history of Japan

…to stem the advance of Japanese invaders. The river waters then surged south to Hongze Lake on the Anhui border, flooding a vast area and causing the deaths of about 900,000 people. During World War II most of Anhui was occupied by Japanese forces, but the resistance of the Chinese…

…under increasing pressure from the Japanese, who established the puppet state of Manchukuo in Manchuria in 1931. In July 1937 fighting broke out between Chinese and Japanese troops near the Marco Polo Bridge, southwest of the city; Beiping was subsequently occupied by the Japanese until 1945. After World War II…

…first Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), gave Japan the right to access the wharves of Chongqing as well. Accordingly, in 1901, when British trade opened, a Japanese concession also was established at Wangjiatuo, on the south shore of the Yangtze. This concession lasted until 1937, when it was abandoned by Japan on…

…1894–95, it was leased to Japan under the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which ended the war. However, after the intervention of the Western powers that followed, it was returned to China. Russia, which was eager to acquire an ice-free port on the Pacific, occupied the Liaodong Peninsula in 1897 after the…

The Japanese invaded southern Guangxi in 1939 and occupied Nanning and Longzhou. In this period Guilin became the principal base for the Chinese and Allied air forces, as well as the home of the patriotic press, the National Salvation Daily News. In 1944 the Japanese made…

…highly vulnerable to Russian and Japanese expansion during the 19th century.

…and was occupied by the Japanese army in 1931. The province became a part of the puppet state of Manchukuo, with Jilin city as the provincial capital. Just before Japan’s surrender to the Allies on Aug. 15, 1945, Soviet forces entered the region, dismantled key industrial installations, and removed them…

…real importance began under the Japanese occupation (1895–1945). The Japanese needed a good port in southern Taiwan to serve those areas that were to become a major source of raw materials and food for Japan, and Kao-hsiung was chosen. It became the southern terminus of the island’s main north-south railway…

In the same year, Japan made a treaty with Korea that ignored China’s traditional suzerainty over the peninsula, and Li was not able, in a later treaty of commerce between the United States and Korea that he tried to manipulate, to get U.S. recognition of the old relationship. In…

…territorial privileges were transferred to Japan following the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 (which largely had been fought in and around Liaoning). From that time, Japan continually strengthened its hold on the economic life of Liaoning and all of Manchuria, partly through physical control but also through an active and successful…

On the other hand, Japan was found to be an aggressor in Manchuria in 1933, Paraguay in the Chaco area in 1935, North Korea and mainland China in Korea in 1950 and 1951, and the Soviet Union in Hungary in 1956, because they refused to observe cease-fire orders.

…was forced to grant the Japanese vast concessions in the region in return for their tacit military support. The notorious Twenty-one Demands that Japan presented to China in 1915 compelled the Chinese to extend Japan’s lease on the territory of Kwantung (Pinyin: Guandong; at the tip of the Liaodong Peninsula)…

…1937), conflict between Chinese and Japanese troops near the Marco Polo Bridge (Chinese: Lugouqiao) outside Beiping (now Beijing), which developed into the warfare between the two countries that was the prelude to the Pacific side of World War II.

During the same era, Japan-based sea raiders repeatedly plundered China’s southeastern coast. Such sea raiders, a problem in Yuan times and from the earliest Ming years, had been suppressed during the reign of the Yongle emperor, when Japan’s Ashikaga shogunate offered nominal submission to China in exchange for generous…

Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Japan joined the side of the Allies and seized the German leasehold around Jiaozhou Bay together with German-owned railways in Shandong. China was not permitted to interfere. Then, on January 18, 1915, the Japanese…

Japan, however, extended its gains in China. The Beijing government, dominated by Duan after Feng’s retirement, granted concessions to Japan for railway building in Shandong, Manchuria, and Mongolia. These were in exchange for the Nishihara loans, amounting to nearly $90 million, which went mainly to…

For Japan, Manchuria was regarded as vital. Many Japanese had acquired a sense of mission that Japan should lead Asia against the West. The Great Depression had hurt Japanese business, and there was deep social unrest. Such factors influenced many army officers—especially officers of the Kwantung…

…was the Qing trade with Japan. The Tokugawa shogunate viewed the Manchu as “barbarians” whose conquest sullied China’s claim to moral superiority in the world order. They refused to take part in the tributary system and themselves issued trade permits (counterparts of the Chinese tributary tallies) to Chinese merchants coming…

Three years after the Meiji Restoration of 1868—which inaugurated a period of modernization and political change in Japan—a commercial treaty was signed between China and Japan, and it was ratified in 1873. Understandably it was reciprocal, because both signatories had…

In 1914, when Japan declared war on Germany, its prime purpose was the capture of Qingdao; the port capitulated after a blockade in November. The Japanese continued to occupy the city until the Washington Conference of 1922, when the port was returned to China. During that period, however,…

After World War I began, Japan joined the Allies and took over German interests in the peninsula. At the same time (1915), it presented China with its list of Twenty-one Demands, including Chinese recognition of Japan’s special position in Shandong. Since its Western friends were preoccupied with Germany, China had…

…advent of World War I, Japan took over German interests in the peninsula and in 1915, as one of its infamous Twenty-One Demands, compelled the Chinese to give official recognition to the renewed occupation. Taking up the Shandong question, the imperialist powers decided in 1919 to grant Japanese occupation, which…

Shanhaiguan’s capture by Japanese forces operating in southern Manchuria (January 1932) placed that entire region under Japanese control and helped set the strategic stage for the establishment of the Japanese-sponsored puppet regime of Manchukuo.

After 1932, under the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, some agriculture-based industry (brewing, oil pressing, flour milling) grew up, and, in the latter part of World War II, the Japanese built a refinery for the production of synthetic petroleum from coal. After the war, Siping was virtually destroyed in four…

…Liaodong Peninsula was transferred to Japan. In 1906 the Japanese made the South Manchurian Railway Company their chief instrument for the economic exploitation of Manchuria, and the company developed the enormous open-pit Fushun coal mine and the Anshan steelworks. Lower-echelon Japanese employees harboured ultranationalistic feelings, which encouraged the Japanese to…

Japan was the only Asian country to escape colonization from the West. European nations and the United States tried to “open the door,” and to some extent they succeeded; but Japan was able to shake off the kind of…

Japan conquered its Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere and arrived at the gates of India, displacing British, Dutch, and French colonial rulers as well as the Americans in Guam and the Philippines. The Japanese had to allow some margin of freedom to their satellite regimes…

In 1940 the Japanese occupied the Tonkin area of northern Vietnam and in the following year the rest of Indochina. But, except for Vietnam and the western provinces of Cambodia, which the Japanese ceded to their Thai ally, Indochina was unaffected by the Japanese invasion. The local French…

Japanese military authorities in Java, having interned Dutch administrative personnel, found it necessary to use Indonesians in many administrative positions, which thus gave them opportunities that had been denied them under the Dutch. In order to secure popular acceptance of their rule, the…

…attention to Laos until the Japanese invaded mainland Southeast Asia during World War II; in 1941, under Japanese pressure, the Vichy government of German-occupied France restored to Thailand the territories France had acquired in 1904. In March 1945 the Japanese took outright administrative control of the remainder of French Indochina,…

…the Japanese (see flag of Japan), who had promoted the Lao independence movement in World War II, but it also symbolized a bright future for the country. Red was said to stand for the blood of those seeking freedom and independence, and blue stood for the promise of future prosperity.…

…determine the cause of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria begun on Sept. 18, 1931.

…of Malaya and Borneo by Japan (1942–45) during World War II generated tremendous changes in those territories. Their economies were disrupted, and communal tensions were exacerbated because Malays and Chinese reacted differently to Japanese control. The Japanese desperately needed access to the natural resources of Southeast Asia; they invaded Malaya…

Assistance came instead from the Japanese government. Aung San returned to Burma in secret, recruited 29 young men, and took them to Japan, where these “Thirty Comrades” (including Ne Win, who later became head of state) received military training. The Japanese promised independence for Burma; hence, when Japanese troops reached…

…of Okhotsk, north of the Japanese island of Hokkaido. With the Kuril Islands, it forms Sakhalin oblast (region).

…west of Lake Baikal, while Japan held much of the Pacific coast, including Vladivostok. Lenin therefore ordered the creation of the Far Eastern Republic, centring on the city of Chita, to act as a buffer between Soviet and Japanese holdings. Once Soviet power was firmly established in Siberia, the republic…

In early December 1941 the Japanese landed in northern Malaya and southern Thailand on the Malay Peninsula. They quickly gained air and naval superiority in the region, and by the end of January 1942 they had overrun the peninsula and were opposite Singapore Island. The Japanese crossed the Johor Strait…

The arrival of the Japanese armed forces in Southeast Asia in 1941–42 did not, however, occasion independence. A few leaders perhaps had been naive enough to think that it might—and some others clearly admired the Japanese and found it acceptable to work with them—but on the whole the attitude…

…plan, mildly encouraged by some Japanese statesmen, was to free Vietnam with Japanese help. Chau smuggled hundreds of young Vietnamese into Japan, where they studied the sciences and underwent training for clandestine organization, political propaganda, and terrorist action. Inspired by Chau’s writings, nationalist intellectuals in Hanoi opened the Free School…

On August 23, 1914, the Japanese empire honoured its alliance with Britain by declaring war on Germany. Tokyo had no intention of aiding its ally’s cause in Europe but was pleased to occupy the Marshall and Caroline archipelagos and lay siege to Germany’s Chinese port of Qingdao, which surrendered in…

…and on August 12, respectively; Japan against Germany on August 23; Austria-Hungary against Japan on August 25 and against Belgium on August 28.

and Japanese policies in China during World War I by a public exchange of notes between the U.S. secretary of state, Robert Lansing, and Viscount Ishii Kikujirō of Japan, a special envoy to Washington. Japan promised respect for China’s independence and territorial integrity and for the…

…that they themselves, with the Japanese plenipotentiaries, would constitute a Supreme Council, or Council of Ten, to monopolize all the major decision making. In March, however, the Supreme Council was, for reasons of convenience, reduced to a Council of Four, numbering only the Western heads of government, as the chief…

The other victorious Great Power, Japan, suffered the least human and material loss in the war and registered astounding growth. Between 1913 and 1918 Japanese production exploded, foreign trade rose from $315,000,000 to $831,000,000, and population grew 30 percent until 65,000,000 people were crowded into a mountainous archipelago smaller than…

… (Tsingtao) was the object of Japanese attack from September 1914. With some help from British troops and from Allied warships, the Japanese captured it on November 7. In October, meanwhile, the Japanese had occupied the Marianas, the Caroline Islands, and the Marshalls in the North Pacific, these islands being defenseless…

…1915), claims made by the Japanese government to special privileges in China during World War I. The major European powers, which already enjoyed similar privileges in China, could not oppose Japan’s move because of their involvement in the war. On May 7 Japan delivered an ultimatum, to which the Chinese…

…Africa were taken over by Britain, France, Japan, and other Allied nations (see mandate).

Japan was understandably incensed when its ally in the Anti-Comintern Pact, Germany, joined with Moscow at a time when the Japanese were fighting the Soviets in Manchuria and Mongolia. On the other hand, the German victories of 1940 made orphans of the French and Dutch…

When war broke out in Europe in September 1939, the Japanese, despite a series of victorious battles, had still not brought their war in China to an end: on the one hand, the Japanese strategists had made no plans to cope with…

Japan concluded a separate surrender ceremony with China in Nanking on September 9, 1945. With this last formal surrender, World War II came to an end.

After the Japanese attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (December 7, 1941), however, the focus shifted homeward. The Japanese victories of the following months more than fulfilled the fantasies that fear and hate had long prompted in Australia. On February 15, 1942, 15,000 Australians…

Italy, and Japan that opposed the Allied powers in World War II. The alliance originated in a series of agreements between Germany and Italy, followed by the proclamation of an “axis” binding Rome and Berlin (October 25, 1936), with the two powers claiming that the world would…

Nevertheless, Japan, one of the signatory parties to the protocol, engaged in a massive and clandestine research, development, production, and testing program in biological warfare, and it violated the treaty’s ban when it used biological weapons against Allied forces in China between 1937 and 1945. The…

…of the goal of stripping Japan of all the territories it had seized since 1914 and restoring Korea to independence. Upon conclusion of the first Cairo Conference, Churchill and Roosevelt flew to Iran for the Tehrān Conference with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. The two Western leaders then returned to Cairo…

The effect of the Japanese occupation was less profound in Cambodia than it was elsewhere in Southeast Asia, but the overthrow of the French administration by the Japanese in March 1945, when the war was nearing its end, provided Cambodians with some opportunities for greater political autonomy. Pressed by…

…Incident, a minor clash between Japanese and Chinese troops near Beiping (Beijing’s name under the Nationalist government), finally led the two countries into war. The Japanese government tried for several weeks to settle the incident locally, but China’s mood was highly nationalistic, and public opinion clamored for resistance to further…

…in the months immediately after Japan’s surrender, it also permitted the import of luxury goods without effective restrictions. As an anti-inflationary measure, it sold gold on the open market. These policies permitted a large gold and U.S. currency reserve, estimated at $900 million at the end of the war, to…

…who provided sexual services to Japanese Imperial Army troops during Japan’s militaristic period that ended with World War II and who generally lived under conditions of sexual slavery. Estimates of the number of women involved typically range up to 200,000, but the actual number may have been even higher. The…

On the following day the Japanese, nominally Germany’s ally, launched their attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Although they had not bothered to inform Hitler of their intentions, he was jubilant when he heard the news. “Now it is impossible for us to lose the…

…sea clashes between Allied and Japanese forces on and around Guadalcanal, one of the southern Solomon Islands, in the South Pacific. Along with the naval Battle of Midway (June 3–6, 1942), the fighting on Guadalcanal marked a turning point in favour of the Allies in the Pacific War.

…he was eventually transported to Japan and then to Singapore, where Japan had captured at least 40,000 Indian troops during its takeover of that strategic island in February 1942. The captured soldiers became Netaji (“Leader”) Bose’s Indian National Army (INA) in 1943 and, a year later, marched behind him to…

…War II that crippled the Japanese Combined Fleet, permitted U.S. invasion of the Philippines, and reinforced the Allies’ control of the Pacific.

>Japan’s first-line carrier strength and most of its best trained naval pilots. Together with the Battle of Guadalcanal, the Battle of Midway ended the threat of further Japanese invasion in the Pacific.

…contacted in China by the Japanese. They then assisted him in raising a Burmese military force to aid them in their 1942 invasion of Burma. Known as the “Burma Independence Army,” it grew with the advance of the Japanese and tended to take over the local administration of occupied areas.…

…soldiers by soldiers of the Japanese Imperial Army after its seizure of Nanjing, China, on December 13, 1937, during the Sino-Japanese War that preceded World War II. The number of Chinese killed in the massacre has been subject to much debate, with most estimates ranging from 100,000 to more than…

The Japanese were established in the northern Oceania, where they treated their mandates as part of Japan itself. In 1941 they advanced into the rest of Oceania, reaching and controlling most of New Guinea and, at the peak of their advance, much of the Solomons. New…

The Japanese war plan, aimed at the American, British, and Dutch possessions in the Pacific and in Southeast Asia, was of a rather makeshift character. The first draft, submitted by the chiefs of the Army and Navy…

…between the United States and Japan.

…to private life until the Japanese invaded the Philippines in December 1941. The Japanese used Aguinaldo as an anti-American tool. He made speeches and signed articles. In early 1942 he addressed a radio appeal to U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur—who at that time was with the U.S. garrison holding out against…

After the Japanese invasion of the Philippines in December 1941 and the fall of Manila to them (January 2, 1942), the defending U.S. and Filipino troops withdrew to Bataan, defeating Japanese efforts to split the forces of U.S. General Douglas MacArthur. His troops fought a fierce delaying…

…it intended to use against Japan. On July 26 an ultimatum was issued from the conference to Japan demanding unconditional surrender and threatening heavier air attacks otherwise. After Japan had rejected this ultimatum, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Japan supported Thai claims to the disputed lands.

…of the American public toward Japan was even more intense and demanded an unambiguous total victory in the Pacific. Truman was acutely aware that the country—in its fourth year of total war—also wanted victory as quickly as possible.

…Hoover’s policy of nonrecognition of Japan’s conquests in Asia. When Japan invaded China in 1937, however, he seemed to begin moving away from isolationism. He did not invoke the Neutrality Act, which had just been revised, and in October he warned that war was like a disease and suggested that…

…Asian policy upon strengthening occupied Japan, with much better results.

…launch guerrilla operations against the Japanese, who occupied the country during World War II. The Viet Minh forces liberated considerable portions of northern Vietnam, and after the Japanese surrender to the Allies, Viet Minh units seized control of Hanoi and proclaimed the independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

…Union’s entering the war against Japan within “two or three months” after Germany’s surrender, the U.S.S.R. would obtain from Japan the Kuril Islands and regain the territory lost in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 (including the southern part of Sakhalin Island), and the status quo in pro-Soviet Outer Mongolia would…