Portuguese traders and Jesuit missionaries, headed by St Francis Xavier, who landed at Kagoshima in 1549. Many Kyushu daimyo adopted Christianity as a means of winning favor with the Portuguese traders, without necessarily abandoning their Buddhist beliefs or Shinto practices. Converted nine years earlier, daimyo Omura founded the port of Nagasaki as a center for Portuguese trade in 1571. The town was handed over to the Jesuits in 1579. By 1582, Christian converts were estimated at 150,000; by 1615 there were half a million throughout the country. (Through all the vagaries of persecution and war, Nagasaki has remained the major center of Japanese Christianity. ) Trade with the Portuguese — and the Dutch — launched a craze for tobacco, bread, potatoes, clocks, pantaloons, and eyeglasses, the latter very often worn as a chic symbol of intellectual superiority rather than as an aid for poor eyesight. Momoyama Unification By 1568, when Kyoto was at last seized from the Ashikaga shogunate, three ruthless generals — Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa — had banded together to eliminate all remaining opposition. Realizing the importance of Western military technology, Nobunaga mastered the manufacture of gunpowder and made firearms from melted-down temple bells. The triumphant trio were the first to develop the appropriate defenses against the new firepower. They replaced the old small castles on high ground protected only by wooden stockades with large central fortresses out of range behind broad moats, surrounded by solid stone ramparts and earthworks strong enough to resist cannon fire. Cleverest of the three , Nobunaga used another Western weapon, Christianity, against the principal remaining threat to his authority — the strongholds surrounding Kyoto. While sending out armies to destroy the Buddhist monasteries and confiscate their lands, he simultaneously fostered Christianity to win adepts away from the Buddhist faith. Nobunaga was assassinated by one of his own generals in 1582, and Hideyoshi, who had started out as a simple infantryman, succeeded him. Seeing in Christianity a threat to his central authority, Hideyoshi systematically suppressed Christian activity; in 1597 six missionaries and 20 Japanese converts were crucified at Nagasaki. He was also a master of the art of conspicuous consumption, contrasting sharply with the restraint shown by the Ashikaga shoguns in their more subtle displays of wealth. The gigantic castle he erected at Osaka was the biggest Japan had ever seen, requiring a work force of 30,000 men. Perhaps his most astounding coup was the monstrous Kitano tea ceremony attended by hundreds of rich and poor followers, who were all obliged to stay to the end. It lasted ten days. Tokugawa Takes All When Hideyoshi died in 1598, he hoped to have his five-year-old son continue his “dynasty,” initially under the tutelage of five regents. But one of the regents was Ieyasu Tokugawa, who had been biding his time at Edo for 12 years, nurturing dynastic ambitions of his own. Of the cunning, ruthless triumvirate that came out on top at the end of the country’s century of civil war, Tokugawa was without doubt the most patient, the most prudent — and most treacherous. He moved quickly to eliminate his strongest rivals, crushing them in 1600 at the great Battle of Sekigahara (near modern Nagoya). During its subsequent two and a half centuries of rule from the new capital established at Edo, the Tokugawa organized a tightly controlled coalition of some 260 daimyo in strategic strongholds throughout the country. The allegiance of this highly privileged and prestigious group was ensured by cementing their ethical principles in the code of bushido, “the way of the warrior”: loyalty to one’s master, defense of one’s status and honor, and fulfillment of all obligations. Loyalty was further enforced by holding the vassals’ wives and children hostage in Edo. All roads into Edo, the most famous being the Tokaido Highway, had checkpoints for guns coming in and for wives going out. One of the most effective ways of keeping a tight rein on the country was to cut it off from the outside world, to keep Japan Japanese. At first, Ieyasu Tokugawa was eager to promote foreign trade. He wanted silk and encouraged the Dutch and British as good, nonproselytizing Protestants just interested in trade. But he didn’t like the Portuguese and Spanish Catholic missionaries, who he felt were undermining traditional Japanese values. He banned their activities in 1612 and two years later ordered the expulsion of all missionaries and unrepentant Japanese converts. Executions and torture followed. Converts were forced to renounce their faith by trampling crucifixes and effigies of Jesus and Mary. The Catholic Church has counted 3,125 martyrs in Japan from 1597 (beginning under Hideyoshi) to 1660. In 1635 the Japanese were forbidden, on pain of death, to attempt to travel abroad, and Japanese citizens already overseas were prevented from returning, in case they brought back subversive Christian doctrines. Western books were banned, as were Chinese books that mentioned Christianity. After the purge of foreigners, only a few stayed on, strictly confined to Dejima Island in Nagasaki Bay. This isolation slowed Japan’s technological and institutional progress almost to a halt. But it also had the effect of permitting a great, distinctive cultural growth with a strong national identity. The Tokugawa thus celebrated the ancestral religion of Shinto — glorified by the monumentally opulent shrines they built at Nikko. Combining Shinto ritual with official Buddhist conformity, they revived the Confucian ideals of filial piety and obedience to authority to bolster their government. Commerce thrived, partly in response to the extravagant demands of the Tokugawa court. Merchants thronged to the large cities that were growing up around the castles at Edo (population already 1 million in the 18th century), Osaka (400,000), and Nagoya and Kanazawa (each 100,000) — all huge in comparison with European cities of the time. Japan’s overall population in the 18th century was already about 30 million. Merchants played an active role in creating the urban culture that burgeoned at the end of the 17th century, the so-called Genroku era. Before these hard-working family men went home from work, they liked to drink strong alcohol in the company of actresses and prostitutes. These were the forerunners of the geisha — literally “accomplished person” — with a beauty and refinement that the merchants did not seek in their wives, whom they valued for their childbearing and good housekeeping. These were also halcyon days for the classic noh theater, the more popular kabuki, and the puppet theater (today’s bunraku) at Osaka, which was Japan’s cultural capital at a time when Edo had more politicians and soldiers than artists. In the end it was the very rigidity of their unshared control of the country that brought about the downfall of the Tokugawa. Without access to foreign markets, there was no way to counter the rash of catastrophes — plague, drought, floods, and famine — at the end of the 18th century. Uprisings in the towns and countryside began to pose serious threats to the shogun’s authority. The Tokugawa reaction was characteristic: a reinforcement of the austere values of the samurai and a rigorous clamp-down on the merchants’ high life. There was no more gambling, prostitutes were arrested, and men and women were segregated in the public bathhouses, with naked government spies to enforce the (short-lived) new rules. The Yankees Are Coming The feeling began to grow that the only way out of the crisis was to open the country to foreign trade and new ideas. The Tokugawa shoguns, however, sensed that the internal strains might be contained, by sheer brute force if necessary, as long as new pressures were not exerted from outside by foreigners once again offering disgruntled daimyo new sources of income. The stubborn Americans came back again in 1853, with Commodore Matthew Perry bringing for the shogun (whom he mistook for the emperor) a polite but insistent letter from President Millard Fillmore and a promise to return the next year, with a bigger squadron, for a positive response. In 1854 Perry duly negotiated the Treaty of Kanagawa (now part of Yokohama), opening up two ports, Shimoda on the Izu Peninsula and Hakodate in Hokkaido. A short time later, similar treaties were signed with Britain and Russia. The West had driven in the thin end of its wedge. More and more ports were opened to foreign trade, and the Japanese were obliged to accept low import tariffs. As the Tokugawa shoguns had feared, this opening of the floodgates of Western culture after such prolonged isolation had a traumatic effect on Japanese society. The Tokugawa had successfully persuaded the samurai that traditional Japanese values might suffer, and now the samurai felt betrayed, rallying under the slogan “Sonno joi! ” (“Honor the emperor, expel the barbarians! ” ). Before they could even think of accepting contact with the outside world, national integrity had to be restored, under the renewed moral leadership of the emperor. Bands of samurai assassinated British and Dutch representatives. In 1863, the daimyo of Choshu (in western Honshu) fired on foreign ships in the Shimonoseki Straits. In response, the Americans, British, Dutch, and French combined forces to smash the Choshu fortified positions, and Britain retaliated for the assassination by practically leveling the town of Kagoshima in southern Kyushu. The local daimyo of Satsuma was so impressed that he started to buy British ships, which became the foundation of the future Imperial Japanese Navy. The Meiji Restoration In 1868 the Satsuma and Choshu clans, never a real threat to Tokugawa authority as long as they remained rivals, joined forces to overthrow the shogun and restore the authority of the emperor, the 14-year-old Mitsuhito. Edo was renamed Tokyo (“Eastern Capital”), and Mitsuhito took over the Tokugawa castle as his palace. But important though the resuscitated imperial authority undoubtedly was, the real power under the restoration known as Meiji (“Enlightened Rule”) was in the hands of a new generation of forward-looking administrators, who set about abolishing the ancient feudal apparatus in favor of a modern government based on merit rather than ancestry. They emphasized the need to acquire Western military and industrial skills and technology with which to confront the West itself and eliminate unfair trade tariffs and other unjust aspects of the foreign treaties. Agriculture, commerce, and traditional manufacturing were expanded to provide a sound economic base for investment in the modern technology of textiles and other industries. Shipbuilding and weapons manufacture were already under way; railways and telegraph lines quickly followed. And to show just how fast Japan’s new rulers were catching on, two punitive expeditions were launched against Korea and China in the grand manner of 19th-century gunboat diplomacy. There was an inevitable reaction to rapid Westernization. Traditional Japanese theater, the tea ceremony, ikebana flower arrangement, and the old martial arts all came back into favor. In 1890 an important imperial edict on education was issued, promoting Asian (that is, Chinese and Japanese) values in culture and stressing loyalty to the emperor and general harmony. If the singing in school of military songs such as “Come, Foes, Come! ” or “Though the Enemy Be Tens of Thousands Strong” seems excessively belligerent today, we should not forget jingoistic attitudes in Europe and America at the time. Japan made a dramatic debut on the international stage, with military actions against China and Russia. The 1894 Sino-Japanese War for control of the Korean markets and the strategic region of southern Manchuria was a triumph for Japan’s modernized army over China’s larger but much less well-organized forces. More impressive still was Japan’s success against the powerful war machine of Czarist Russia (1904–1905), beginning with a surprise nighttime attack on the Russian fleet, to be repeated some years later at Pearl Harbor. The West was forced to accept Japan’s occupation of southern Manchuria and the annexation of Korea in 1910. In just 40 years, Japan had established itself as a viable world power. Triumph and Disaster The 20th century saw a stupendous release of energies that had been pent up for the 250 years of Tokugawa isolation. By 1930 raw-material production had tripled the figure of 1900, manufactured goods had increased twelve-fold, and heavy industry was galloping towards maturity. Britain led the World War I allies in large orders for munitions, while Japan expanded sales of manufactured goods to Asian and other markets cut off from their usual European suppliers. Merchant shipping doubled in size and increased its income ten-fold as the European fleets were destroyed. Setbacks in the 1930s caused by the European postwar slump were only a spur to redouble efforts by diversifying heavy industry into the machine-making, metallurgical, and chemical sectors. Even the terrible 1923 Tokyo earthquake, which cost over 100,000 lives and billions of dollars, provided another stimulus due to the construction boom that followed. Riding the crest of this economic upsurge were the zaibatsu conglomerates — a dozen family-run combines, each involved in mining, manufacturing, marketing, shipping, and banking. These tightly controlled commercial pyramids were the true heirs to the old feudal structures. Japan’s progress toward parliamentary democracy was halted in the 1930s by the growing nationalism being imposed on government by the generals and admirals. They proclaimed Japan’s mission to bring progress to its backward Asian neighbors in language not so very different from that of the Europeans in Africa or the US in Latin America. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Soviet Union was regarded as a major threat to Japan’s security, and the army felt it needed Manchuria and whatever other Chinese territory it could control as a buffer against Russian advances. In 1931 the Japanese occupied Manchuria. And then in 1937, with the popular support of ultra-right-wing groups, the army overrode parliamentary resistance in Tokyo and went to war against the Chinese Nationalists. By 1938, they held Nanking, Hankow, and Canton. Japanese expansionist policies were leading to direct confrontation with the West. Japan hoped that war in Europe would divert the Soviet Union from interference in East Asia, giving Japan a free hand both in China and, through its alliance with Germany, in French Indochina after the defeat of France. The US responded to the Japanese invasion of Indochina with a trade and fuel embargo, cutting off 90 percent of Japan’s supplies. The result was the attack on the American fleet at Pearl Harbor (7 December 1941) and total war. Early successes in the Philippines, Borneo, Malaya, Singapore, and the Dutch East Indies enabled Japan to establish the so-called Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The “liberation” of these old European colonies created the basis for postwar independence movements proclaiming the Japanese slogan “Asia for the Asians. ” Despite this, the various occupied populations quickly found themselves suffering harsher and more brutal treatment than they had ever experienced under their former colonial rulers. The Battle of Midway, in June 1942 — destroying Japan’s four aircraft carriers and soon thereafter its merchant navy and remaining naval air-power — cut Japan off from its empire. In 1944 General Douglas MacArthur was back in the Philippines to direct the island-hopping advance that ended in the massive fire-bombing of Japan’s mostly wood-built cities. In an air raid by 130 B29s, Tokyo was devastated and 100,000 of its inhabitants perished. But Japan was reluctant to sue for peace because the Allies were demanding unconditional surrender with no provision for maintaining the highly symbolic role of the emperor, still considered the embodiment of Japan’s spirit and divine origins. Despite US intelligence reports and monitored communications indicating the desperation of large sections of the Japanese government for peace, the Japanese rejection of the Potsdam Declaration calling for Japan’s unconditional surrender was the excuse for unleashing the ultimate weapon of the war. On 6 August 1945, a B29 (the Enola Gay) dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, inflicting a level of destruction that astonished even the bomb’s designers. Three days later another atomic bomb devastated the southern port of Nagasaki. On 8 August the Soviet Union entered the Pacific battlefront and on the next day marched into Manchuria. Five days later the Japanese people heard the voice of Emperor Hirohito, in his first radio broadcast, announcing that “the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage. ” The emperor renounced his divinity, and US forces took formal control of Japan. Peace and Prosperity After years of government propaganda predicting the worst atrocities, most Japanese civilians were surprised at the warmth and friendliness of the occupying forces. The postwar period began, however, with millions of displaced people homeless and starving. To counter a perceived communist threat from the Soviet Union, the US quickly set to work reconstructing the economy by transforming Japan’s institutions and devising a new pacifist constitution. Article 9 renounced Japan’s right to maintain armed forces, although the ambiguous wording was later taken to permit the creati on of a “self-defense” force. The zaibatsu conglomerates that had proved so instrumental in boosting Japan’s militarism were disbanded, later to re-emerge as the keiretsu trading conglomerates that dominated the economy once again. The entire economy received a massive jump-start with the outbreak of the Korean War, with Japan ironically becoming the chief local supplier for an army it had battled so furiously just a few years earlier. The occupation lasted until 1952, having already planted the seeds for Japan’s future stunning economic success. Economic output was back to prewar levels, and British auto companies provided the support needed to get Japan’s auto industry back on its feet. Japanese companies then enthusiastically imported any Western technologies they could get their hands on. This included transistor technology — invented in the US but then considered to have only limited applications — for the surreal sum of $25,000. It was Japan that produced the world’s first transistor radio. The electronic technology spurt that followed is now legendary. Parliamentary democracy finally came into its own, albeit with distinctly Japanese characteristics reflecting the dislike of debate and confrontation and the group-oriented preference for maintaining the appearance of harmony at all times. The government, through the powerful Finance Ministry and Ministry of International Trade and Industry, generously supported favored private corporations: first shipping, then cars, then electronics firms basked in the warmth of the government’s loving attentions. Japan overtook Britain economically in 1964. By the end of the decade, Japan’s was the third largest economy in the world — less then two decades after the war had left the country in ruins. Prosperity was not without its own problems: pollution caused by “dirty” industries, a high incidence of stomach ulcers (even suicides) among schoolchildren pressured by over-ambitious parents, and the awkward questions of what to do about nuclear energy. The famous coziness among politicians, bureaucrats, and private companies, together with the strong cultural emphasis on relationship-building and a lack of transparency and accountability, eventually led to corrupt practices of endemic proportions. Breach-of-trust scandals became common. In an increasingly producer-led economy dominated by price-fixing cartels operating with the government’s blessing, consumers were left to foot the bill. The Inevitable Collapse The start of asset inflation in the 1980s led to the “bubble economy,” with anyone owning land becoming richer by the minute. At one point the land value of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo was thought to be worth more than the entire real-estate value of Canada. With astonishing sums of money sloshing around the economy and Japanese products considered world-beaters everywhere, it seemed to the Japanese that the nation had finally achieved its rightful place in the world. Everyone expected the double-digit growth rates to continue indefinitely. However, crashing real estate prices had a domino effect on the rest of the economy, and in the early 1990s Japan slipped quickly into stagnation and then recession. Seemingly endemic corruption was compounded by a remarkable dearth of political leadership and decisive action. Indeed, in Japan’s consensus-based management system, the response of politicians, bureaucrats, and business leaders seemed to be to look the other way and hope bad news would disappear. The government’s gradual and reluctant admission that, despite previous assurances, banks were sitting on staggering — and long-concealed — amounts of unrecoverable loans (originally secured against land values) caused an unprecedented crisis of confidence. Growing economic decline brought record corporate bankruptcies and the end of lifetime employment, as companies were forced to improve efficiency in order to survive. The irony is that although Japan has continually triumphed over externally imposed adversity and upheavals, it seems unable to implement effective reforms to its own systems before problems reach crisis proportions. The rote-learning educational system is still failing to help students develop the individual analytical and problem-solving skills required in the information age. Another example is the banking crisis, which grew to globally alarming proportions over an eight-year period before the government even admitted a problem existed. Despite these formidable challenges, Japan will probably end up confounding the pessimists. It will likely emerge in the 21st century as a regional leader in more than just economic terms. No matter what the future holds, Japan will remain one of the world’s most intriguing destinations for travelers everywhere.