Located in East Asia, the island nation of Japan, whose name originally means "sunrise country", is mainly composed of four large islands, Named Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu, as well as many small islands. Japan's land area is not very large, and the population is not very large, but its history is quite long, dating back to the middle and late Paleolithic period. Next, we will briefly tell the history of Japan from the three stages of ancient times, medieval periods and modern periods.
At present, the confirmed human history in Japan can be traced back about 30,000 to 100,000 years ago, but that period was basically in the state of primitive people, and it was far from civilized. Beginning around 12,000 years ago, Japan began to enter the Jomon period, which is believed to be the earliest human settlement era in Japan to date, when people were mainly hunting, so named because of the pattern similar to jomon on pottery.
The development of early Japanese civilization mainly relied on foreign stimuli, that is, the so-called "Watanabes" (referring to Overseas immigrants from Korea and China), who brought more advanced agricultural, construction, manufacturing, textile and other technologies to Japan, so that Japan gradually entered the era of civilization, with the development of agriculture and fisheries based on rice, Japan began to enter the Yayoi era around the middle and late Spring and Autumn period in China.
With the development of society, Japan began to form a class society, and roughly in the middle and late Period of the Eastern Han Dynasty in China, it began to form a state by tribes. At that time, around the two political centers of northern Kyushu and Gyeonggi, there were many small countries in the Japanese archipelago, and these small countries often fought between them, and it was not until the second half of the second century that Japan appeared in the northeast of Kyushu Island, known as the "Evil Matai Kingdom", which had more than 30 small countries, and its most famous ruler was the Queen Beimihu, which was also recorded in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms (those who have played "Tomb Raider Rise" should have an impression of this country).
In the late Western Jin Dynasty, Japan began to enter the Yamato era, because a large number of kofuns were built at that time, so it was also called the kofun era. After that, the Yamato court gradually completed unification, and diplomatic relations with China began to become more frequent, and Confucianism, Buddhism, medicine, calendars, Chinese characters, manufacturing, and construction techniques in the Central Plains began to be introduced to Japan in large quantities.
By the second half of the fifth century (the end of the Southern and Northern Dynasties of China), due to the fierce struggle between the major Hao clans in the country and the unfavorable treatment of the Korean War, the emperor had to cooperate with the Su I clan, the largest Hao clan at that time, in order to stabilize his rule, which led to the further expansion of the power of the Su I clan and the fall of the emperor's power.
It was not until 586, after Prince Shengde ascended the throne, after learning from the Sui Dynasty, began to suppress the domestic Hao clan through reform, strengthened centralized rule, and Japan began to form a unified state centered on the emperor, and the emperor became the supreme ruler of Japan, because the capital at that time was Asuka, so this period was also known as the Asuka Era. Although this reform was opposed by the Su we ministry, because a large number of people of insight who returned from China at that time defected to the emperor, the result was that the Su we department was eventually eliminated.
Japan's reform was not basically completed until the Nara period (named after the relocation of the capital to Nara), when Japan began to enter a period of prosperity in the legal system, which was also the period when Japan was most closely related to our country, when Japan sent a large number of envoys to the Tang Dynasty, and Sino-Japanese cultural exchanges were extremely frequent, which promoted the prosperity of Buddhism in Japan and played a great role in promoting Japanese culture.
In 794, with the relocation of the capital to Heian Kyo (Kyoto), Japan began to enter the Heian period. During this period, the Japanese legal system began to collapse, and finally in the late 10th century and around the eleventh century, Japan began to enter the regency politics (that is, the regent and Sekibai held real power), and the Fujiwara clan became the regents. It was also because of the collapse of the law system and the chaos of local law and order, the manor owners began to hire and form private armies to protect themselves, and the samurai class began to appear.
In the late Heian period, the Hei family and the Genji entered the central government as representatives of the samurai order, and in order to take power, the two families began to fight openly and secretly, first the Hei family defeated the Genji family to influence the government, but because of its rule based on the manor, the samurai rebelled, which led to a nationwide civil unrest, and the era of aristocratic rule fell.
As a representative of the Takeshi clique, genji began to take charge of the government after defeating the Heijia, and after learning the lessons of the defeat of the Hiraya, the Genji established the Kamakura shogunate in 1185, and the samurai politics officially replaced the aristocratic rule. The shogunate was characterized by the formation of the samurai's chief shogun and his subordinate imperial family, and at the same time inherited the Hei family's land head system, dividing the imperial family into land heads and maintaining local rule. The shogunate nominally needed to be authorized by the emperor, but in fact the shogunate governed the country by "holding the son of heaven hostage to order the princes".
However, due to the fact that the lords and nobles of the great manor were still very powerful at this time, the result was that the power of the Genji family was eventually usurped by his foreign relative Hojo, and the emperor seized the opportunity to restore his rule, but the unity of the samurai class failed, resulting in the complete loss of power by the emperor, and the Hojo family began to take power, and in order to stabilize the rule, the first samurai code was promulgated to restrain the samurai.
In the later period of the Kamakura shogunate, due to the intensification of the confrontation between the imperial government and the shogunate, coupled with the dissatisfaction of the imperial family, the shogunate rule collapsed, and then Emperor Daigo also took the opportunity to seize power, resulting in the eventual demise of the Hojo clan's rule. However, after the Kamakura shogunate, the emperor only maintained a few years of rule, and was soon ousted by the new samurai representatives and ran to the south to establish himself as emperor, while the Ashikaga family established the Muromachi shogunate in the north.
This kind of southern and northern dynasties lasted for about sixty years, during which time geopolitics began to gradually replace blood politics, the power of local guardian daimyo began to increase, and the peasants who held groups were mostly attached to the guardian daimyo, and by the late fourteenth century, Japan was almost entirely under the guardian daimyo system, and the Muromachi shogunate, with the help of the various guardian daimyōs, eventually merged the southern dynasty through mediation, making Japan unified again.
However, due to the strong power of the daimyo, after the shogunate stabilized, he also tried to weaken the daimyo's power, but he did not succeed. Later, due to the large-scale rebellion of the long-oppressed peasants, the power of the shogunate began to weaken, and the power of the daimyo began to increase. Later, with the internal strife in the government, daimyōs from all over the country sent troops, and eventually the "Onin Rebellion" broke out, and the Muromachi shogunate survived in name only.
After the "Ying Ren Rebellion", Japan began to enter a century-long Sengoku period, during which both the courtiers rebelled against the lords of the family, and the peasants and samurai rebelled against the upper class, resulting in social unrest and class chaos, and the daimyo that rose up during this period was called the Sengoku Daimyo. The way the Sengoku daimyo ruled their territories and subjects was very different from before, which made their military and economic power very strong.
After a century of fighting each other among the daimyōs of the Warring States, Oda Nobunaga came out of the crowd and fought all the way from neighboring countries to Upper Kyoto, deposing the shoguns of the time, establishing a new monarch, and disarming the monasteries. After that, Oda soon destroyed the Muromachi shogunate and built a castle in Azuchi, almost unifying the world, but eventually died in the "Honnoji Rebellion" due to the rebellion of his subordinate Mitsuhide.
After Oda Nobunaga's death, Toyotomi Hideyoshi took over his career, pacifying Shikoku, receiving the title of Sekibai, and later serving as Minister of Taisei, completely unifying Japan. Toyotomi Hideyoshi then established a dictatorship, and his sword hunting order and land inspection order had a great impact on the later period, but because it did not establish a perfect political system, the regime declined after his death.
After Toyotomi Hideyoshi's death, Tokugawa Ieyasu, who had been a subordinate of Oda Nobunaga, began to take the stage of history. Tokugawa Ieyasu was suppressed when Toyotomi Hideyoshi came to power, but his power was still very strong, and after Toyotomi Hideyoshi's death, Tokugawa Ieyasu defeated other daimyōs, was enfeoffed as a shogun of Seiyi, and established the Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the Edo period.
After three generations of rule, the Tokugawa shogunate eventually established the so-called "shogunate system", in which the shogunate had coercive power over the daimyōs of the country, but the daimyōs also had semi-independent territorial sovereignty. The Edo period was a standard feudal government, and in order to stabilize the rule, the government stipulated four classes of scholars, peasants, industrialists, and merchants, and although nominally the status of the peasants was second only to the samurai class, the peasants were still the most oppressed and exploited class.
The Japanese economy of the Edo period developed rapidly, and capitalism began to sprout in Japan in the late eighteenth century, but it could not be further developed due to the suppression of the feudal system, and the government even began to implement a closed policy in order to maintain its rule. Since then, the samurai class has become increasingly impoverished for various reasons, and even had to survive by betraying its samurai identity, which led to the gradual collapse of the hierarchy. The peasants, under severe exploitation, became more and more impoverished and eventually began to riot.
After the nineteenth century, as the power of the developed countries in the West poured into East Asia, Japan was still mired in financial difficulties and peasant riots, and the authority of the shogunate was greatly weakened, which made the lower classes and merchants who held a lot of money begin to enter the historical stage. Eventually, under pressure from the West, Japan was forced to open a state, which caused a power struggle within the shogunate and the public, and brought the development of the Zunwang Yi movement to its climax.
In order to regain power, the shogunate and the public government began to "integrate public and military forces", but as more and more people in Japan realized the corruption of the shogunate, the rebellion movement began to rise. After the death of Emperor Takamei, the shogunate also realized that the situation was irreparable, and eventually returned power to the emperor during the fifteenth shogunate, but the actual power was controlled by the Sasaga League.
After that, Japan experienced a series of wars during the transition between the old and new governments, such as the "Toba, Fushimi War", "Bochen War", and "Southwest War", after which the shogunate completely withdrew from history, and the Imperial Japanese government began to appear on the stage of the calendar.
In order to change the backward situation, the new Japanese government began to actively introduce various European and American systems and promote the reform of the "Meiji Restoration", which made Japan begin to move towards the road of modern development. After the rise of Japan, it has also begun to actively plunder other countries like the Western powers, and everyone must be more aware of the history of Japan after that, after all, many of the humiliating histories of modern China are due to Japan, so I will not repeat them here.