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The Empire of Japan, also referred to as the Japanese Empire, Imperial Japan, or simply Japan, was the Japanese nation-state that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the enactment of the reformed Constitution of Japan in 1947.
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The Empire of Japan (Japanese : 大日本帝國) also known as Imperial Japan was a historical Nation State and great power during the period from the Meiji Restoration to the Japanese defeat in World War II. It ruled the Home Islands of Japan and many other areas.
- Overview
- The Meiji Restoration
- The last shogun
Empire of Japan, historical Japanese empire founded on January 3, 1868, when supporters of the emperor Meiji overthrew Yoshinobu, the last Tokugawa shogun. Power would remain nominally vested in the imperial house until the defeat of Japan in World War II and the enactment of Japan’s postwar constitution on May 3, 1947.
The period that came to be known as the Meiji Restoration has as its focal point the coronation of the boy emperor Mutsuhito, who took as his reign name Meiji, or “Enlightened Rule.” With the ascent of Meiji, the throne replaced the Tokugawa bakufu, or shogunate, as the central executive power of Japan. The slogan of “return to antiquity” (fukkō) m...
The arrival of Westerners in the 1850s added a new dimension to domestic politics. In July 1853 an American naval force commanded by Commodore Matthew C. Perry entered the fortified harbour of Uraga. Perry refused to comply with requests to leave, and he delivered the demand that Japan end its policy of isolation and establish diplomatic relations with the United States. The following year Perry returned with a much larger fleet, and it soon became clear that the shōgun (Japanese: “barbarian-subduing generalissimo”) was unable to protect Japan from this new wave of “barbarians.” Concessions were made to them in spite of the objections of the imperial court in Kyōto, and the foundations of the shogun’s claims to power—loyalty to and protection of the throne—appeared to be crumbling. The ratification of the Treaty of Kanagawa (1854), the Harris Treaty (1858), and other agreements with Western powers triggered a wave of antagonism from Kyōto; tensions that had been building during long years of peace and relative stability were suddenly brought to the surface. The slogan “Sonnō jōi” (“Revere the emperor! Drive out the barbarians!”) was first raised by men who sought to influence the shogunal policy, but it was later taken up by others who wished to embarrass the Tokugawa.
The stirrings of revolution did not immediately centre in distant fiefs but instead in the Tokugawa house of Mito, which had done much to advance Confucian scholarship. The Mito daimyo, Tokugawa Nariaki, made vigorous attempts to involve Kyōto in the affairs of the bakufu with a view toward establishing a nationwide program of preparedness. For his assertiveness, he was placed under house arrest by tairō Ii Naosuke, the head of the council of elders in Edo (now Tokyo). On March 24, 1860, a band of Nariaki’s supporters assassinated Ii and ushered in years of violence. Many of those who took part in the subsequent fighting were young samurai who directed their martial prowess toward both foreigners and rival clans. Their swords availed little against Western guns, but they took a heavy toll on their domestic political enemies.
The years which followed were a time of extremism. The shogunate, anxious to rally support among its feudatories and to help them to prepare their defenses, relaxed its controls and regulations concerning attendance at the court in Edo. In doing so, it increased the opportunities for intrigue and conspiracy. In many fiefs young samurai endeavoured to push their feudal superiors into a less cautious and more strongly anti-foreign position. However, it soon became obvious that expelling the foreigners by force was impossible. Each anti-foreign act provoked stern countermeasures and diplomatic indemnities which tightened the Western hold on the country. The Japanese were fully aware of the outcome of the Opium Wars in China, and after the bombardment of Kagoshima (1863) and Shimonoseki (1864) there could not be any doubt of Western military superiority. Thereafter, slogans advocating antagonism and exclusion toward foreigners were used chiefly as a means of obstructing and shaming the shogunate. Policy makers in Edo were forced to make surface concessions to the anti-foreign elements, but this succeeded only in arousing the hostility of Western treaty partners. After the arrival of British minister Harry Parkes in 1865, Great Britain in particular began to tire of the difficulties of negotiating with a bakufu which stood between it and the court in Kyōto. It began to consider ways of dealing directly with what it perceived as the centre of ultimate authority.
By this time, samurai in Chōshū (now part of Yamaguchi prefecture) in far southwestern Honshu had decided to act. In 1864 they orchestrated a military coup that installed a group of former leaders of the anti-foreign movement into the inner council of the daimyo of Chōshū. These men were no longer blindly xenophobic. A group that came to be known as the Chōshū Five had secretly traveled to England to study at University College in London. Among these men were future prime minister Itō Hirobumi and future genrō (“elder statesman”) Inoue Kaoru. Their goal was nothing less than the overthrow of the shogunate and the creation of a new regime with the emperor at its head. They developed militia units that used Western training methods and weapons and included commoners alongside samurai. Discontented samurai from other domains flocked to Chōshū, and the fief became a centre of anti-Tokugawa resistance. In 1866, believing that the shogun was attempting to enlist French aid to create a centralized despotic government, Chōshū allied itself with Satsuma, the dominant feudal domain in Kyushu.
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- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
The Empire of Japan, also referred to as the Japanese Empire, Imperial Japan, or simply Japan, was the Japanese nation-state that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the enactment of the reformed Constitution of Japan in 1947.
The territory of Japan has changed throughout history. Its largest extent was the Empire of Japan. In 1938 it was 1,984,000 km 2 (800,000 sq mi). The maximum extent including the home islands and the Japanese colonial empire was 8,510,000 km 2 (3,300,000 sq mi) in 1942. After its defeat in World War II the empire was dismantled.
Records of the reigns of the emperors of Japan were compiled according to the traditional Japanese calendar, [2] and these traditional dates have been converted into the Western calendar format. Emperors of Japan. Related pages. Japanese imperial family tree. Line of succession to the Japanese throne. References.
