Lying off the east coast of mainland Asia, Japan is an island country of East Asia. It consists of four main islands and a few thousand smaller islands in the western North Pacific Ocean. Japan ranks high in population density and tenth in population among the world’s countries. Its capital, Tokyo, is one of the world’s largest cities. Area 145,898 square miles (377,873 square kilometers). Population (2019 est.) 126,244,000.
Japan is one of the world’s most technologically and economically advanced countries. It began its modern period in the late 19th century. For more than 250 years before then, Japan had largely cut itself off from the outside world. Then in 1868 the country began a period of major political, economic, and social change. It renewed its contacts with Western countries and launched a program of modernization and Westernization, or adopting aspects of Western culture. The Japanese skillfully developed the technological base for modern industry and built their country into a leading world power.
In the 20th century, Japan began invading other countries in Asia in the attempt to build a large overseas empire. However, Japan suffered a crushing military defeat in World War II (1939–45). Set back temporarily by wartime destruction, Japan rose rapidly to achieve the fastest growing economy of any major country in the postwar period, again becoming a world power. This time, however, its strength was based not on armed might but on the productivity of its peacetime industry.
Japan’s spectacular economic growth brought the country to the forefront of the world economy. The phrase economic miracle has been used to describe Japan’s recovery from the ravages of World War II. By the early 1990s, however, its economic growth had slowed considerably and was being challenged by other countries in East and Southeast Asia. Nevertheless, in the early 21st century Japan remained a global leader in manufacturing, trade, and finance.
In few other places in the world do the values and traditions of the past continue to flourish so strongly alongside the ideas and practices of the present. The persisting contrast between the new and the old, the modern and the traditional, is one of the most characteristic features of present-day Japan.
Urbanization, industrialization, and modern transportation and communication rapidly changed the Japanese way of life. The effect of these developments was keenly felt not only in the cities, but also in the countryside. However, beneath Japan’s “new look” lie the deep-seated customs and institutions of traditional Japanese culture—in religion, in politics, and especially in family life. The people of Japan largely continue to respect and honor their past. Their society as a whole continues to adhere to the concepts of personal loyalty and obligation that have been a tradition through the ages.
Japan comprises an island chain along mainland Asia’s east coast. The islands stretch about 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) from northeast to southwest. Nearly all of the country’s land area is taken up by the four main islands—from north to south they are Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu. Japan’s largest island by far is Honshu, with about three-fifths of the total area. On Honshu are most of Japan’s principal cities and the heaviest concentration of people. Among the country’s numerous smaller islands are the Ryukyu (Nansei) Islands, including the island of Okinawa, to the south and west of Kyushu. The other major groups of smaller islands are the Izu, Bonin (Ogasawara), and Volcano (Kazan) islands to the south and east of central Honshu.
Japan has no land border with any other country. Across the Sea of Japan to the west are North Korea and South Korea, and across the Sea of Japan to the northwest and the Sea of Okhotsk to the north is Russia. Across the East China Sea to the west is China. Southwest of Japan’s Ryukyu Islands are Taiwan and the Philippines. The open waters of the vast Pacific Ocean wash Japan’s eastern and southeastern shores. Across the Pacific, more than 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) away, is the United States mainland.
The islands of Japan are the exposed tops of massive undersea ridges that rise from the floor of the Pacific Ocean on the eastern edge of the Asian continental shelf. The islands are geologically young and unstable. They have been subjected to considerable folding, faulting, and volcanic activity. As a result, the land surface of the Japanese islands is rugged. Mountains and hills cover more than 80 percent of the land surface and divide the islands into hundreds of subunits. This creates a landscape of great variety and beauty and gives Japanese life a small-scale compactness. The largest and highest mountain mass, part of which is known as the Japanese Alps, is in central Honshu. From it mountain chains extend northward to Hokkaido and southwest to Shikoku and Kyushu. These mountain chains are gouged by many short river valleys and interrupted by many small lowland plains.
Only one-quarter of Japan’s land surface has a slope of less than 15 degrees. Most Japanese plains have been formed by river deposits and lie along the seacoast. The largest lowland, the Kanto Plain of east-central Honshu, has an area of more than 6,000 square miles (15,500 square kilometers). In it sits the city of Tokyo. Among the country’s smaller, yet intensely utilized, plains are the Nobi Plain, the site of the city of Nagoya. Another notable plain lies in the Kinki (Kansai) region, near the cities of Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe.
The numerous rivers of Japan are short and have small drainage basins. Only two of them are more than 200 miles (310 kilometers) long—the Shinano and the Tone, both on Honshu. Of the two, the Shinano is the longest, at 228 miles (367 kilometers) long. The Tone drains the largest area—7,100 square miles (18,400 square kilometers).
Japan’s rivers are generally steeply sloped. They tend to carry heavy loads of sediment (tiny rock and soil fragments) from the mountains to the lowlands. On the lowlands the rivers are usually shallow and braided and flow through gravel-filled beds. Often they have built-up natural levees and are elevated above the river plains. Their flow rates vary greatly with the seasonal rains.
Although of little use for navigation, the rivers of Japan are used intensively for irrigation, urban water supply, and the generation of electricity. Floods are common, especially during the typhoon (tropical cyclone) season, and are highly destructive in the heavily populated river valleys and plains. Japan has few lakes. The largest is Lake Biwa, in west-central Honshu.
Japan’s coastline is unusually long in relation to the country’s total land area. The Pacific coast has many deep indentations, among them Tokyo, Suruga, and Ise bays on Honshu and the Inland Sea between Honshu and Shikoku. The indentations are separated by rugged peninsulas and headlands. Among them are the Boso and Izu peninsulas. The west coast of Kyushu is also deeply indented, and there are many small offshore islands. The Sea of Japan coast of Honshu, however, is much straighter and has long stretches of sand dunes and beach ridges.
Japan’s numerous volcanoes and frequent earthquakes are evidence of the instability of the rocks underlying the country. This instability is caused by the movement of several of Earth’s major crustal plates near the Japanese islands (see plate tectonics). The country has about 200 volcanoes and volcanic groups, of which about 60 have been active in recorded history. Some of the volcanoes are cone-shaped and rise to the highest elevations in Japan. Others are calderas, or craters where cones once stood.
Mount Fuji, the famous volcanic cone, is the highest peak in Japan. It rises to 12,388 feet (3,776 meters). Mount Fuji has been dormant since 1707. Mount Asama in central Honshu and Mount Sakurajima in southern Kyushu are well-known active volcanoes. Among the most notable calderas are Mount Aso in Kyushu and Mount Akan in Hokkaido. There are many hot springs in the country’s volcanic zones.
Japan experiences some 1,000 tremors each year, most of them minor. However, major earthquakes have caused considerable loss of life and widespread destruction. Severe earthquakes that cause damage over small areas occur about every five or six years in Japan. One of the worst was the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, which, combined with the ensuing fire, wiped out much of Tokyo and Yokohama. More than 140,000 lives were lost. An earthquake in Kobe in 1995 killed about 6,400 people.
Undersea earthquakes in the North Pacific basin stir up unusually large tsunamis, a type of giant sea wave, that are very destructive when they reach the Japanese coast. In 1896 a tsunami seven stories high obliterated several villages near Sanriku, drowning roughly 26,000 people. In 2011 a powerful earthquake and large tsunami devastated Honshu’s eastern coast, killing more than 18,000 people (see Japan earthquake and tsunami of 2011). That event also led to a nuclear accident at a coastal power plant.
For a small country, Japan has a great variety of climatic conditions. This is partly because its islands extend across a large north-south distance. The islands are also in the zone where the conflicting air masses of the Asian continent and of the Pacific Ocean meet and interact. The continental air masses make for more extreme temperatures, both in winter and in summer, and result in large annual temperature ranges. But their effect is moderated by the strong marine influence, which also produces high humidity and abundant rainfall. Japan’s rugged terrain also causes many local variations in weather and climate.
Japan’s climate is generally governed by wet and dry seasonal winds, called monsoons. During the winter, the country is primarily under the influence of cold air masses moving out of Siberia, Russia, deep in the Asian interior. Biting northwest winds pass over the Sea of Japan and cross the islands of Japan. Moisture picked up over the Sea of Japan is deposited on Japan’s west coast in the form of heavy snows that are among the deepest in the world.
During the summer, Japan is under the influence of air moving in from the Pacific Ocean. Southeast winds prevail, making the summer months hot and humid. The cycle of the seasons brings frequent, often sharp, changes in the weather, especially during the spring and autumn months.
Japan’s climate, especially along the coasts, is also affected by two ocean currents along the Pacific coast. The warm Kuroshio, or Japan Current, flows northward, while the cold Oya (or Kuril) Current flows southeastward. The two currents meet off northeastern Honshu. The Kuroshio, on the lee—or sheltered—side of Japan in winter, has little warming effect on land temperatures. The Tsushima Current, a branch of the Kuroshio, passes into the Sea of Japan by way of Korea Strait and slightly warms offshore waters. The Oya reduces summer temperatures and creates dense fog banks off the coasts of northeastern Honshu and Hokkaido.
Virtually all of Japan except parts of eastern Hokkaido averages more than 40 inches (100 centimeters) of precipitation annually. Several coastal mountain areas in Honshu get more than 120 inches (300 centimeters). The area around the Inland Sea, eastern Honshu north of Tokyo Bay, and western Hokkaido average 40 to 60 inches (100 to 150 centimeters) of annual precipitation. The Sea of Japan coast gets more precipitation in winter, largely in the form of snow, than it does in summer. The reverse is true for the Pacific coast, where summer precipitation exceeds that of winter. In northern Hokkaido, snow falls an average of 130 days per year; along the Sea of Japan, 80 days; on the Pacific coast south and west of Tokyo Bay, only 10 days.
Japan has rainy seasons in June and September, though there is some precipitation throughout the year. The main, June rainy season is called the baiu, or tsuyu, and has many days of continuous rain. The September rainy season is called the shurin. It is associated with occasional typhoons, tropical storms like the hurricanes of southeastern North America. These move to the north and northeast in a clockwise arc from their spawning grounds east of the Philippines. When they strike Japan, they cause destructive floods and landslides. However, the typhoons also restore water levels, which drop during the dry days of late summer.
Typhoons bring roughly one-third of the rain that falls annually on the Pacific coast of Asia. In 1959 one of the worst typhoons of modern times tore through the city of Nagoya and across central Honshu. Approaching typhoons are carefully watched by the Japan Meteorological Agency, which issues special bulletins on their progress.
Seasonal temperatures in Japan generally increase from north to south. Average January temperatures are 15 to 20 °F (–9 to –7 °C) in Hokkaido; 35 to 40 °F (2 to 4 °C) in central Honshu; and 45 °F (7 ° C) in southern Kyushu. There is little difference in winter temperatures between the west and east coasts, though the skies are more overcast on the west coast and clearer and sunnier on the east coast. Summers are hot and humid throughout Japan. July temperatures average 77 to 80 °F (25 to 27 °C) in Kyushu, Shikoku, and southern and central Honshu; 72 to 75 °F (22 to 24 °C) in northern Honshu; and a cooler 65 to 70 °F (18 to 21 °C) in Hokkaido.
The clear, hot weather of summer arrives in mid-July, following the baiu rains. It is ended by the shurin rains. The length of the frost-free, or growing, season ranges from 250 days or more along the Pacific coast south from Tokyo Bay to only 120 days in central Hokkaido. Early autumn frosts in northern Japan and late spring frosts in central and southern Japan pose a seasonal threat to farming.
The trees, shrubs, and flowering plants of Japan are as varied as its terrain and climate. Forests cover most of the land surface that has not been cleared by humans. Coniferous (cone-bearing), broad-leaved, and mixed forests are the three main types. Pine, cypress, hemlock, cedar, fir, and spruce are commercially valuable conifers. The numerous broad-leaved trees include oak, maple, ash, birch, beech, poplar, chestnut, and horse chestnut. Subtropical forms such as bamboo and palms grow as far north as central Honshu.
Many native plant species have been destroyed or reduced by humans, and new species from the Asian mainland have been introduced. Virgin forests have been preserved in limited areas.
Japan’s large mammals include bear, badger, otter, mink, deer, and fox. One monkey, the Japanese macaque, is found as far north as northern Honshu; the monkeys there are the northernmost monkeys in the world. The seas adjacent to Japan are the home of whales, porpoises, and dolphins. Japanese bird species include many water and wading birds, songbirds, hawks, pheasants, doves, owls, and woodpeckers. Among the reptiles are sea turtles, tortoises, lizards, and snakes. The sea abounds with hundreds of fish species. Salmon, sardine, sea bream, tuna, squid, mackerel, cod, and mullet are among the marine species caught by commercial fishers. Tropical varieties of fish accompany the warm waters of the Kuroshio as far north as Tokyo Bay. The raising of goldfish and colorful carp (koi) for decorative purposes is a Japanese specialty. Aquaculture, the commercial raising of certain fish, eels, and pearl oysters, is highly developed in Japan.
Japan is the world’s tenth most populous country. Its population went beyond the 100 million mark in 1967 and surpassed 125 million in the late 20th century. Yet Japan’s rate of population increase slowed dramatically at the end of the 20th century and became essentially stagnant in the first decade of the 21st century. Japan now has one of the lowest population growth rates in the world.
Japanese population data are incomplete for the period before 1868, when the country’s modern era began. However, the population of Japan is believed to have reached 5 million in the 7th century and 10 million in the 14th century. Official estimates placed the number of Japanese in the mid–19th century at more than 30 million. In 1920, when Japan’s first precise census was taken, the country had a population of nearly 56 million. In 1940, early in World War II, its population was about 72 million.
Japan experienced a brief baby boom after World War II. Afterward, however, the country’s birthrate dropped from a high of 34 per 1,000 in 1947 to below 10 per 1,000 in 1997, 50 years later. This was one of the fastest declines ever observed in any country, though similar declines have taken place in other industrialized countries. Japan’s death rate also fell, largely because of improvements in public health measures, advances in medicine, and the greater availability of modern medical facilities. Japan’s life expectancy is now among the world’s highest.
The proportion of young people in Japan has thus been decreasing. Average family size has also been shrinking, in part because many young married couples have been establishing their own households instead of living with their parents in the traditional fashion. Another reason for this drop in family size is that young couples in Japan are having fewer children than in the past.
Most of Japan’s people share the same ethnic and cultural background. The population consists almost entirely of ethnic Japanese. Koreans and Chinese, the largest non-Japanese groups in the country, each number more than 500,000. The Ainu, a native people of northern Japan, have been almost completely assimilated into the general population of the country. Another minority is the burakumin. The term means literally “hamlet people,” but this conceals their true status as descendants of outcasts—individuals who engaged in occupations that were declared ritually unclean, such as gravediggers, butchers, or leatherworkers. The burakumin are ethnically Japanese, but they are often victims of discrimination because of their low status in society.
The national language of Japan is Japanese, one of the world’s major languages. It is generally considered to belong to the Altaic language family. Japanese is thought to be most closely related to Korean, though the vocabularies differ.
The Japanese language has many dialects, and speakers of one dialect do not always understand everything a speaker of another dialect might say. But almost everyone in Japan uses standard Japanese as well as the dialect of his or her home area. Standard Japanese, originally the dialect spoken by the educated people of Tokyo, is now taught and understood throughout the country. Television, radio, and the Japanese educational system played prominent roles in standardizing the speech patterns of the population.
Broadly speaking, the accent in Japanese is musical. To say “bridge” (hashi) in standard Japanese, the voice begins with a low pitch on ha and rises on shi. If the voice is high for ha and low for shi, the word means “chopsticks.” The pitch of a word can also change in a sentence. As a word, hi (fire) has a low pitch. But in the sentence Hi ga deta (“Fire has broken out”), the pitch pattern is high for hi and low for the rest of the sentence.
In Japanese, different styles of speech are used to show degrees of politeness and familiarity. A plain style is generally used in speaking to close friends. For strangers, a polite style may be used. To show honor and respect, a deferential style is often used toward parents, older people, teachers, and so on. Thus, when meeting a stranger for the first time, the Japanese are very concerned to determine appropriate social distinctions as soon as possible. Different styles are also used in talking about people and things. One such style, the exalted style, is almost entirely limited to references to the Japanese emperor and the imperial family.
The Japanese writing system is unique. More than 1,500 years ago, the Japanese adopted Chinese characters for writing the Japanese language. These characters are called kanji. Because Japanese is very different from Chinese, additional sets of symbols, called kana, were developed, each standing for a syllable rather than a separate consonant or vowel. There are two kinds of kana: hiragana and katakana. After World War II the Japanese government modified the system of writing. Kanji were reduced from many thousands of characters to about a couple thousand basic characters, and their forms were simplified. Many words are written with kanji only. Some words are written with kana (hiragana or katakana) only. And other words are written using both kanji and hiragana.
Most Japanese writing is a mixture of kanji and kana. In newspapers and magazines, Japanese is usually printed from top to bottom, in columns running from right to left. But in many textbooks, Japanese is printed horizontally from left to right. In the Japanese culture, the surname, or family name, comes before a person’s given name.
Most Japanese are not members of any formal religion. However, their concerns with life after death tend to be Buddhist, and their participation in community activities often centers on Shinto celebrations. Shinto is a religion that originated in Japan. Because Shinto and Buddhism focus on different aspects of a person’s life, most Japanese have no trouble following both Shinto and Buddhist practices.
Shinto is based on worship of numerous gods and spirits, including local spirits in nature. These gods and spirits are called kami. Among the many objects of worship in Shinto were the kami of the creator, the Moon, stars, mountains, rivers, waterfalls, seas, winds, fire, and some animals. People, commonly major historical figures, have also been enshrined as gods.
Many of the Japanese ceremonies associated with the birth of a child and the rites of passage to adulthood are associated with Shinto. Shinto is valued because it creates a bond between the individual, his community, and his native land. Shinto shrines dot the Japanese landscape, and community festivals honoring local kami abound. Among the several shrines of national importance is the Grand Shrine of Ise, in southern Honshu. It is dedicated to the sun goddess Amaterasu, traditionally said to be the ancestor of the Japanese emperor and his family. Shinto was the state religion during part of the 19th and 20th centuries. Today, Japan has no official religion.
Buddhism arose in India and was introduced into Japan from Korea in the 6th century. Several major branches of Buddhism developed in Japan, including Zen Buddhism, which has maintained a large following. The largest branches of Japanese Buddhism today have come from those founded in the 13th century by monks such as Shinran and Nichiren. Shinran established the True Pure Land branch, while Nichiren founded Nichiren Buddhism. All branches of Buddhism teach that life continues after death, but each differs on how to find salvation. Buddhism was highly influential in early Japanese history for training the samurai, warriors who ruled the country. In contemporary Japan, Buddhist practices center around funerals and later memorial rites for deceased family members.
Confucianism has been another important influence in Japan. Confucianism is a system of ethics for social relationships, not a religion. It originated in China during the 6th century bc and was introduced into Japan from Korea about the 6th century ad. Its ethical teachings were adopted primarily by the ruling elite. Centuries later, during a time called the Tokugawa period (1603–1867), Confucian principles of absolute obedience to one’s father and lord also greatly influenced the samurai. During World War II, Confucianism was used to arouse patriotism. After the war, Confucianism was excluded from the Japanese educational curriculum. Nevertheless, Japanese ethics and social behavior are still profoundly influenced by Confucianism. (See also Confucius.)
A small percentage of Japanese are Christian. Christianity was introduced into Japan in the 16th century by Francis Xavier, a Spanish Jesuit priest. Starting in the 17th century, during the Tokugawa period, Japan limited foreign contacts and was suspicious of foreign ideas. Japanese Christianity was banned, and tens of thousands of Japanese Christians were killed. After Japan was opened to the West in the late 19th century, Christianity was reintroduced, mainly by Protestant missionaries. Japanese Christians tended to become involved in social welfare movements.
Japan is one of the world’s most densely populated countries, especially in its major cities. The bulk of Japan’s people live on the coastal lowlands, which make up a relatively small part of the country’s total area. Japan is also one of the most urbanized major countries in Asia. In 1920 more than four-fifths of Japan’s people still lived in rural areas. Today, however, about two-thirds of the Japanese live in cities.
Japan’s greatest concentration of population is in a long belt that extends for a few hundred miles from Tokyo and the Kanto Plain westward along the Pacific coast. It stretches through Nagoya and Kyoto to Osaka and Kobe on the eastern edge of the Inland Sea and then as far west as the city of Fukuoka on northern Kyushu. Most of the Japanese cities with populations of more than 1 million are located in the area between Tokyo and Fukuoka. This area is home to more than half of the country’s total population. It is sometimes called the Pacific Belt Zone (Taihei-yo Beruto Chitai) or the Tokaido Megalopolis.
The Pacific Belt Zone contains the principal Japanese centers of industry, business, and finance and Japan’s major international ports. It provides most of the job opportunities for migrants from the farms and small towns of Japan. Virtually all the country’s leading educational institutions and cultural organizations are located within the Tokyo-Fukuoka belt. However, Japan’s difficulties in providing adequate housing, transportation, and social services of all kinds are greatest in this zone. The people of this zone face the problems that most inhabitants of great cities everywhere face—overcrowded housing, air and water pollution, and traffic congestion.
Tokyo, the capital, is Japan’s largest city. It is the heart of Greater Tokyo, the country’s largest metropolitan area by far. Greater Tokyo also includes Yokohama, Japan’s second largest city, as well as the populous city of Kawasaki. A two-hour commute to work is common for many residents of this vast metropolitan area. Greater Tokyo is the largest industrial, commercial, financial, and cultural center in Japan. A second major metropolitan cluster centers on Osaka and Kobe. It forms part of a large industrial zone that also includes Kyoto, an ancient center of Japanese culture. Other large industrial cities in the Pacific Belt Zone include Nagoya, Hiroshima, and Fukuoka. Saitama lies just north of Greater Tokyo. The largest Japanese cities outside the Pacific Belt Zone are the commercial centers of Sapporo, on Hokkaido, and Sendai, on northeastern Honshu.
Japan is divided into 47 prefectures—political subdivisions, called ken in Japanese. Outside the Pacific Belt Zone and the few other large metropolitan centers, many prefectures have been losing population through out-migration, especially since 1950. The heaviest losses have occurred in Honshu along the Sea of Japan coast and in rural areas north and west of Tokyo, in western and eastern Kyushu, and on Shikoku. Hokkaido, the northernmost large island, was an area of pioneer settlement until the 1930s. It has the lowest population density of any Japanese prefecture.
For nearly 2,000 years a close relationship existed between Japan and China. During much of Japan’s history this relationship to China was that of pupil to teacher. As early as the 1st century ad, Japanese travelers visited the Chinese imperial court (the emperor’s official assembly of councilors and officers). They brought back cultural treasures that enriched Japanese life—Confucian ethics, a writing system, and Chinese literature, art, architecture, music, and methods of government. The Japanese then adapted these cultural forms, making them uniquely Japanese.
In the late 19th century the coming of the Industrial Revolution to Asia changed this relationship. Japan emerged from more than two centuries of self-imposed isolation, recognizing that industrialization was a means of gaining equality with the Western powers. Mastering Western techniques, it soon built factories and created a modern army and navy.
Japan therefore modernized relatively rapidly. Yet there are still contrasts in the everyday life of the Japanese people. Especially striking are the contrasts between the more traditional countryside and the bustling urban centers.
Only a very small percentage of the Japanese people live in small farming villages called buraku. The way of life of these people has changed, but the traditional patterns established centuries ago can still be observed.
Rural homes are generally small by Western standards. Compared to the cramped apartments and the tiny houses typical of Japanese cities, however, they seem spacious. The walls are made of a clay-and-straw plaster. Kitchens traditionally had earthen floors, while the floors in the other rooms were covered with wood or reed mats.
The villagers usually live in households that include grandparents and grown sons with their families, as well as the farmer, his wife, and their younger children. When a farmer dies or grows old, his land is passed on to a son, traditionally the eldest. His other sons may inherit money and may stay on the farm. However, most enter occupations in the village or a city.
The chief family responsibilities involve work in the fields. Both men and women spend long days planting, tilling, and harvesting their crops. During the time in each growing season when the rice paddies (fields) are flooded, the people work knee-deep in water. Most farmers tend and harvest their crops using modern specialized farm machinery; nevertheless, intense hand-labor practices are still widely employed.
The women often work in the fields after they have finished their usual household tasks of cooking, cleaning, and gardening. Children go to school, and schoolwork is their major responsibility. They may help take care of younger brothers and sisters. Grandparents no longer able to do field work look after their grandchildren.
After a hard day’s work, the entire family enjoys an evening bath. The large earthenware or cedar bathtub stands in a bathhouse or in the kitchen near the stove. A fire kindled beneath the tub keeps the water hot. Then each family member in turn—beginning with the father—washes and rinses thoroughly before getting into the tub. The water in the tub is used only for soaking since it is shared by all members of the family. On winter days the hot bath gives the farm family its first chance to get really warm.
Japanese villagers are neighborly. The whole village may partake in a wedding or a funeral. All the women prepare food for a village celebration, and every family brings its share. Most village business is handled through agricultural cooperatives which help market the farmers’ produce.
Japanese cities have modern housing, plumbing, and transportation systems. Many city dwellers live in high-rise apartment buildings and take commuter trains or buses to their jobs. The daily lives of city dwellers have been transformed by modern conveniences. Yet many traditional practices survive. Many city dwellers use public bathhouses, for example.
Traditionally, Japanese parents have arranged their children’s marriages. In the cities today, however, few marriages are arranged, and few young couples live with their parents after marriage. Since many young men and women attend universities or work away from home, they have more opportunities to meet socially and to choose their own husbands and wives.
Entertainment in the cities is not as dependent upon family activity as is that of the villages. Many people like to play a game called pachinko, similar to pinball, in special parlors that are like slot-machine arcades. Karaoke (literally “empty orchestra”) is a popular form of nightlife entertainment. It was invented in Japan in the 1970s. In karaoke, a device plays instrumental accompaniments to songs with the vocal tracks removed, permitting the user to sing the lead. Entertaining typically is not done at home, in part because of the small size of most Japanese homes and also because much of entertaining is business-related. The commercial landscape of most Japanese cities is among the most diverse and service-oriented in the world. All manner of food, Japanese or otherwise, can be found in the numerous restaurants. City dwellers can also attend a wide variety of theatrical performances and sports events.
When a baby is about seven days old, the child is named in a small ceremony. Friends and relatives attend, bringing gifts for the child. At the age of about one month, the child is taken to the nearest Shinto shrine. There the priest may record the name and birthday, and the child formally becomes a member of the community.
A Japanese baby is often carried on the back of the mother, grandmother, or sister, safely fastened with broad sashes. The baby is given a great deal of loving attention. But from nursery school on, a child is trained in obedience. Spankings are rarely used, but a child may be ridiculed and shamed for acting badly.
After World War II, the status of Japanese men and women began tending toward social equality. Prior to that time, boys and girls were treated very differently. Parents thought it so important to have sons to carry on the family name that boys were preferred and pampered. They could dominate their older sisters and even their mothers. Girls, on the other hand, had to defer not only to their elders but even to younger brothers. Both boys and girls were brought up with the obligation to do nothing to bring shame to the family reputation. However, parents expected their sons to achieve more than their daughters.
Japanese boys are still often favored above their sisters and more is still expected of them. However, the difference in the treatment of boys and girls is not as great as it once was. Nevertheless, such inequalities as still exist have deep historical roots. Sons have traditionally been regarded as economic assets for the work they were expected to do. Moreover, sons—not daughters—would become responsible for caring for their elderly parents. Daughters would marry and leave the parental home to start their own families.
In a traditional arranged marriage, when a young man is 25 or even older, his family or work supervisor may take steps to find a suitable wife for him. The prospective couple is introduced, and if neither objects strongly to the proposed marriage, a go-between is chosen to make arrangements for the exchange of presents. Such arranged marriages are no longer as common as they once were. Even if a marriage is a love match, a family friend, relative, or mentor is still often chosen to act as a go-between.
The marriage ceremony in Japan commonly is a Shinto ceremony; the bride and groom take three sips of sake, a rice beer, from three cups. The bride wears the elaborate clothing and the complicated hairstyle that are traditional on this occasion. The marriage ceremony is usually followed by feasting and dancing. Now, couples often change to Western-style wedding attire for the reception following the wedding.
The Japanese mark a man’s entry into old age with a special ceremony that occurs between his 59th and 60th birthdays. At that time he dons a kimono in red, a color not usually worn by adult males, to signify that he has shed the responsibilities of maturity.
Most Japanese funerals are marked by Buddhist rites. Virtually all Japanese are cremated. Japanese cemeteries have family memorial stones, at which the ashes are deposited. The deceased is formally remembered each week for seven weeks and then again at increasingly lengthened periods of time.
Traditional Japanese homes generally have a kitchen and three or four other rooms. The walls are lined with bamboo strips. The floors are covered with tatami, woven straw mats 6 feet by 3 feet (1.8 by 0.9 meters) in size. A room’s size is stated as the number of tatami required to cover the floor. Among the most common sizes are 41/2- and 6-tatami rooms. To keep the tatami clean, the Japanese remove their shoes when entering a house.
Most houses perch on posts that are 2 feet (0.6 meter) high, set on rock foundations. A narrow porch on the sunny side serves as a hall onto which the rooms open. Permanent partitions are rare. Fusuma, or sliding screens made of paper-covered frames, may be closed to create separate rooms or opened to convert the entire house into a single room. Shoji, or sliding outer doors or windows, are pushed back on summer days to let in air and are shut for protection at night.
The light, open construction of such Japanese houses is well suited to a warm climate and to a region where earthquakes destroy heavier structures. However, these houses do not keep out the damp chill of winter. A hibachi (charcoal brazier) serves mainly as a hand warmer. Sometimes a heated table called a kotatsu is used. Quilts or futons are draped over the table to help trap the heat underneath. The family gathers around the table to warm their feet and legs under the table.
Furniture in the Japanese home generally consists only of storage chests and low tables. In most homes the family sits on zabuton (low cushions) and sleeps on futons (cotton-filled mattresses). However, many city families have replaced the futon with beds. Both the zabuton and the futon are stored in wall closets when they are not being used, though they must be aired frequently to prevent mildew during the hot, humid summers.
The most important spot in the house is the tokonoma, an alcove containing a low platform that holds a flower arrangement. Above the platform hangs a painted scroll. When callers come, the most honored guest is seated near the tokonoma. Except for the embellished parchment doors between rooms, scrolls and flower arrangements are usually the only decoration found in Japanese homes.
Carefully tended gardens demonstrate the Japanese love of nature. The rooms of a home often open onto a garden through a sliding door. Many Japanese gardens are actually miniature landscapes, with small trees, flowering bushes, pools, streams, and bridges.
Most Japanese eat three meals a day. Boiled white rice (gohan), the mainstay of the Japanese diet for centuries, is eaten at almost every meal. However, rice consumption per capita has declined in favor of such Western staples as potatoes or bread. At breakfast rice is usually supplemented by misoshiru, a bean-paste soup, and tsukemono, pickled vegetables. In the cities, many Japanese have replaced these dishes with bread, butter, and eggs. Lunch is a light meal and may consist of tsukemono, salted fish, and tsukudani, seafood or vegetables cooked and preserved in soy sauce, in addition to rice or noodles.
The evening meal is the most important meal of the day. In most homes it includes vegetables and rice with fish, beef, pork, or chicken. Meat is usually cut into thin strips and fried. It has not been as central in the Japanese diet as in that of Western countries, but meat-eating increased in the late 20th century. Until the late 19th century, Buddhist practice discouraged eating the flesh of four-legged animals. Fish is often served raw. When served this way it is called sashimi. Sashimi is often included in sushi, cooked, vinegared rice served with a variety of garnishes and formed into various shapes.
The two most popular beverages in Japan are green tea and sake (rice beer), though coffee is also widely consumed. Tea is drunk during and after meals. It is also served to guests with such snacks as soba (buckwheat noodles) and udon (wheat noodles). Sake is served with meals, at dinner parties, and especially at celebrations such as weddings or holiday feasts.
Chopsticks are the only eating utensils for a traditional Japanese meal, whether formal or informal. Food is served in china or lacquer bowls and on dishes. On important occasions, individual trays are provided. Usually a Japanese family sits around a low table for meals. Western-style breakfasts probably predominate in Japan today. Western fast-food establishments are widespread.
Modern Japanese dress incorporates both Eastern and Western styles. Western clothes, worn by both men and women, are virtually universal. The traditional kimono, a loose-fitting garment with wide sleeves, is now worn principally at home or on certain special occasions. Men’s kimonos differ from women’s primarily in color and fabric. Women wear their kimonos at ankle length, bound with a sash called an obi. Men’s kimonos are shorter and on very formal occasions are worn with a wide, divided skirt called a hakama. A kimono-shaped cloak called a haori may be worn over a kimono by both sexes.
The Japanese usually wear shoes like those worn in Western countries. However, geta, or wooden clogs, and zori, or rubber or straw sandals, are still worn with kimonos. Socks called tabi are worn with geta and zori. The tabi have a separate place for the big toe—the geta or zori strap is held between it and the other toes. Japanese now wear Western hairstyles. The elaborate hairstyles Japanese women formerly wore are now used only at weddings or by entertainers in the theater and hostesses at certain restaurants.
Competitive sports have a wide following among the Japanese. Baseball—with two professional leagues—is one of Japan’s most popular spectator sports. Many baseball stars, notably Oh Sadaharu, have ranked among the country’s best-known celebrities. Soccer (association football) has grown considerably in popularity in Japan, to the point of rivaling baseball. A Japanese professional soccer league was established in 1993, and there are numerous youth leagues. Japan’s national soccer team has made strong showings in international competition. With South Korea, Japan cohosted the World Cup soccer finals in 2002. Other sports enjoyed by the Japanese include basketball, lawn and table tennis, volleyball, bicycling, and swimming.
Japanese athletes have excelled in many sports at the Olympic Games. They have been especially strong in gymnastics and judo competitions. The country hosted the Summer Games in 1964 at Tokyo; it was the first time the Olympics had been held in Asia. Tokyo was chosen to host the Summer Games again in 2020. Japan also hosted the Winter Games twice—at Sapporo in 1972 and at Nagano in 1998.
The Japanese pursue a great variety of indoor and outdoor recreational, fitness, and sports activities. People in Japan tend to go on frequent family outings. Parents take their children to shrines and temples and to parks and zoos or on excursions into the country to view the spring cherry blossoms or the autumn foliage. The Japanese are also fond of playing board and card games, notably shogi and go (both similar to chess), and mah-jongg.
The martial arts in Japan originated with medieval warriors, the samurai, who mastered at least one or two of them for use in battle. Today they are practiced as competitive sports and as aids to physical and mental fitness. The martial arts were traditionally acquired through the family, but schools to teach them now thrive in Japan.
Sumo is one of the country’s most popular sports. Professional sumo matches between two huge wrestlers dressed only in mawashi, or loincloths, are held in rings of sand. The actual bout is preceded by a ritual during which the wrestlers face each other, squatting and touching the ground with their fists. The match does not begin until both wrestlers come up at the same time. It ends only when a wrestler has been pushed out of the ring or when any part of a wrestler’s body except his feet touches the ground. Several professional sumo tournaments are held each year in Japan. A grand champion wrestler is called yokozuna.
Judo, another martial art form, developed from jujitsu, an art of self-defense that was popular during the Tokugawa period. The objective of the sport of judo is to cleanly throw, to pin, or to master the opponent. Mastering the opponent is done by applying pressure to arm joints or to the neck to cause the opponent to yield. Techniques are generally intended to turn an opponent’s force to one’s own advantage rather than to oppose it directly. Different colored belts are worn to indicate degrees of mastery in judo.
Aikido also resembles jujitsu and judo in its use of twisting and throwing techniques. It too shares the aim of turning an attacker’s strength and momentum to one’s own advantage. Pressure on vital nerve centers is also used. Aikido especially emphasizes the importance of achieving complete mental calm and control of one’s own body to master an opponent’s attack. It does not require great muscular strength. Aikido is practiced in part to enhance body flexibility and to foster graceful movement.
Karate evolved in East Asia over a period of centuries and was developed into a system in Okinawa in the 17th century. Only in the 20th century, however, did it gain wide popularity. Karate involves jabbing, hitting, and kicking at the most vulnerable parts of the opponent’s body. Emphasis is on concentrating as much of the body’s power as possible at the point of impact. The striking surfaces of the body, including the hands and feet, are toughened by practice blows against padded surfaces or wood.
Kendo developed in ancient Japan. In kendo, two opponents hit or jab at each other with bamboo swords. Both wear protective masks, bamboo armor, leg padding, and thick gloves. In a match, a point is given to the fencer who makes a clean hit on the opponent’s throat, head, body, or wrist. The first to make two points is declared the winner.
Kyudo, or archery, was used in early Japan for fishing and hunting. Later it became a military art. In medieval times, samurai displayed their skill as bowmen in exhibitions. After the introduction of firearms in the 16th century, however, kyudo declined as an effective technique of combat and became a sport. Kyudo archers use a bow about 7.5 feet (2–3 meters) long. The bow is made of wood glued to bamboo. Arrows consist of a bamboo shaft, three feathers, and an arrowhead. Each archer in a match usually shoots 10 to 20 arrows.
Poetry plays a central role in Japanese culture. Occasions of many kinds are celebrated with poems, and thousands of poems are submitted for the poetry prize awarded by the emperor each New Year’s. Many Japanese compose short poems such as haiku and tanka. Japanese poems, which usually do not rhyme, are based on a syllable count. A haiku is a three-line poem of 17 syllables, with 5 syllables in the first line, 7 syllables in the second, and 5 syllables in the third. A tanka has five lines, with 5, 7, 5, 7, and 7 syllables. Because haiku and tanka are short, they can only suggest a mood or a picture; the listener or reader has to fill in the details. Basho, who has been regarded by many as Japan’s greatest poet, was a master of haiku. A notable tanka poet was Ki Tsurayuki, one of Japan’s “36 poetic immortals.”
Japanese literature is noted for distinctive forms of drama as well as of poetry. The Noh, or No, play combines recitation, music, and slow dance. It is noted for its fine poetry, which is chanted by the actors and chorus. Japan’s outstanding Noh dramatists were Zeami and his father, Kan’ami Kiyotsugu.
Like the Noh play, the Japanese puppet play is serious drama combining words, music, and dancing. Perhaps the greatest writer of puppet drama, called Bunraku, was Chikamatsu Monzaemon. His plays fall into two groups. His heroic plays are often set in Japan’s Middle Ages. His domestic tragedies—for example, Double Suicide at Amijima—give a naturalistic picture of middle-class life.
For elaborate spectacle, Kabuki drama has no rival. Kabuki plays are distinguished by sensationalism and melodrama. One of the most famous Kabuki plays is Chushingura, about 47 samurai who avenge their lord’s death and then commit seppuku, or hara-kiri (ritual suicide; self-disembowelment), as required by the law of the time. (See also “Performing Arts” later in this section.)
Japanese prose works tend to be series of loosely connected episodes. Diaries and books of random thoughts, which lend themselves to this style, are typical of Japanese prose literature. Early Japanese novels consisted of series of incidents, each incident built around a poem. Perhaps the greatest work of Japanese literature is The Tale of Genji, an episodic novel written near the beginning of the 11th century by Murasaki Shikibu, a woman who was a courtier to the Japanese empress. Most of the works of the 17th-century writer Ihara Saikaku, the outstanding novelist of the Tokugawa period, are really collections of short stories based on a single theme. In many modern novels it is common to find loosely related incidents.
The visual arts of modern Japan are similar to those of many Western countries. However, Japanese classical works of art are unique in the philosophy, methods, and materials used in their creation. These works include paintings and sculptures, as well as products of the decorative arts, such as pottery and porcelains, lacquers, textiles, and woodcuts. Delicacy and exquisiteness of form, together with simplicity, characterize traditional Japanese artistic taste.
In classical Japanese painting, black ink and watercolors were used on tissue-thin silk or washi (Japanese paper). Often the artist used only black ink, achieving a sense of color in the gradations from deep, luminous black to silvery gray. One-color paintings made in this way are called suiboku-ga or sumi-e.
Although classical Japanese paintings were realistic, they were never photographic. Instead, the artist used only a few brushstrokes to suggest the crumbly texture of a boulder; a hard-edged, rocky cliff; the gnarled trunk and rustling foliage of a tree; the feathers of a bird; or an ocean wave. Unpainted areas of silk or paper created a sense of space and depth. Through economy of line and careful composition, the artist presented a distillation of his subject, leaving the viewer to fill in the details.
Classical Japanese paintings were “studio pictures.” The artist did not go into the countryside with paints and easel. Instead, following a walk in the hills or along a stream, he returned to his studio to paint his impressions. The paintings usually took the form of hanging scrolls called kakemono, hand scrolls called emakimono, large folding screens, sliding doors, or fans. The hand scrolls, often 30 feet (9 meters) or more in length, are unrolled from right to left. With such scrolls, one enjoys only as much of the painting at a time as may be exposed between one’s outstretched hands.
After Buddhism was introduced in Japan in the mid-6th century, great temples were built. These served not only as religious shrines but also as centers of art and learning. The numerous deities of Buddhism were depicted in paintings and sculptures. Artists, governed by precise descriptions in the sutras, or holy texts, created likenesses of the Buddha, his disciples, and minor deities, as well as complex, maplike representations of gods surrounding a central Buddha. These figures were painted or carved to embellish the temples and instruct the devout. Long, narrative hand scrolls record in fine line and rich color the lives, journeys, and campaigns of important Buddhist priests and nobles. The names of most early painters, many of them priests, are no longer known.
Suiboku-ga developed rapidly during the Muromachi period (1338–1573) of Japanese art. It was fostered by Zen Buddhism, which stressed simplicity. While Japan was subjected over the centuries to successive waves of influence from China, the artists assimilated the foreign styles and in almost every instance made them uniquely their own.
During the Muromachi period and the Momoyama period (1574–1600), distinctive schools of painting emerged and individual artists established their fame. The Buddhist monk Sesshu perfected black-and-white landscape painting in the Chinese tradition. The Kano school was founded by Kano Masanobu (1434–1530). He was the official court painter for the shoguns (military rulers of Japan). His school was continued by his family and developed into a distinctively Japanese style.
Folding screens and sliding door panels were created in rich colors and patterns, often on a ground of gold or silver. They were made to enliven the austere grandeur of 16th- and 17th-century castle interiors. The creators of these works were called “the great decorators.” The Kano school remained dominant well into the Tokugawa period (1603–1867). It shared favor with traditional Chinese-style ink painting as well as a new artistic style called ukiyo-e, paintings depicting the life of common people.
A woodcut, or wood-block print, is a print made by carving a picture into a wooden block, inking the block, and then pressing it against paper. Japanese woodcuts were made as early as the 11th century. However, this art form enjoyed its greatest popularity in Japan from the mid-17th through the 19th century. The earliest woodcuts, which portrayed Buddhist leaders and deities, were executed in black with strong, rhythmic lines and areas of simple pattern. Occasionally, rich red-oranges, mustard yellows, and greens were added by hand. Early color prints, developed about 1740, were also restricted to three colors. True color prints, using many wood blocks, were developed in 1765. These color prints were called nishiki-e, meaning “brocade pictures.” A print bears the name of the artist who designed it. The carving and printing, however, were done by two other craftsmen.
Japanese woodcuts are probably the finest expression of the ukiyo-e movement. Courtesans, Kabuki actors, and scenes from Kabuki dramas were popular subjects. Hishikawa Moronobu is credited with beginning the ukiyo-e tradition of printmaking in the 17th century. The era of the full-color print starts with the work of Suzuki Harunobu in the mid-18th century. The early 19th century brought both the full maturity and the gradual degeneration of this art form. The mid-19th century landscape artists Hokusai and Hiroshige were the last outstanding woodcut artists of the ukiyo-e. In the 20th century a modern movement in printmaking developed, called sosaku hanga (creative prints). The use of woodcuts has generally been neglected by modern printmakers.
Japanese sculpture of the pre-Buddhist period is perhaps best represented by the clay cylinders or hollow sculptures called haniwa. Haniwa date from the 3rd to the 5th century ad. These images of red clay were sometimes elaborately modeled in the forms of animals, birds, and human figures. They were placed fencelike around tomb mounds of the imperial family and important court figures. The haniwa thus seem to have served the dual function of preventing soil erosion and providing the deceased with objects they had enjoyed during their lives.
Following the introduction of Buddhism to Japan in the 6th century, the development of sculpture paralleled that of painting. Numerous icons—religious images—depicted the growing number of Buddhist deities. Sculpture closely followed earlier Chinese examples that had been transmitted to Japan through Korea. Important images were cast in bronze, though wood was also favored. In later periods, wood and clay were increasingly preferred, as was dry lacquer. Dry lacquer consisted of successive coats of lacquer (colored varnish) applied to cloth over a clay or wood core. This core was later removed. Stone was almost never used in sculpture. Most of the best surviving sculptures were made by unknown masters.
Starting in the 8th century, a noteworthy tendency was the portraitlike quality of much of the sculpture. This may in part be attributed to the growing preference for the dry-lacquer technique, which allowed greater inventiveness on the part of the artist. The finished product was light but durable. An innovation in wood sculpture—the use of small blocks ingeniously fitted together, rather than a single block or log—also provided the artist with greater freedom of expression.
Japanese sculpture reached its peak during the Kamakura period (1192–1333). Although distinctive pieces were made in later eras, sculpture never again attained the position it had enjoyed in the preceding seven centuries. Most of the important sculptures have remained in the temples for which they were created.
The best-known Japanese decorative arts include the making of pottery, porcelains, lacquers, and textiles. The earliest examples of Japanese artistic expression are earthenware vessels of the Jomon (rope-patterned) period and the later, but still ancient, Yayoi period. Some Jomon specimens date as far back as about 10,500 bc. The style continued until about the 3rd century bc, when it was supplanted by the more finely executed Yayoi style.
The process of making true porcelain was not introduced into Japan until the 16th century ad. Elegantly patterned products found favor with the nobility and court circles. By contrast, native rough pottery enjoyed great popularity in intellectual circles and was especially favored for use in the tea ceremony.
Many well-known painters also applied their skills to allied arts. Hon’ami Koetsu, famed for his calligraphy, or decorative writing, was also a gifted potter and lacquer designer. Ogata Kenzan executed in pottery the designs of his brother Ogata Korin, who was renowned for bold, decorative paintings.
The dry-lacquer technique was used not only for sculpture but also for decorative accessories such as trays, tables, small chests, containers for tea and candy, and sumptuously fitted picnic boxes. Sprinklings of gold and silver powder and burnished and cut-gold foil were used, alone or combined with inlays of shell, mother-of-pearl, or metal. These bright touches provided a bold contrast to the red, black, brown, and green lacquer surfaces.
The 18th- and 19th-century love of splendor and rich decoration was also expressed in handsomely brocaded silks favored by the Japanese court and clergy. The latter, under vows of poverty, cut brocades into small squares and pieced them together again so that their fine garments would simulate the patched clothing of leaner years. Even the simple folk designs worn by the poor reflected the taste of Japanese weavers.
Japanese architecture, like painting and sculpture, made its greatest advances following the introduction of Buddhism. As with sculpture, wood was the primary material. The design of traditional Japanese architecture emphasizes horizontal lines. Even in taller structures such as pagodas, the use of sloping roofs helps minimize the impression of height.
Great temples and monasteries and feudal castles and palaces are the major architectural monuments. The temples are characterized by vast halls and soaring roofs. Based on Chinese examples, the temples and storied pagodas feature elaborate bracketing systems to support their roofs.
Major constructions mirror the taste of the periods that produced them. Horyu Temple near Nara reflects the simple elegance favored in the 7th century. It is Japan’s oldest surviving wooden temple, in a region known for many such national treasures. The Tosho Shrine in Nikko illustrates the rich and showy decoration of the Tokugawa period (1603–1867).
Secular (nonreligious) architecture of nearly all periods reveals the Japanese love for refined simplicity. Interior and exterior finishes depend on the fine grain of wood and textured stucco.
Handsome gardens are created to so complement the buildings they surround that the landscape and structures appear to be part of one another. Moss, trees, pebbles and rocks may be combined with artificial hills, ponds, and a stream to suggest the natural beauty of a lake, seascape, or mountain waterfall. Profound simplicity is achieved in the garden of Ryoan Temple in Kyoto, for example, by the use of five artfully placed rock formations set in moss in a patterned field of white sand. Whatever its proportions or the materials used, the Japanese garden is designed to invite entry and inspire meditation.
The art of raising bonsai—dwarfed potted trees—has enabled the Japanese to admire nature in an indoor setting. Bonsai are able to bear fruit and to drop their leaves in season, thus reproducing nature in miniature. A skillful bonsai artist can prune, bend, and shape branches to suggest trees standing tall and upright in a field or bent and gnarled by age or weather. The beauty of a natural landscape is evoked in the viewer’s imagination.
Another means of enjoying nature in the home is through the arrangement of flowers, which has been refined in Japan to an art known as ikebana. Unlike Western floral arrangements, which emphasize the color and form of flowers, ikebana favors the flowing lines of stems, leaves, and branches.
In any arrangement, the plant materials used must convey a feeling of continuing growth as well as be symbolic of time and the season. Full blossoms might suggest the past; buds, the future. A full and spreading arrangement of various blossoms or other plant materials might suggest summer; a sparse one, autumn. A graceful floral design and a symbolic ornamental scroll often decorate the alcove called the tokonoma, the place of honor in a Japanese home.
Cha-no-yu, the ceremonial art of making tea, is a notable discipline in Japan. The tea ceremony is founded on the reverence of the beautiful in the daily routine of life. Through the delicate flavor of the tea and the simplicity of the ceremony, participants in the ritual hope to achieve serenity and an understanding of true beauty.
Turning handwriting into an art form is called calligraphy. Chinese writing and literary classics probably arrived in Japan in the 4th century ad. Three centuries later Japanese scholars started traveling to China to study. It was Buddhist monks especially, both Chinese and Japanese, who brought calligraphy to Japan and made it into a fine art. Among the first practitioners of the art were the priests of Zen Buddhism.
In time, the Japanese departed from reliance on Chinese patterns and created their own, in a script called hiragana. This became the most distinctive Japanese type of calligraphy, though the use of Chinese characters, called kanji, persisted. In one kind of hiragana, the letters are written together, without a break, and spacing plays a large role. In another style, hiragana and kanji are used together. Japanese calligraphy is a very demanding art that requires many years of training. Calligraphy was not confined to the Buddhist monks, however. Some of the most adept calligraphers were emperors and warriors.
The Japanese have great respect for their ancient, traditional performing arts. At the same time they are attracted by new, more modern forms. As a result, a Japanese person who enjoys a performance of bugaku, an ancient musical dance of the imperial court, may also take pleasure in a concert of contemporary Western music played by an excellent Japanese symphony orchestra.
One reason for the vitality of the performing arts in Japan is that performance is an essential part of the country’s life. The ceremonies of the native Shinto religion include music and dance. A Japanese wanting to honor the gods pays for a performance of the sacred dance kagura at a shrine. During the Bon festival, a Buddhist celebration for the souls of the dead, the young people of a community participate in folk dances in a circle around a drum tower. In summer festivals, groups of young men carrying a portable shrine dance and chant through the city streets. All such dances are related to the Japanese love and worship of nature.
Rhythm, singing, and chanting can also be part of everyday work in Japan—pulling a net from the sea, felling timber, even erecting a telephone pole. Ancient music and dance accompany the planting and harvesting of rice.
The Japanese performing arts differ greatly from those of the West. Dancing, acting, and instrumental and vocal music are closely combined. In any traditional Japanese stage performance, it is difficult to say where the dancing stops and the acting begins. Moreover, traditional Japanese music does not use Western keys and scales. The drums, stringed instruments, and flutes produce sounds not usually heard from Western instruments. However, the koto, a Japanese harp, comes close to sounding like a Western instrument. Traditional Japanese singing uses a different system of voice production than that of the West, and the traditional dance employs patterns of body movement unfamiliar in the West. A traditional Japanese actor does not think he should look like a real person when he is performing.
From his youth, the Japanese performing artist is trained in the strict imitation of his teacher. This method insures that traditional techniques of performance are preserved in a continuous, almost unchanged, artistic heritage.
Before 1640, foreign influences on the Japanese performing arts came only from the Asian mainland. But, as is typical in Japan, the borrowed materials were refined into a principally Japanese expression.
Classical gagaku music was introduced into Japan from China as early as the 6th century ad. It combined musical forms absorbed from Korea, Manchuria (now in China), Persia (Iran), India, and Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia). Gagaku merged with Japanese music about 850. Wind, stringed, and percussion instruments are used in gagaku performances, which are known as kangen when performed without dance.
When gagaku is accompanied by dance, it is called bugaku. A single dancer or one or more pairs of dancers perform with great symmetry of movement. The dancers wear masks, and the positions of their arms, hands, and feet are highly stylized. The dances may be slow or lively, depending on whether they are ceremonial dances, military dances, or dances for children. A bugaku may tell a story, but the story is generally not learned from a view of the dance alone.
The medieval dance drama called Noh (or No) can be considered as scenes from the ceremonial life of lords and ladies during Japan’s Middle Ages. Noh theater was derived in part from Chinese sources. Actors in Noh plays perform on a usually bare stage about 18 feet (5.5 meters) square and on a narrow runway leading to the stage from the dressing room. They are accompanied by drums, a high-pitched flute, and chanting by a chorus of six or eight men. All parts, including female roles, are played by men and boys. The mood of these plays usually is serious and often is tragic.
There are only two important roles in Noh theater—the shite, or principal character, and the waki, or subordinate character. Both the shite and the waki wear handsomely embroidered costumes patterned upon medieval court dress. The shite usually wears a painted mask carved from wood. Joy, sorrow, or anger may be represented by slightly changing the position of the mask on the actor’s face. Different masks are used to represent men, women, elderly persons, gods, and demons. In most of the 230 Noh plays performed in Japan today, the shite changes his costume and mask for the second half of the performance to reveal his true character. He may change, for example, from a beautiful woman to a demon or from a boy to a warrior. Often, the waki is a Buddhist priest and the shite is the ghost of a person who is suffering for evil he committed during his lifetime. In these plays, the shite seeks and obtains help from the priest for the peace of his soul.
A Noh performance neither looks nor sounds like real life. Movement is extremely slow. If the play requires, for example, a boat or a hut, such things are represented by a skeletal framework that only suggests their shape. A folding fan in the hands of an actor may represent a variety of objects—a sword, a letter, the rising moon, or falling rain. The text is ancient poetry, difficult even for many Japanese to understand.
The traditional Noh program consisted of five plays with short comic pieces called kyogen performed between them. The first Noh play was usually about a god, the second about a warrior, and the third about a woman. The fourth type of play varied in content; it could be a realistic, contemporary play, for example. The fifth type dealt with demons and other supernatural beings. The usual program now, however, consists of three plays, each lasting an hour or longer, and two kyogen. The kyogen are a complete contrast to the serious Noh plays, for they are acted vigorously and amusingly and deal with such matters as servants outwitting their masters or husbands their wives.
Toward 1700 a new form of theater appeared in Osaka. Called Bunraku, it combines the manipulation of puppets with a narrative accompanied by music. The music is played on the samisen, a three-stringed, banjo-shaped, plucked instrument. Each puppet is about half life-size and is handled by a team of three men in a fashion unique to Japan. By means of strings inside the puppet’s head, the chief manipulator controls the movable mouth, eyebrows, and eyelids, as well as the right arm and hand of the doll. His assistants animate the rest of the puppet. The operators are silent but visible to the audience throughout the play.
Unlike the Noh stage, the Bunraku stage uses elaborate scenery and various techniques and devices for changing scenes rapidly. At one side of the stage are seated one or more samisen players and the narrator. The narrator chants both the descriptive passages and the spoken words of all the characters. Such precise coordination and teamwork is demanded among the operators, the musician, and the narrator that they must all have many years of training.
Bunraku developed two kinds of plays. Jidaimono deals with historical subjects and the warrior class, while sewamono is concerned with the life of the commoner. Some of the greatest Japanese dramatists wrote Bunraku plays. Among them was Chikamatsu Monzaemon, widely regarded as one of Japan’s greatest dramatists. Another was Takeda Izumo, whose Chushingura (1748) is a popular play in both the Bunraku and Kabuki theaters. Its theme—unswerving loyalty to a master—is a common one in the puppet theater.
Bunraku declined in popularity after the mid-1700s. Today, it is regarded as a “cultural property” by the Japanese government, which helps to support it. UNESCO proclaimed Bunraku, as well as Kabuki, to be a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.
A form of Japanese theater using live actors, Kabuki began about the same time as Bunraku. It originated in Kyoto with new kinds of dances performed by a woman named Okuni in the early 1600s. These became highly popular, and Okuni was imitated by other actresses and actors. But the Japanese government, deciding that the performances were immoral, decreed in 1629 that women could no longer appear on the stage. Women’s roles were taken over by men, and this practice continues in modern Kabuki theater.
A typical Kabuki program may include a dance play based upon a Noh play or a kyogen; a dance play adapted from part of a puppet-theater jidaimono; and acts from plays written especially for the Kabuki in the 18th and 19th centuries. No important Kabuki plays were written after 1900, and this theater is in many ways a living museum of the Japanese performing arts. It is now based in Tokyo theaters and attracts large audiences.
The performance of a Kabuki program requires highly skilled actors, often trained from childhood in dance, voice, and acrobatics. Kabuki actors are capable of playing a wide variety of parts, including female roles. An actor who plays the part of a woman is called an onnagata. Among the Kabuki characters are horses, foxes, dogs, and demons, all played by actors.
Kabuki visual effects are varied, spectacular, and often quite colorful. Huge settings change on a revolving stage in plain view of the audience. Scenery and actors rise from or disappear into the stage floor on elevators. Actors perform portions of the program in the midst of the audience on the hanamichi, a runway about 6 feet (1.8 meters) wide extending from the rear of the auditorium to the stage. Music, most frequently that of the samisen, is used throughout. The musicians perform either on the stage or in a room at the side of it.
In some Kabuki plays the actors wear striking white, red, and black makeup to create the effect of power and strength. Elaborate costumes, which are often changed on stage, may weigh as much as 50 pounds (22 kilograms). Masses of warriors dance and somersault in scenes of battle. The dramatic poses of an actor are accompanied by the beating of wooden clappers on the stage.
The Japanese have also fully embraced Western art forms. Western-style painting, sculpture, and architecture are widely practiced. Western classical music, which has been taught in Japanese schools since the 1870s, is as popular as the traditional music of ancient Japan. Many Japanese cities have permanent orchestras and thriving musical conservatories. Numerous concert halls for Western classical music have been built throughout Japan since the 1980s. In addition, the works of contemporary Japanese composers trained in Western music, such as Takemitsu Toru and Mayuzumi Toshiro, have been played in Europe and the United States. Japanese classical performers, including conductor Seiji Ozawa and violinist Goto Midori, also have built reputations abroad.
Motion pictures have been another Western influence on the Japanese performing arts. Filmmaking in Japan began early in the 20th century with screen adaptations of traditional literary masterpieces and Kabuki drama. The cinematic art declined in Japan during the war years of the 1930s and 1940s. After World War II many Japanese films became internationally famous for their artistic and technical quality. Kurosawa Akira’s Rashomon won the grand prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1951. Other internationally acclaimed Japanese directors include Ozu Yasujiro, Mizoguchi Kenji, and Itami Juzo.
The national government’s Agency for Cultural Affairs is responsible for promoting different aspects of Japanese culture. It also preserves cultural properties and historical sites throughout the country. Most of Japan’s major cultural institutions, including the Japan Academy, the Tokyo National Museum, and the National Theatre, are located in Tokyo. Japan’s numerous Buddhist temples contain a great many cultural properties as well, especially those located in Kyoto and Nara. There also are numerous private museums, art galleries, theaters, and gardens throughout the country. Japanese department stores offer free or low-cost exhibitions.
Japan’s school-age children attend school regularly. Attendance is compulsory for nine years, from elementary school through middle school. However, virtually all Japanese also attend kindergarten and high school. Kindergarten lasts from one to three years. At age 6, children begin elementary school; at 12, middle school; and at 15, high school. High school offers either a technical or a college preparatory course of instruction.
Japanese schooling stresses memorization and group activities. Memorization is necessary because of the complexity of the written Japanese language and because the main goal of schooling is for students to do well on competitive examinations. Individualism and creativity have not generally been encouraged: a traditional Japanese saying states that “the nail that stands out will be pounded down.” This bias against individualism has begun eroding, however, as Japanese society begins to value individual initiative and originality.
Japanese students, especially those who plan to attend college, take entrance examinations in order to qualify for the best middle schools and, later, the best high schools in the country. Rigorous study at one of the top schools helps the student prepare for the extremely difficult college entrance examinations. These examinations are given once a year. If a high school senior fails the entrance examinations, the student may study furiously at a special cram school during the following year and then retake the exams. Despite the examination system, a high percentage of Japanese youth attend colleges, either junior colleges or four-year universities.
Greater Tokyo has a high concentration of the country’s universities. Of note is Tsukuba Science City, located about 40 miles (65 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo, which consists of research facilities and educational institutions. The most prestigious of Japan’s schools are the two great public universities of Tokyo and Kyoto. Prominent private institutions include Waseda and Keio universities in Tokyo and Doshisha University in Kyoto.
Japan has a high standard of living, which contributes much to the general good health of the Japanese people. In addition, the country has one of the most comprehensive health care systems in the world. National health insurance covers all Japanese citizens. The amount individuals have to contribute to this insurance varies by income; some people do not have to pay anything for their medical care. Most of the country’s hospitals are operated by unions, associations, or individuals and the remainder by local governments and the national government.
Japan experienced astonishing economic growth in the 20th century. The term economic miracle is often used to describe the remarkable expansions in manufacturing and trade that the Japanese people achieved in the first several decades after World War II. After the war, Japan’s economy was in ruins. However, the country rapidly became an economic powerhouse. The “miracle” came to an end in 1990, when a serious economic downturn began. Japan then experienced more than two decades of a faltering or greatly slowed economy. Nevertheless, the Japanese economy remains one of the world’s largest. Japan has developed a highly diversified economy based on manufacturing and services, including trade. The country is one of the world’s largest producers of motor vehicles, steel, and high-technology manufactured goods—notably consumer electronics.
Trade is important in the Japanese economy, in part because Japan lacks the natural resources to support its industries. It must import large amounts of fossil fuels such as petroleum, natural gas, and coal as well as raw materials for manufacturing. In addition, the country has only limited amounts of land good for farming. Japan thus needs to import much of its food supply. However, the country exports large volumes of manufactured goods, giving it a favorable trade balance. By adding value to raw materials as they are turned into finished products, Japan’s economy has grown despite shortages in natural resources.
By the end of World War II in 1945, Japan’s cities and factories were rubble. Goods of all kinds, including food, were scarce. Inflation was running more than 100 percent a year. For several years after the war, a process of rebuilding was needed before genuine economic growth could begin. The economic transformation began about 1949, and it led to spectacular growth.
Prior to World War II there had been close cooperation between government bureaucracies and the business sector. The U.S. occupation of Japan after the war sought to democratize the economy. Under the Americans, a number of land and labor reforms were carried out. Many Japanese farmers were able to own their own farmland for the first time. The Americans also broke up some of the powerful zaibatsu, Japanese business concerns like cartels that had come to dominate the economy.
With the economy in shambles after World War II, the Japanese government was the only institution strong enough to organize and plan for the country. Direction of the economy was not left just to the business sector. It was a deliberate national policy, a cooperative effort of government, business, labor, and the people—based on national purpose and supported by an excellent school system. But the chief guidance, at least initially, came from the government bureaucracies. Many Japanese bureaucrats who had guided the war mobilization were allowed by the U.S. occupation forces to assume positions of authority in the Japanese government after the war. They became leaders in ministries of trade, industry, and finance, in the Bank of Japan, and in other policy-making institutions.
One factor contributing to Japanese economic growth was the Cold War; animosity developed between the United States and the Soviet Union after 1947. The U.S. occupation forces realized that building a strong and productive Japan would be to the advantage of the United States as a counterforce to Soviet expansionism. The United States provided military protection to Japan. Only a small percentage of Japan’s budget was thus needed to pay for defense, freeing up more funds for economic investment. The United States also proved a generous export market to which Japanese industries could send their merchandise. Moreover, the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 created a huge demand for Japanese goods, as the United States used Japan as a military base. This increased demand for Japanese products set off an investment drive that laid the foundations for a long period of extraordinary economic activity.
Another vital ingredient of Japan’s economic growth was the Japanese willingness to borrow and learn. Japan had been borrowing ideas for industrialization from the United States and Europe since the 1860s. In the late 19th century Japan worked energetically to catch up with the industrialized countries, in order to be counted as an equal among world powers. After World War II, Japanese bureaucracies and businesspeople listened willingly to those who would teach them how to improve productivity. Among these teachers was the American banker Joseph Dodge. He persuaded the Japanese government to revise the country’s tax structure with a view to strengthening investment. The American statistician W. Edwards Deming taught Japanese businesspeople total quality management and warned them against imitating outdated American practices.
The Japanese economic miracle primarily revolved around manufacturing and trade. Japanese economic growth was designed to enrich the country through trade, not necessarily to improve the standard of living of the Japanese people. However, a greatly improved standard of living was a by-product of this miracle.
Japanese company and brand names became household words nearly everywhere: Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba, Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, Canon, Hitachi, and others. The heavy involvement of government ministries in overseeing the economy does not mean that the government owns the companies, as in socialist countries. The companies are privately owned firms. A great part of their funding, however, came from the government, at least in the decades just after World War II. Japanese tax laws also encouraged saving. The postal savings system became one of the largest savings institutions in the country. Without a high savings rate among Japanese citizens, funds available for investment would have been much less.
What set Japan apart from other industrialized nations was strategy. The main strategy behind the Japanese miracle was exporting manufactured goods to gain market share around the world. To gain market share means to sell more goods to more people in more places than the competition does. Japanese manufacturers desired to expand market share at the expense of immediate profit. They were willing to let profits be small—even willing to post a loss—in order to get customers.
Many large firms formed business groups called keiretsu, which include manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors. Keiretsu are corporations bound together through mutual stockholding—that is, each company within the group owns some stock in the other companies. The corporations also have interlocking boards of directors. These close relationships involve manufacturing firms and the banks that are their major sources of funds. This means that ownership of corporations is much more concentrated in Japan than in the United States, since banks hold most of the shares of a company. Over time, however, the keiretsu system has weakened somewhat.
The success of Japanese manufacturing owes much to the willingness of businesspeople to innovate. An often-told story illustrates the Japanese path to economic vitality. In 1946 Morita Akio and Ibuka Masaru started a company named Tokyo Telecommunications and Engineering. The company made home appliances and, later, tape recorders. In 1952 they heard about an American invention called the transistor. This electronic device had been invented by Bell Laboratories in the United States in 1947. American manufacturers saw little immediate potential for it, because they had a vested interest in vacuum tubes. The two Japanese businessmen paid $25,000 for a license to use the transistor and within two years were producing transistor radios. They named these little radios Sony, and in 1958 Sony became the corporate name. The company became an outstanding success.
In the 30 years after 1950, Japanese corporations made more than 30,000 licensing and other technology agreements with other countries. The Japanese have excelled in process engineering—finding better ways to make a product. The Japanese became the leading makers of all kinds of high-technology electronic equipment.
In the decades after 1950, Japanese manufacturing went through three specific phases. At first, heavy industry was dominant. This meant steelmaking, chemical production, shipbuilding, and the production of heavy machinery—relics of a fading industrial era. This approach was pushed by the government, and in the end it failed. By 1960 consumer goods moved ahead, mainly electronic products and automobiles. By the 1980s Japanese companies were building manufacturing plants in countries that were normally large importers of goods.
One reason for moving plants offshore was a growing resentment around the world of Japanese trade practices, resulting in large imbalances of trade. As consumers abroad bought more and more Japanese goods, they bought less of the products made in their home countries. A desire to protect U.S. industries was growing in the United States, especially among the automakers. Fearful that their exports would be curtailed, Japanese business leaders invested in plants in the United States, Europe, and Latin America. Another reason for this practice was a diminished supply of manual labor within Japan. Developing countries, such as Indonesia and Thailand, had large numbers of manual laborers available. And workers in underdeveloped countries accepted lower wages, which helped greatly in cutting manufacturing costs.
After World War II, the Japanese economy experienced decades of impressive growth. In 1945, as a result of war damage, Japanese production stood at 30 percent of what it had been in 1935. By 1951 it was at 114 percent of the 1930 level, and it continued to grow at more than 9 percent each year in the 1950s. Through the 1960s the economy grew at more than 10 percent a year. During the 1970s, because of the huge oil-price increases and worldwide recession, productivity increases dropped to under 5 percent a year. Because of the oil shocks, Japan reduced its dependence on oil as a source of energy for manufacturing and electricity. In the 1980s, with recovery under way, productivity improved. By 1990 the growth rate had reached 5.5 percent before starting to decline.
Japan’s great success at exporting its manufactured goods led to trade surpluses, meaning that the value of Japan’s exports exceeded that of its imports. In the late 20th century, growing Japanese trade surpluses increased friction between Japan and its trading partners in Europe and the United States. These trading partners wanted to sell more of their products in Japan and at home, where they competed with Japanese goods. Japan’s critics charged that the country advocated free trade abroad but maintained a closed market in Japan, making it very difficult for other countries to export their goods to Japan. For example, Japan charged very high tariffs, or taxes on imported goods. Critics also claimed that Japan engaged in “adversarial trade” designed to benefit only Japan. There were complaints that Japanese companies sold goods abroad at lower prices than they did within Japan—a charge denied by Japanese business and government leaders.
The Japanese government responded by making efforts to “open” Japan to foreign products. In the early 1970s Japan had the world’s second highest tariffs on manufactured goods. Two decades later such tariffs were the lowest among the economically advanced countries. In addition, restrictions on importing many agricultural products were lifted. Japan’s formal barriers to trade were largely ended, though areas such as construction bidding were still closed.
By the late 20th century, Japan had become one of the world’s great powers, both economically and politically. It had led the way in Asia for decades. By the early 1990s, however, the Japanese economy, especially manufacturing, found itself in a new global environment. Industrialization had expanded in previously underdeveloped parts of Asia, including South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. These were providing competition for Japan in its export trade, and labor costs in these countries were much less than in Japan. China too was experiencing astounding economic growth, ultimately overtaking Japan to become the world’s second largest economy in 2010.
Meanwhile, in the 1980s Japan experienced what has become known as a “bubble economy.” Enjoying easy credit and low interest rates, Japanese corporations engaged in unrestrained economic speculation in the stock market. The Japanese also speculated on land, and real-estate prices skyrocketed. Eventually, the prices grew so overinflated that the “bubble” burst in the early 1990s. The stock and real-estate markets collapsed, and prices dropped sharply. This ushered in a steep recession, and production levels dropped dramatically. Thousands of smaller firms filed for bankruptcy. The Japanese economy’s period of great growth had ended.
To combat the recession, a variety of economic policies were adopted and tried. Nevertheless, economic growth was essentially stagnant throughout the 1990s—in what came to be known in Japan as the “lost decade.” The country experienced another serious recession at the end of that decade.
Conditions improved after the turn of the 21st century. Growth rates were modest, however, and were punctuated with periodic slumps. By 2000 Japan was also facing the fact that an increasing number of Japanese workers would be retiring. At the same time, with the country’s population growth also stagnant, fewer young people would be entering the workforce. Japan, like the rest of the world, was hard hit by the global economic recession that began at the end of 2007. Nonetheless, Japan continued to have one of the world’s highest gross national products per capita.
Because Japan’s terrain is mostly mountainous, the supply of farmland is sharply limited. Agriculture accounts for only a tiny portion of Japan’s gross domestic product (GDP). Less than 5 percent of the Japanese workforce makes its living by farming. This represents a remarkable decline from World War II levels, when half the population worked in agriculture. In addition, most families engaged in farming today have outside jobs as well. A large number of farm households are more dependent for a living on jobs in nearby cities than they are on farming. But many farmers who have taken city jobs are holding onto their farms because they regard them as a hedge against unemployment and inflation.
Most Japanese farms are small, and many are inefficient. Larger farms generally are found in Hokkaido, where units of 25 acres (10 hectares) or more are fairly common. Large crop surpluses in Hokkaido, northern and western Honshu, and central Kyushu are shipped to the heavily populated, urbanized belt that stretches from Tokyo westward to northern Kyushu.
Rice, the staple food in Japan, is by far the largest crop in acreage, tonnage, and value. Irrigated rice fields, or paddies, occupy more than half the cultivated area of Japan. Most rice fields in Hokkaido and northern Honshu bear only one crop a year. To the south, where the winter is milder and the growing season longer, multiple cropping is used. Under this system, paddies produce a summer rice crop and a winter crop of dry grains or vegetables.
As a result of government price supports and the use of modern farming methods, rice production rose steeply starting in the 1960s, to the extent that supply far outran demand. Meanwhile, overall rice consumption dropped. Thus, although Japan needs to import much of its food, it is self-sufficient in rice production. A ban on imported rice was ended in 1999. However, steep customs duties on rice have remained in place. Prices paid by Japanese consumers for rice have been far above world market prices, as is generally true of food prices in Japan.
Leading Japanese crops in addition to rice include wheat, barley, sweet potatoes, white potatoes, sugar beets, fruits, vegetables, and tea. Apples and mandarin oranges are among the major fruit crops. Raising livestock is an important farming activity in Japan, but it is carried out on a small scale. Japanese farms produce eggs, dairy, pigs, cattle, and chickens.
Japan has one of the largest fish catches of any country in the world. The Japanese people are among the world’s leading consumers of seafood, traditionally depending on the sea for much of the protein in their diet. Labor shortages are severe in the fishing industry, however, and imports of fishery products exceed exports.
The Japanese fishing industry includes coastal fishing, offshore fishing, deep-sea fishing, and fish-farm production. The culture in shallow coastal bays of prawns, sea bream, edible seaweed, oysters, and other marine products has grown rapidly. In addition, cultured pearls have long have been significant.
Most Japanese fishers work in shallow coastal waters. The typical coastal fishing craft have a capacity of less than 10 tons. The greatest tonnage of the country’s fish catch comes from offshore fishing, for which somewhat larger boats are used. Deep-sea fishing is done in waters far from Japan by large modern fleets. Mother ships serve the fleets as floating processing and canning plants. The Japanese government is a party to international treaties and conventions regulating the use of international waters for fishing.
In spite of its large annual fish catch, the Japanese fishing sector faces some serious problems. Local fisheries are depleted by overfishing and pollution, especially in the Inland Sea. The number of Japanese workers engaged in fishing has declined sharply. As with agriculture, the fishery worker population has aged rapidly. The fishing sector’s total catch has been decreasing for decades.
Forests occupy about 62 million acres (25 million hectares), slightly more than two-thirds of Japan’s land area. However, most of the forested land is located in inaccessible mountain areas. Most forestland is privately owned, mainly in small plots of less than 10 acres (4 hectares). These plots are usually a part of normal farming operations and a source of household fuel.
Planted forests, many of them publicly owned, occupy about two-fifths of the total forested area. Cedar, cypress, and larch are the leading species. Sawlogs are obtained mainly from Hokkaido, the mountains of northern and central Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu. Both conifers and broad-leaved trees are harvested for pulpwood. Charcoal was formerly a significant source of income for mountain villagers, but it has been largely replaced by gas and electricity as the main household fuel.
Lumber production has fallen below the peak years of the early 1960s. Since the demand in Japan for lumber has continued to rise, the country has relied increasingly on imports, mainly from the United States. Imported raw timber is turned into lumber and finished products. The government has tried to increase domestic production in a variety of ways, including by opening roads to remote forest stands and by promoting proper forest management among private owners of woodland.
Manufacturing is very important to Japan’s economy. It contributes about a fifth of GDP, employs millions of workers, and produces valuable exports. Japan has some of the world’s largest and most-advanced industrial plants. The country is one of the world’s principal shipbuilders and automakers. It is also a major producer of such basic products as crude steel, aluminum, pulp and paper, and textiles. Japan is a leading producer of industrial chemicals, pharmaceuticals, chemical fertilizers, and petrochemical products, such as plastics and synthetic rubber. Japanese oil-refining capacity is one of the largest in the world. Japan is also a leading producer of cement.
In the late 20th century Japanese industry saw the most spectacular growth in the production of motor vehicles, iron and steel, machinery (including robots), and cameras and other precision equipment. The country became noted for advanced electronic products, including computers, telecommunications equipment, and consumer goods.
Japanese manufacturing is concentrated in a heavily populated urban-industrial belt. This belt extends westward from Tokyo and the Kanto Plain along the Pacific coast and the Inland Sea to northern Kyushu. Japan’s major international ports and its best overland transportation facilities are in this region. So too are the headquarters of its leading banks and trading companies. Most of the industrial complexes are on the coast, where they have access to ocean shipping and imported fuel and raw materials.
Within the industrial belt are several major clusters of manufacturing activity. The largest—the Keihin Industrial Zone—is centered upon the urban core of Tokyo, Kawasaki, and Yokohama, on the Kanto Plain. Within the Keihin zone, large-scale heavy industry lines the western and northern shores of Tokyo Bay. The area is a center for printing and publishing and for the manufacture of machinery, automobiles, and electronic equipment. Yokohama provides international port services.
The Chukyo Industrial Zone centers on the city of Nagoya. This zone is noted for its production of automobiles, aircraft parts, machinery, textiles, and ceramics. Also included in this zone is the Kuwana-Yokkaichi area, an oil-refining and petrochemical center.
The Keihanshin Industrial Zone includes the cities of Osaka and Kobe along with surrounding areas. Osaka has chemical, machinery, electrical machinery, and iron and steel plants. Kobe is a major international port and produces ships and steel.
Another industrial area is centered on Kita-Kyushu, in northern Kyushu. It developed around Japan’s first steel mill, established in 1901 at Yawata. The Kita-Kyushu area specializes in the manufacture of iron and steel and has other heavy industries.
Japan’s mineral and energy resources are small compared with those of other major industrial countries. Its mineral deposits are limited, and their quality is often poor. Great amounts of many fuels and minerals, including coal, petroleum, natural gas, iron ore, tin, nickel, nitrate, and phosphates, must be imported. Among the most abundant minerals in Japan are coal, iron ore, zinc, lead, copper, sulfur, gold, and silver. The country also has large deposits of limestone.
Mining is a relatively unimportant and declining sector of the economy. Coal was long the major product mined in Japan. Because of high production costs, however, Japan’s total coal production declined drastically in the late 20th century. Nearly all the country’s coal is now imported. Hokkaido accounts for most of Japan’s very small coal output. Mining for iron and copper essentially ceased in Japan after 2000.
Japan’s reserves of petroleum are meager and must be supplemented with imported oil, mostly from the Middle East. Virtually all of the country’s own petroleum and natural gas production comes from Niigata prefecture, in north-central Honshu. Japanese consumption of petroleum increased greatly during the boom times of the 1960s. However, the global price of oil rose to unprecedented heights in the 1970s, and Japan cut down its dependence on imported petroleum. In addition, a significant share of Japan’s imported oil now comes from fields developed in other countries by Japanese companies. Japan is also a major importer of liquefied natural gas.
The availability of large supplies of electric power was a key to Japan’s industrial growth and rising living standards. Hydroelectric power (electricity from waterpower) made up almost two-thirds of the total electric supply in the early 1950s. The Japanese have continued to build hydroelectric dams. However, there has been a much greater emphasis on the construction of thermal power plants (which use heat to generate electricity). These plants used coal or oil as fuel in their early years. Pollution problems and oil costs later forced a switch to natural gas in many cases.
Giant thermal power plants were built along the coasts, near urban and industrial markets, especially along Tokyo Bay. The first Japanese nuclear-powered thermal electric plant, situated at Tokai, went into full production in 1967. Many more such plants were later built, and Japan grew to be one of the world’s largest producers of nuclear power. However, fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, and coal) still contributed the largest share by far of Japan’s electric power. Hydropower accounted for only a small amount of the country’s electricity. In 2011 a tsunami caused a serious accident at a coastal nuclear power plant in Fukushima prefecture. In the wake of the accident, the ongoing role of nuclear power in Japan’s energy sector was the subject of debate.
The service sector has come to dominate the Japanese economy. It contributes the largest portion of Japan’s GDP by far and employs the majority of its workers. Services include a great variety of activities, including retail and foreign trade, banking, operation of hotels and restaurants, education, health care, and government administration.
The Bank of Japan is the core of Japan’s banking system. The bank’s purpose is to stabilize the value of the country’s currency—the yen—and to foster credit. The bank issues yen notes; the government mints coins. The country’s commercial banks receive savings deposits and provide funds for private industry.
The Japanese government stimulates industry and foreign trade by providing funds through such agencies as the Export-Import Bank of Japan, the Japan Finance Corporation for Small and Medium Enterprises, and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation. Credit associations, cooperatives, and the postal savings system are widely used. The most important stock exchanges in Japan are in Tokyo and Osaka. The Tokyo Stock Exchange is one of the world’s largest marketplaces for stocks.
The number of foreign visitors to Japan has increased steadily. Japan abounds in natural scenic beauty and has a great variety of cultural attractions. Tourism is well organized. The country offers a charming combination of modern and traditional tourist facilities. There are many modern high-rise hotels, especially in Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto, and ryokan (Japanese-style inns) may be found throughout the country.
Japan has a large number of national and prefectural parks. (Prefectures are Japanese political subdivisions.) Mountaintops can be reached by ropeways, cable cars, and automobile toll roads. Other tourist attractions in Japan include the many ancient temples and shrines, the Japanese theaters and festivals, and the restaurants and nightlife of the big cities.
Japan’s traditional system of the distribution and marketing of goods is complex, with goods changing hands through many different channels. There are numerous small retail outlets. Among these are small stores operated by an owner and members of his family. The family generally lives in quarters to the rear of or over the store.
This traditional system of distribution and marketing has been challenged for years by large department stores, which have become common in the cities. Japanese department stores are among the largest in the world. They have prime locations in the downtown areas and near key railway terminals. Supermarkets based on American models also have sprung up. Discount-store chains and online sales outlets compete for business in Japan as well.
Japan is one of the world’s leading trading countries. It imports a huge volume of fuels and raw materials, upon which its manufacturing industries are greatly dependent. It exports great quantities of manufactured goods. Japan’s domestic market is too small to absorb its entire output of manufactured goods. Japan has had a favorable trade balance, or surplus—with the value of exports exceeding that of imports—in most years since the late 1960s. The size of this trade surplus was often the largest in the world.
Manufactured items account for the great majority of Japan’s exports. Textiles made up half of the country’s exports before World War II but dropped to only 2 percent in the late 20th century. Machinery, transportation equipment, and metals—especially steel—made up the bulk of exports in the 1950s. Among Japan’s important exports today are a wide variety of machinery, including electronic equipment and parts; automobiles and other transportation equipment; chemicals; and metals. The United States and China receive the greatest share of Japan’s exports. Other key export markets for Japanese goods include other countries of East and Southeast Asia and the countries of the European Union (EU).
After World War II, Japan established relatively high tariffs (taxes on imported goods) and set up other kinds of barriers for selling foreign products in Japan. It took these measures in order to protect its own industries, to ensure that they would not face much foreign competition within the country. As a result of Japan’s vigorous exports and protective import policies, Japan enjoyed consistently high trade surpluses. These surpluses led to mounting pressure by the country’s trading partners—notably the United States—for Japan to open its domestic market to foreign goods. Imports have grown steadily as Japan’s trade structure has become more open.
Japan imports large amounts of fuels, including crude petroleum, liquefied natural gas, and coal. Other major imports include food, machinery, chemicals, metals, and clothing. Among Japan’s largest suppliers are China and other countries of East and Southeast Asia; the United States; Australia; and western Europe. The Middle East is a major source of oil.
To guarantee its supply of raw materials, Japan has invested heavily in overseas developments. Its interests abroad have included oil fields; mines for coal and metals such as iron, copper, and bauxite; and pulp mills in countries around the globe. Japan gives other countries economic aid either directly or through the Asian Development Bank. It belongs to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Trade Organization, and other international economic organizations.
The Japanese labor movement flourished in the period after World War II. After the war, the U.S. occupation forces introduced laws that gave workers the right to organize, to bargain with employers, and to strike. Membership in unions gradually declined after the 1950s, however.
Most Japanese unions were organized by single enterprises rather than by industry or craft. In other words, there was at least one different union for each company. Most of these enterprise unions later combined to form federations organized by craft—for example, Japanese automakers’ unions formed a federation. Many unions also joined larger, nationwide organizations. In the late 1980s the major national organizations and other unions were reorganized into the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (JTUC-Rengo). Unions that were politically more to the left of JTUC-Rengo formed the much smaller National Confederation of Trade Unions (Zenroren).
The various labor federations make policy, advise on strategy, and coordinate major “wage drives” to secure better pay for employees. Serious labor negotiations are still usually carried out by each individual enterprise union and the employees. Labor-management relations in Japan generally are nonconfrontational and are characterized by cooperation. Work stoppages such as strikes are much less common than in other countries.
Japanese businesses take a keen interest in their employees, especially at the management level. Large companies may provide many benefits, including low-cost housing, medical care, insurance, paid vacations, and huge year-end bonuses. Part-time workers in large firms and employees of smaller enterprises do not have the range of benefits enjoyed by full-time employees at large corporations such as Toyota or Sony. There is a rigid system of promotions and salary increases in Japanese industry. Employees are traditionally very loyal to their companies, and job turnover is low. A Japanese worker is likely to spend his entire working life on the job he takes when just out of school.
Modern transportation facilities link all parts of Japan and facilitate the swift, efficient movement of people and goods. Greater Tokyo, the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto area, and Nagoya are the largest transportation centers. All four of the main Japanese islands are connected by surface transport, which consists of undersea tunnels and bridges for roads and railways.
Railways are a very important form of land transportation for passengers in Japan. Railway stations are the hubs of mass-transportation systems, which also include buses, taxis, and subways. Most of the country’s largest cities have subways. Japan’s commuter trains are renowned for being clean, safe, and on time. However, most are extremely crowded during rush hours.
The first Japanese railway was laid in 1872 between Tokyo and Yokohama. By 1930 a rail network covered the four main islands. Most private rail lines were nationalized in 1906 and passed to a public corporation, the Japan National Railways (JNR), in 1949. After accumulating massive debts, the JNR was privatized in 1987. It was broken up into a number of companies that together are called the Japan Railways Group. The group operates the majority of Japan’s railway lines, including the Shinkansen.
The Shinkansen are high-speed electric trains that derive their power from an overhead wire system. Some Shinkansen trains operate at up to 200 miles (320 kilometers) per hour. The Shinkansen rail system was nicknamed the “bullet train” for the great speed at which the trains travel and for the aerodynamic bullet shape of their noses. The first Shinkansen trains went into operation in 1964 on the New Tokaido Line from Tokyo to Osaka. Extensions of that line and new lines were later completed.
Modern highway construction has lagged badly behind the needs of automobile and truck traffic. The country has an extremely high density of motor vehicles in the populous areas. Many families have two or more automobiles, and they are more likely to drive to a destination than in the past. Moreover, the great majority of freight transport within Japan is by truck. Roads are thus congested in the big cities and in industrial areas. The government’s road building program has relied upon expressways to ease intercity traffic. The Meishin Expressway from Kobe to Nagoya, the Tomei Expressway from Nagoya to Tokyo, and other superhighways provide for uninterrupted high-speed movement through Japan’s most densely settled areas.
Domestic air service links all major Japanese cities. Japan Airlines (JAL), the Japanese international flag carrier, operates round-the-world service. Air travel in Japan, to both international and domestic sites, has become commonplace. However, the growth in air travel has severely strained the country’s airport capacity. Tokyo is the principal air hub, followed by Osaka. Other major airports are in Nagoya, Sapporo, and Fukuoka.
Japan is one of the world’s principal seagoing countries, and it has one of the world’s largest merchant fleets. However, the Japanese shipping sector has declined steadily since the 1970s. Given the very large volume of Japanese imports and exports, most products are carried in oceangoing vessels registered to other countries. Shipping is channeled through several main international ports: Yokohama, Kobe, Chiba, Nagoya, Kawasaki, Kita-Kyushu, Mizushima, and Sakai.
Japan has highly advanced communications systems. The country’s telecommunications and postal service networks are among the best and most sophisticated in the world. These networks effectively link Japan’s hundreds of islands as well as the remotest villages deep in the mountains. The use of personal computers and connections to the Internet have become nearly universal throughout Japan.
Japan had a government-owned telephone system until the mid-1980s. Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT), which provides service within Japan, became a private company in 1985. NTT became one of the largest private firms in the world. In 1999, however, it was broken up into a number of companies under the name NTT Group. Several other private telecommunications companies also operate in Japan.
The Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK), or Japan Broadcasting Corporation, operates the country’s public radio and television broadcasting system. It has two television networks and three radio networks. One of its television networks provides educational programming. The other broadcasts news, cultural programs, sports, and entertainment. NHK is notable for its innovations in high-definition television. It does not broadcast advertising. Instead, NHK’s programs are financed through monthly license fees paid by each Japanese household owning a television set.
In addition to public programming, commercial radio and television programs reach all parts of Japan through a variety of networks and local television and radio outlets. Satellite and cable television reception is common as is digital broadcasting.
The Japanese are among the world’s most ardent newspaper readers. The country has numerous daily newspapers, many of which publish both morning and evening editions. The big-city newspapers have large circulations. Several million copies of each of the largest papers are printed every day. Japan is also one of the world’s major book-publishing countries, with tens of thousands of titles published each year. Magazines and other reading matter are printed and sold in huge quantities as well. Japanese comic books, called manga, are extremely popular and have influenced a worldwide audience.
The present constitution of Japan—the Showa constitution—became law on May 3, 1947, as an amendment to the Meiji constitution of 1889. The current constitution is based on a draft prepared in English by the Allied occupation forces after World War II. A Japanese version was debated and approved by the national Diet, or parliament. In some quarters, the constitution has been regarded as an American-imposed document, untrue to Japanese traditions and political realities. However, moves to revise it have made little headway.
Under the constitution, the emperor is the “symbol of the State and of the unity of the people.” His duties—such as opening the Diet or receiving ambassadors—are largely ceremonial. The emperor acts only on the initiative of responsible government officials. His appearances in public are carefully directed by the Kunaicho, or Imperial Household Agency.
The two-house Diet has the sole constitutional power to make laws in Japan. The upper house, also called the House of Councillors, has 242 members. They are elected for six-year terms, with the terms of half of the members expiring every three years. The lower house, or House of Representatives, has 480 members elected for four-year terms. In both houses, some members are elected by direct vote and others through a system of proportional representation. The lower house can be dissolved at any time, but the upper house cannot.
All bills approved by both houses of the Diet become law. However, a bill rejected in the upper house can become law if it is approved by a two-thirds majority in the lower house on a second vote. A simple majority in the lower house is sufficient to ensure such decisions as the selection of a prime minister or the ratification of a treaty, even over the opposition of the upper house. In practice, however, the two houses are usually in agreement. The budget, furthermore, originates in the lower house.
The principal executive body is the cabinet. It is headed by the prime minister, who is chosen by the Diet. Ministers heading the major administrative agencies are named by the prime minister. They must all be civilians, and a majority of them must be members of the Diet. If the House of Representatives passes a no-confidence resolution or rejects a confidence resolution, the cabinet must resign or the prime minister must dissolve the House of Representatives and call a new election.
The judiciary is separate from both the legislative and executive branches. The 14 associate justices of the Japanese Supreme Court are appointed by the cabinet, and the emperor appoints the chief justice designated by the cabinet. An appointee to the Supreme Court is reviewed by the voters at the next general election. A Supreme Court justice is again reviewed at the elections following each 10-year period on the bench. The Supreme Court has complete administrative control over lower courts. It is the court of last resort, with power to decide the constitutionality of laws, cabinet orders, regulations, and official acts.
Voters in each of Japan’s 47 prefectures (political subdivisions) elect a governor and a one-house legislature. Voters in each city, town, and village elect a mayor and a one-house legislature. The voters have the powers of initiative, referendum, and recall. The governors and mayors can dissolve their legislatures. The legislatures can in turn pass votes of no-confidence in their executives. Local governments adopt budgets and levy taxes. Routine national and local government business is handled by a professional civil service.
Although Japan has a constitutional government, the real authority structure of the country lies within its various bureaucracies. Ministries in such areas as finance, education, construction, communications, labor, transport, and trade and industry have each built a large body of administrative law. The regulations put into force within these bureaucracies are the laws by which the country is actually governed. Laws passed by the Diet that seem to conflict with administrative law are normally interpreted in favor of the latter.
Throughout most of the post-World War II era, Japanese politics and government have been dominated by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). This generally conservative party focuses on providing a favorable environment for business. It has followed a pro-U.S. foreign policy. The LDP held power continuously for many years after its formation in 1955. However, an economic crisis and a series of scandals involving high-ranking party members finally caused the party to lose its majority in the Diet in 1993. The Liberal Democrats returned to power in a coalition government the following year. The party retained power in most years after that.
Political power in Japan is dispersed among many groups. These include business leaders, labor unions, agricultural cooperatives, the press, the various government bureaucracies, the political parties, and even the criminal syndicates, which are called yakuza. The political parties are mostly combinations of habatsu, or small factions centered on strong individual leaders. Local political organizations usually consist of small support groups for local Diet members, who are expected to bring benefits to their districts. However, the New Komeito Party and the Japanese Communist Party are exceptions, each having an extensive organizational structure that discourages the formation of factions.
Japan has universal, equal, and direct suffrage. All Japanese citizens who are 20 years of age and over have the right to vote. In Japan, especially in rural areas, voting is regarded as a duty, and participation in elections can be high. In local elections in smaller towns and villages, voter participation may reach 90 percent.
Special-interest groups play a major role in Japanese politics. National federations of labor unions are closely linked to the left-wing parties. Large industrial concerns, national federations of farm cooperatives, businesspeople’s associations, and professional groups have close links with the Liberal Democrats. As in many other countries, the relations between special-interest groups and government officials or political parties sometimes lead to bribery and corruption.
Demo, or mass demonstrations, are another means of influencing government policy. They are usually employed by the left-wing parties, which are able to mobilize the support of students and union members.
The expression of public opinion is protected by the constitution. Japanese citizens are guaranteed freedom of speech, religion, assembly, and association. Newspapers and magazines are uncensored and are often critical of the government and of its policies.
Because of Japanese military aggression in World War II, the Japanese constitution includes an antiwar clause. It renounces “war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.” Nevertheless, since 1950 Japan has developed a military for self-defense purposes. The voluntary national Self-Defense Forces (SDF) include land, naval, and air branches. Japanese military expenditures are among the highest in the world, though they account for only a small proportion of the country’s annual budget.
The existence and use of the SDF have been highly controversial. Some people have questioned whether the Japanese military is constitutional. Japan’s Supreme Court ruled in 1959, however, that the SDF did not violate the constitution because of their defensive nature. Japanese forces were not used outside the country until 1992, when the SDF began participating in noncombatant UN peacekeeping operations abroad. The first deployment of Japanese combatant forces outside the country after World War II was in 2009. In that year Japanese destroyers were sent to counteract pirate operations against Japanese shipping off the coast of Somalia. The use of the SDF outside Japan has sparked vigorous debate both in Japan and abroad. It has been especially controversial among countries that were victims of Japanese aggression in World War II.
Japan’s foreign affairs and the negotiation of treaties are handled by the cabinet. The prime minister reports on foreign relations to the Diet and must obtain its approval of treaties. Routine administrative business with foreign countries, such as granting visas, is handled by a professional diplomatic corps.
Japan is a member of the United Nations. Since regaining full sovereignty in 1952, Japan has based its foreign policy on close ties with the United States. A mutual security treaty between the two countries affords Japan the protection of the United States. The most visible sign of this protection is the existence of major U.S. military airfields and naval bases in Japan, mainly in Okinawa.
Japan has been inhabited since at least the Stone Age. Archaeologists have discovered many stone tools in Japan dating to about 30,000 to 10,000 years ago. From about 10,500 bc Japan was inhabited by the Jomon culture, people who made pottery decorated by rope patterns. These people lived mainly by hunting and fishing and by gathering edible nuts and roots. They may also have eventually practiced an early form of agriculture. They did not know how to weave cloth. By about 250 bc they were supplanted by the people of the Yayoi culture, who lived in small villages, growing rice in irrigated fields. The Yayoi people cast bronze and iron and wove hemp. They were organized into extended families headed by chieftains. These early people had no writing system. The Yayoi worshipped nature spirits and the mythic founders of clan lines.
According to legend, the Japanese state was founded in 660 bc by Jimmu, the first emperor. Historical evidence shows that Japan emerged as a unified state in the 4th–5th century ad, when the chieftains of one family, the Yamato clan, became dominant. Their base was the eastern end of the Inland Sea, centered on the Kinai (Osaka) Plain and the Nara Basin. Claiming the sun goddess Amaterasu as their ancestor, the Yamato clan founded the imperial dynasty that has reigned in Japan ever since.
During this period, most of the Japanese people were peasants who farmed or fished for a living. Families were still organized into clans, and each clan worshiped a god believed to be the clan’s ancestor. A small portion of the people were aristocrats, or nobles, who led the large, powerful clans and helped to run the government. Nobles formed the imperial court (the Yamato ruler’s formal assembly of advisers, high officials, and attendants).
The Japanese borrowed much from the civilization of neighboring China. Many Chinese ideas and customs reached Japan via Korea. The religion of Buddhism was introduced into Japan from Korea in the mid-6th century. However, a true understanding of Buddhist teachings did not come to Japan until the early 7th century, during the time of the Yamato ruler Prince Shotoku. In 604 he began to infuse the life of the imperial court with Chinese ideals. In 607 the Japanese court’s first official representatives were sent to China.
Shotoku promoted both Buddhism and Chinese Confucian ethics, the spread of which deeply affected Japanese society. Many Japanese people, especially in the upper classes, began to practice Buddhism. Shintoism, the native Japanese religion, also remained important. Confucian teachings emphasized the need for people to obey their ruler. The teachings stressed obedience within the family as well; children were expected to obey their parents and wives to obey their husbands. The Japanese also adopted Chinese styles of art, architecture, and dress. People began using Chinese characters to write the Japanese language, which had never before been written down.
The Chinese model of government was also imported but modified to fit Japanese needs. The Taika reforms, beginning in 646, transformed the Yamato ruler into an absolute sovereign—the emperor. An elaborate bureaucracy was established. In theory, all land belonged to the emperor. Large landholdings were abolished; some farmland was redistributed among the peasants. The government started collecting taxes on a regular basis. However, in order to encourage agricultural development, the Yamato regime did not make people pay taxes on newly cultivated land. This practice actually stimulated the growth of huge privately owned estates called shoen. Similar to the manors of medieval Europe, the shoen were owned by powerful families, court aristocrats, or religious institutions. The estates were worked by thousands of peasants. The peasants became permanently dependent on the landholders.
In 710 an imperial capital was built at Heijo-kyo (now Nara) on the model of Chang’an, the Chinese capital. In 794 the capital was moved to Heian-kyo (Kyoto). From the 9th to the 12th century an aristocracy controlled by the Fujiwara family dominated Japan. This period was a classic age of art and literature. Japan’s culture no longer borrowed from China but became distinctively Japanese.
The samurai were provincial Japanese warriors who resembled medieval European knights. They began to assume power in Japan in the 12th century. However, the emperor continued to hold authority in theory. The samurai often managed the estates of aristocrats and sometimes held land in their own right.
Rivalry between two warrior clans—the Taira and the Minamoto—led to the Heiji War (1159). The Taira won, but a revolt begun in 1180 ended in 1185 with the victory of the Minamoto.
Minamoto Yoritomo then established a new government at Kamakura. In 1192 he was named shogun, or chief military commander, by the imperial court. He was authorized to appoint his own military governors (shugo) in the provinces and land stewards (jito) on many private estates to collect taxes and to maintain order. His administrative organization was called the bakufu (“camp government”) or shogunate. It served as a model for a series of later regimes. (See also Hojo family.)
The Kamakura shogunate successfully repelled Mongol invasions in 1274 and in 1281. It was overthrown by a domestic revolt in 1333, and Ashikaga Takauji established a new regime. A dispute between rival families over the succession to the shogunate led to the Onin War (1467–77). Centralized control disappeared as Japan was plunged into civil wars that lasted until the late 1500s.
During this period, warrior leaders fought each other for land and vassals (people who serve a lord and are in turn protected by that lord). The emperor and shogun became politically insignificant. Local lords known as daimyo divided the country into feudal domains. Their vassals served both as warriors and as government officials. The daimyo taxed the peasantry, who made up the bulk of the population.
Meanwhile, Japan was developing trade contacts with the outside world. Official trade missions to China began in 1404. Japanese traders were active along the coasts of Korea and China, especially during the 16th century. Japanese adventurers and pirates also operated in East Asian waters, some reaching Siam (now Thailand) and the Philippines.
Later in the feudal period, the first Europeans arrived in Japan. Japan was known to the Europeans as Cipango from the tales of the European adventurer Marco Polo. Portuguese traders came to Japan first, in 1543, followed by Spanish, English, and Dutch traders.
In the hope of attracting European trade, some daimyo in Kyushu encouraged conversions to Christianity. The first Christian missionary in Japan was the Jesuit priest Francis Xavier. He preached in Japan for only two years (1549–51). Nevertheless, the Christian missionary movement enjoyed great success in Japan for the next three decades.
Feudal division and disorder in Japan ended in the late 16th century. The powerful daimyo leader Oda Nobunaga began to subdue the smaller daimyo. By 1590 Toyotomi Hideyoshi, one of his generals, succeeded in defeating the rival Hojo family. Although he never became shogun, Hideyoshi took control of the whole country. In 1592–93 and in 1597–98 he led invasions of Korea as part of an unsuccessful plan to conquer China. Upon withdrawing from Korea, Hideyoshi’s armies carried out a scorched-earth policy (widespread destruction of the enemy’s property and resources).
The political consolidation of Japan continued under Tokugawa Ieyasu, one of several men chosen to govern the country after Hideyoshi’s death in Korea in 1598. Ieyasu won an important battle against his rivals at Sekigahara in 1600. After the battle, he organized the daimyo into a federation under a new bakufu at the city of Edo, which is now Tokyo. Ieyasu was named shogun in 1603.
For the next two centuries, under the Tokugawa shogunate, Japan enjoyed extraordinary peace and stability. Ieyasu and his successors built an elaborate system of controls over the daimyo, including limits on their military strength. Fearing that Japan was being prepared for foreign conquest, the government expelled the Christian missionaries. It also prohibited the Christian religion and persecuted many Japanese converts to Christianity. By 1638 Christianity was exterminated in Japan. The Tokugawa leaders cut back foreign trade. By 1641 only Dutch and Chinese merchants were permitted to trade in Japan—limited to one ship a year at the single port of Nagasaki. Japanese were forbidden to leave the country. The country entered a period of seclusion that lasted for more than 200 years.
As a result of internal peace, a national market developed and the economy flourished. New rice lands were cultivated, and advances were made in farming techniques. Osaka and Edo became great commercial centers. By the 18th century Edo, with a population of more than 500,000, was larger than any city in Europe. A new urban culture, reflecting the tastes of merchants, shopkeepers, and artisans, emerged in both Osaka and Edo. The cultural standards of the peasantry rose as well, and by the middle of the 19th century almost half of the entire male population of Japan could read and write.
The seclusion of Japan ended in 1853 with the arrival of a United States naval fleet commanded by Commodore Matthew C. Perry. He had been instructed to open Japan to foreign trade and diplomatic contact. The Edo bakufu, recognizing U.S. military superiority, signed a treaty of friendship with the United States during a second visit by Perry in 1854.
The Netherlands, Russia, Great Britain, and France followed the lead of the United States. By 1859 the bakufu had been pressured into signing a series of “unequal treaties” opening several Japanese ports to foreign trade. These treaties were called unequal because they gave privileges to Western powers at Japan’s expense. Western nationals were given the right of extraterritoriality, or exemption from local law. Tariff rates were established that the Japanese government could not alter.
Many Japanese regarded the surrender to the West as a national humiliation, and the bakufu’s authority declined rapidly. There were growing demands for the expulsion of the foreigners and for the restoration of political power to the emperor. These demands were supported by the court and two powerful daimyo domains in western Japan—Satsuma (in southern Kyushu) and Choshu (in extreme western Honshu). In 1868 the Tokugawa shogun was forced to give up power. A new government was established under the young emperor Mutsuhito, who took the reign name of Meiji (“enlightened government”). This transfer of power from the Tokugawa shogunate to the Meiji emperor is known as the Meiji Restoration. It is regarded as the beginning of Japan’s modern era.
Leaders of the new government were former samurai of Satsuma and Choshu, such as Okubo Toshimichi, Kido Takayoshi, and Saigo Takamori. They wished to end the “unequal treaties” and to catch up militarily with the Western countries. Their first task, however, was to create internal order. A centralized administration replaced the daimyo system. Many class distinctions were abolished. A conscript army was built up, replacing the samurai, or warrior class. In 1868 Edo was renamed Tokyo, meaning “eastern capital,” and designated the new imperial capital.
During the 1870s the army quelled a number of rebellions by former samurai who objected to rapid modernization. This included the ill-fated Satsuma rebellion of 1877, led by Saigo. He had resigned from the government in 1873. This rebellion was the last major challenge to the new regime.
The imperial government also laid the foundations for an industrial economy. Modern money and banking systems were introduced. Railroads, telegraph and telephone lines, and factories were built, using the newest technology. The government funded private enterprises, and new laws permitted the private ownership of land.
Leaders such as Mori Arinori helped create a modern educational system. Compulsory universal education was instituted in 1872. By 1905 nearly 95 percent of Japanese school-age children were in school, and Japan soon achieved one of the highest literacy rates in the world.
A constitution was drafted in the 1880s under the direction of the political leader Ito Hirobumi. He took as his model the institutions of the German empire. The constitution, finally put into force in 1889, gave strong executive powers to the emperor and a privy council. A prime minister headed a cabinet whose members were individually responsible to the emperor. Legislative powers were exercised by a two-house parliament, or Diet. The upper house, the House of Peers, consisted mainly of a new nobility created in 1884. The lower house, the House of Representatives, was elected by male taxpayers over 25 years of age.
By the 1890s Japan’s rapid modernization had made it the most powerful country in Asia. Extraterritoriality was relinquished by Great Britain, the United States, and the other Western powers by 1899. But Meiji leaders such as Ito and Yamagata Aritomo remained suspicious of Western imperialism. Using its growing economic and military power, Japan sought to build an empire of its own.
To achieve this objective Japan fought two major wars. The first, the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95 was fought between Japan and China. After its victory in this war, Japan forced the enormous but weak Chinese empire to cede Taiwan, formerly called Formosa, and the P’eng-hu Islands, or Pescadores. Japan was also supposed to get the Liaotung Peninsula in Manchuria (northeastern China), but Russia forced Japan not to accept it. Instead, in 1898, Russia took the peninsula itself.
The second war was fought in 1904–05 against Russia, which had become Japan’s chief rival in eastern Asia. It was this Russo-Japanese War that woke Europe and the United States to the extent of Japanese military power, because Russia was also a major player in European politics. Japan won from Russia the southern half of Sakhalin Island and a leasehold in Liaotung, together with the South Manchurian Railway. In 1910 Japan made Korea a Japanese colony and held onto it until 1945, the end of World War II. In 1915 Japan expanded its influence in Manchuria after presenting “Twenty-one Demands” for special privileges to the Chinese government. The empire of Japan had become a recognized world power.
After 1905 Japan faced a change in national leadership. The Meiji emperor died on July 30, 1912. He was succeeded by his son Yoshihito, who became known as the Taisho emperor. Yoshihito soon showed signs of mental illness. Crown Prince Hirohito served as regent from November 1921 until he became the Showa emperor on December 25, 1926.
More important, the original Meiji leaders had all died by the early 1920s. At first they were replaced by younger protégés, such as Katsura Taro and Saionji Kimmochi. Gradually, however, under the leadership of men such as Hara Takashi and Kato Takaaki, political parties in the Diet gained increasing control over the government. Between 1918 and 1932 most Japanese prime ministers were leaders of political parties in the lower house of the Diet.
The emergence of party government was accompanied by a flourishing of democratic ideas. Intellectuals such as Yoshino Sakuzo advocated greater attention to the needs of the common person. Some social-welfare legislation was approved, and in 1925 universal male suffrage (the right to vote) was instituted.
By the 1920s Japan had begun to encounter severe economic problems. Contributing to these economic problems was the fact that the rate of economic development was beginning to slow down. Agricultural production had reached a plateau, and domestic food supplies were no longer adequate. Imports of rice had to be increased greatly. By the late 1920s and early 1930s the countryside faced hard times.
The cities remained relatively prosperous, however, and industry continued to grow. Employees of the zaibatsu (large urban business combines, similar to cartels) enjoyed secure jobs and rising wages. The growth of labor unions led to the rise of a left-wing political movement in the 1920s. The Peace Preservation Law was passed in 1925, however, to curb procommunist activities. (Nearby Russia had become a communist state in 1917, and China had acquired a new and vigorous communist party.)
Japan’s party governments of the 1920s tried to follow a peaceful foreign policy. Government officials such as Foreign Minister Shidehara Kijuro advocated cooperation with Great Britain and the United States and nonintervention in the affairs of China. Japan had benefited from relationships with these countries during World War I. It had gotten control of former German territories in the Pacific—most significantly, the German base on China’s Shandong Peninsula. But during the 1920s Japan’s attention was diverted elsewhere: its economic interests in southern Manchuria were threatened by China and the new Soviet Union.
In September 1931 the Japanese army engineered a complete takeover of Manchuria. There in 1932 Japan established a puppet state—a state that is supposedly independent but is actually controlled by a foreign power. This Japanese-controlled state was named Manchukuo.
Some Japanese believed that expansion through military conquest could solve Japan’s economic problems. In addition, there were growing ranks of military officers and civilians in Japan who were ultranationalist—excessively patriotic, exalting Japan above all other nations. These ultranationalists believed that parliamentary government was “un-Japanese.” They began to attack leading government officials. Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi was assassinated by ultranationalist Japanese naval officers in 1932. A rebellion by military extremists in February 1936 was defeated, but the political parties were losing control of the government. Cabinets were increasingly dominated by militarists, and Japanese military involvement on the Asian mainland grew.
Undeclared war with China broke out in July 1937. (Some historians regard this date as the real start of World War II.) Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro refused to negotiate with the Chinese government. The Japanese armies penetrated deep into China, but they failed to force a Chinese surrender. In 1940 Japan moved troops into French Indochina (now Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia). In that year Japan also signed the Tripartite Pact with Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. In this pact Japan, Germany, and Italy agreed to assist each other if they were attacked by any power not yet at war with them, such as the United States.
The United States attempted unsuccessfully to curtail Japan’s aggressive policy through economic sanctions. In October 1941 General Tojo Hideki became Japan’s prime minister. Fearing that its plans to dominate East and Southeast Asia were in danger, the Japanese government reluctantly decided to go to war against the United States. On December 7, 1941, Japanese aircraft attacked the United States fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
By mid-1942 Japanese forces had occupied the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), Malaya (now part of Malaysia), and Burma (now Myanmar). Japanese forces had also captured virtually all islands in the central Pacific and had reached into the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. Japan hoped to achieve a favorable negotiated peace with the United States with a series of quick victories while American allies in Europe were preoccupied with the war against Germany and Italy.
By mid-1942 Japan’s fortunes were at high tide. The dream of a vast Japanese overseas empire—termed the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”—seemed within reach. But the United States was a determined foe and a much greater industrial power. It was only a few months after the Pearl Harbor attack that the tide began to roll the other way against Japan. First, there was the alarming raid by U.S. General Jimmy Doolittle’s B-25 bombers over Tokyo on April 18, 1942. This had more shock value for Japanese civilians than military significance. Then, beginning with the defeat in naval battles in the Coral Sea and off the Midway Islands in May and June 1942, Japan’s fortunes went into a slow decline.
Although the United States had lost battleships at Pearl Harbor, no aircraft carriers were destroyed: they were not in Hawaii at the time of the attack. The war in the Pacific became a war of aircraft carriers, and the United States could build and replace carriers at a much greater rate than Japan. In its land-based operations the United States initiated an island-hopping strategy instead of trying to attack every Japanese-held island. Gradually, Japan’s defense perimeter in the Pacific was pushed back. In July 1944 the Tojo government fell, and later in the year massive air raids began to destroy Japan’s cities and industries. Japan surrendered in 1945 after U.S. atomic bombs had destroyed the cities of Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9.
Under the terms of surrender in 1945, Japan gave up all territory it had acquired since 1895. The country was restricted to its home islands. U.S. forces under the command of General Douglas MacArthur began a military occupation of Japan.
The United States demobilized Japan’s military forces. Many civilian and military leaders were tried as war criminals. Seven of them, including Tojo, were convicted and executed in December 1948. Thousands of lesser officials, military officers, and business executives were removed from their jobs because they had supported Japan’s war policies.
To encourage the growth of democracy in Japan, the United States occupation authorities pressured the new Japanese government into accepting a series of political, social, and educational reforms. A new constitution became effective in 1947, and the educational system was reorganized.
On September 8, 1951, Japan signed a peace treaty with the United States and 47 other countries—but not the Soviet Union. The U.S. occupation formally ended when the treaty went into effect on April 28, 1952. Only Okinawa and several smaller Japanese islands remained under U.S. control. (Okinawa was returned to Japan in 1972, but the United States kept its military installations on the island. The Soviet Union had taken control of Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands near the end of the war and kept control of them. Control of these islands was to become an issue of contention between Japan and postcommunist Russia in the 1990s.) In 1956 Japan restored diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union but without a formal peace treaty. Later that year Japan joined the United Nations.
When Japan regained full sovereignty in 1952, the political reforms of the occupation had taken effect. Conservative political parties combined in 1955 to form the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). This party went on to dominate Japanese government for decades, holding power uninterrupted until 1993. The occupation reforms also strengthened the labor unions and the Japan Socialist Party, whose popular vote and strength in the Diet increased from the 1950s.
A bilateral security treaty signed on September 8, 1951, permitted the United States to retain military bases and troops in Japan. The treaty enabled Japan to rely on the United States for effective defense, despite groups who objected to the treaty and demanded that Japan adopt a policy of neutrality. The United States refused to allow a neutrality policy, however. By 1951 the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was well under way. The United States was fighting in the Korean War and used Japan as a base for its Korean operations.
In Japan the most pressing need immediately after the war was rebuilding. The task was monumental because nearly everything in large urban centers—homes, factories, stores, and offices—had been destroyed. Whole cities were little more than rubble.
The most far-reaching developments in Japan after the early 1950s were economic. Freed from the burden of heavy military expenditures, the Japanese could pour most of their resources into peacetime industrial production. Enjoying astounding growth, the Japanese economy expanded at never-before-seen rates (see Economy section above). Economic progress helped bring a return of Japanese national confidence. The 1964 Summer Olympics at Tokyo, the Meiji Centennial of 1968, the world exposition held near Osaka in 1970, and the return of Okinawa to Japanese control in 1972 all were occasions of renewed national pride.
Japan’s policy toward China shifted in the 1970s. The United States began dealing directly with the People’s Republic of China rather than Taiwan. In 1972 Japan, too, began establishing official relations with the government of mainland China. At the same time, Japan cut off its official ties with Taiwan. In 1978 Japan and China signed a peace treaty officially ending World War II in East Asia. (Japan had earlier signed such a treaty with Taiwan.) Both trade and cultural contacts between Japan and China expanded dramatically. China became one of Japan’s most important trading partners.
Within Japan, criticism of the ruling conservatives—the Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP—was growing. In 1972 Sato Eisaku, the prime minister since 1964, resigned. He was succeeded by Tanaka Kakuei. In new elections later in the year, the Liberal Democrats retained their majority. However, they suffered a setback as the number of seats in the Diet won by the socialist and communist parties rose to almost one-third of the total. The LDP now held only slightly more than half the seats. Twenty years earlier, the party had controlled two-thirds of the seats. Tanaka resigned under pressure in November 1974 and was succeeded by Miki Takeo.
In the December 1976 election the LDP lost its parliamentary majority for the first time in 21 years. Miki resigned, and the LDP’s Fukuda Takeo was elected prime minister. In 1978, however, Fukuda lost the presidency of the LDP to Ohira Masayoshi, who then became prime minister. Ohira died 10 days before new elections in 1980. The Liberal Democrats won majorities in both houses. Suzuki Zenko was selected president of the party and became prime minister.
Japan’s economy remained strong under Suzuki. The Suzuki administration was shaken in mid-1982, however, when former government officials were convicted in a bribery scandal that involved the U.S. Lockheed Aircraft Corporation and former prime minister Tanaka. In October 1982 Suzuki announced that he would not run again, and Nakasone Yasuhiro, a cabinet member, became Japan’s prime minister. The continuing issue of political corruption marred the elections in 1983, but Nakasone won a second term. In September 1986 the Diet voted to extend his term one year. Nakasone chose Takeshita Noboru to succeed him as president of the LDP in October 1987, and in November Takeshita was elected prime minister.
Emperor Hirohito, the longest-reigning monarch in Japanese history, died in January 1989 after a 62-year reign. His son, Crown Prince Akihito, automatically became emperor. Akihito’s reign was named Heisei, meaning “Achieving Peace.”
In April of 1989 Prime Minister Takeshita announced his resignation. His administration had been plagued by a stock-trading and bribery scandal involving the Recruit Cosmos Company. Foreign Minister Uno Sosuke was elected by the Diet in June to replace Takeshita as prime minister. however, Uno’s tenure lasted only three months. Distrust continued over the Recruit scandal, and many Japanese resented a new sales tax. In addition, Uno was involved in a scandal concerning his private life. In August 1989 former education minister Kaifu Toshiki was chosen to replace Uno.
The early 1990s were marked by a series of scandals involving bribery, corruption, and securities firms fraudulently influencing stock prices on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Kaifu was replaced as prime minister by Miyazawa Kiichi in November 1991. The scandals gained momentum, until the LDP lost favor with the people and government became highly unstable.
Japan had developed one of the largest and most sophisticated economies in the world. By the 1990s, however, the Japanese economy was suffering a serious downturn. There were two major reasons for this. First, other countries in East and Southeast Asia were increasing their economic productivity. The “Four Little Tigers”—South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore—were among the fastest-growing economies in the world, as was China.
Second, Japan had seriously over-inflated its economy from the mid-1980s onward. Japanese businesspeople and bankers believed the 30-year run of prosperity could not end. Industrial capacity was thus expanded beyond all present needs. Easy credit led to huge increases in property values and to unneeded capital investments in production. By 1992 this boom had gone bust, with the stock market losing more than half its equity values and property values plunging. Banks were caught with nonperforming loans, and the country fell into a deep recession. There were more than 13,000 business failures in Japan in 1992 alone.
As the economy worsened, the fortunes of the LDP declined. New political parties were formed to challenge the older ones. Prime Minister Myazawa’s government fell in June 1993, and elections were called for July. For the first time since 1955 the LDP was defeated. A coalition of seven parties formed a government, with Hosokawa Morihiro as prime minister. He had founded the Japan New Party in 1992.
In office, Hosokawa promised to initiate political reforms to get rid of the worst excesses of government corruption. Entrenched bureaucracies and elected officials blocked his initial legislative program, however. Then, after only eight months in office, Hosokawa resigned in April 1994. The reason for his resignation was one that had tripped up four of the last five Japanese prime ministers—an old financial scandal.
The popular Hosokawa’s fall was a great disappointment to the public. He had started a reform movement that the Japanese people hoped would clean the corruption out of government. His departure from office left Japanese politics in a state of great uncertainty. The political parties suffered from internal divisions, especially the large LDP. After much bickering within the party, Hata Tsutomu was named prime minister. Like his predecessor, Hata led a fragile coalition government. His government was given little chance to solve Japan’s problems, however. It lasted only nine weeks. He was replaced in mid-1994 by Murayama Tomiichi of the Social Democratic Party of Japan. Murayama was put into office as a result of unusual cooperation between his party and the conservative Liberal Democrats.
Two disasters struck Japan in 1995. On January 17, an earthquake measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale rocked central Japan, killing more than 6,000 people and causing billions of dollars of damage. Hardest hit was the port city of Kobe. Less than three months later, 13 people were killed and some 5,500 injured after the deadly nerve gas sarin was released into the Tokyo subway system during the morning rush hour on March 25. The subway attack was carried out by members of the small religious sect AUM Shinrikyo, led by Asahara Shoko.
In early 1996, after nearly two ineffective years in office, Murayama resigned as Japan’s prime minister. The Diet chose Liberal Democratic leader Hashimoto Ryutaro to succeed him. Hashimoto’s government lost support because of the economic recession, however, and he stepped down in 1998. He was replaced as LDP leader and prime minister by Obuchi Keizo, who died in 2000. The LDP secretary-general, Mori Yoshiro, was quickly confirmed as prime minister. In elections that June, the LDP lost its majority and was forced into an awkward alliance with two smaller parties. Mori proved to be highly unpopular, being plagued by cabinet scandals and a habit of making blunt, insensitive comments. He resigned in 2001.
Urging economic reform and fiscal restraint, Koizumi Junichiro replaced Mori as LDP leader and prime minister of Japan. He enjoyed widespread popularity, but the conservative factions of his party resisted some of his reforms. In addition, he wanted Japan to have a full-fledged military, not just a self-defensive force. This position provoked outrage in neighboring countries and among some Japanese. Nevertheless, the LDP won a clear majority in the House of Representatives in 2003, giving Koizumi a second term as prime minister. Because of LDP term limits, he left office in 2006.
Koizumi was succeeded over the next two years by a string of three LDP prime ministers—all from politically well-connected families. Abe Shinzo served in 2006–07 but resigned amid party scandals and concerns about his health. His replacement, Fukuda Yasuo, stepped down in 2008. The next prime minister was Aso Taro. The LDP was becoming increasingly unpopular with voters, however, many of whom believed the party to be ineffective and corrupt.
In elections in 2009, the LDP was swept out of office. The centrist Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) enjoyed an overwhelming victory. It formed a ruling coalition with the Social Democratic Party of Japan and the People’s New Party. The DPJ’s Hatoyama Yukio was elected prime minister, but he stepped down the following year. He was succeeded by Kan Naoto of the DPJ.
On March 11, 2011, offshore Japan was hit with the fifth-largest earthquake in the world since 1900. With a magnitude of 9.0, it was the strongest quake ever reported in Japan. This massive underwater earthquake occurred in the Pacific Ocean east of the city of Sendai, in northern Honshu. In the aftermath of the quake, a huge tsunami was created. The earthquake and ensuing tsunami killed thousands of people and left countless others without power and services. In all, more than 18,000 people were killed or were still listed as missing two years after the disaster. Tens of thousands more were left homeless. Low-lying areas along the Pacific coast were largely destroyed. In addition, the tsunami led to a serious accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station along the coast of Fukushima prefecture. Residents in a wide area around the power plant had to be evacuated. (See also Japan earthquake and tsunami of 2011.)
Kan’s government was criticized for its handling of the disaster, especially the nuclear emergency. Kan resigned in August 2011 and was replaced by Noda Yoshihiko of the DPJ. Noda’s government soon became unpopular, however, especially because of an increase in Japan’s national sales tax.
In elections in 2012 the LDP returned to power in a landslide victory. The LDP leader, Abe Shinzo, became prime minister. He quickly launched a program of ambitious economic reforms, nicknamed “Abenomics.” The program included measures such as raising the inflation rate and increasing government spending on major public-works projects. Abe’s reforms were intended to stimulate the Japanese economy, which had been largely stagnating for two decades. They were also aimed at speeding economic recovery in the area that had been devastated by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
The Abe government had early success in improving Japan’s economy. However, by late 2014 the economy had fallen into recession. Abe dissolved the parliament and called early elections, which were held in December 2014. Despite the sharp economic downturn, the LDP won by a large margin. Abe thus remained prime minister.
Following the elections, Abe worked to revise the so-called peace clause of the Japanese constitution, which restricted the use of Japan’s military. In 2015 he endorsed bills that made it easier for Japanese forces to engage in overseas combat missions if the country were attacked or threatened. The bills faced considerable opposition by the Japanese people. Nevertheless, the Diet passed the legislation.
In 2017 Abe called early elections for the lower house. He wanted to strengthen his majority there. A larger majority would allow him to begin the process of trying to amend the peace clause of the constitution. Meanwhile, the DPJ, the main opposition party, had voted itself out of existence. DPJ lawmakers were told to apply for membership in a new party, the Party of Hope. That party was launched by Tokyo governor Koike Yuriko. In the October 2017 elections, Abe’s LDP won a decisive victory.
In foreign affairs, Abe strongly condemned the acceleration of North Korea’s program to develop nuclear weapons. In 2017 he urged the international community to apply “the greatest possible pressure” on North Korea to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
Meanwhile, in 2016 Akihito expressed his desire to step down as emperor owing to his advancing age. However, the Imperial Household Law only allowed for imperial succession to take place upon the death of the emperor. In 2017 the Diet modified the law to allow Akihito to retire. The Japanese government began making preparations for the first imperial abdication in some two centuries. On April 30, 2019, Akihito stepped down, and Naruhito became the emperor of Japan on May 1. That transition marked the beginning of the Reiwa period, as Naruhito’s reign would be known. The official English translation of Reiwa is “Beautiful Harmony.”
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