Japan (Lonely Planet, 11th Edition) - Chris Rowthorn [25]
1894–95 Japan starts a war with China, which at this stage is a weak nation and which Japan defeats in the Sino-Japanese War (1895). Japan gains Taiwan as a result, thereby starting its territorial expansion.
1902 Japan signs the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, the first-ever equal alliance between a Western and non-Western nation. This effectively means that Japan has succeeded in becoming a major power.
1904–05 Japan has an epoch-making victory over Russia in the Russo-Japanese War. Antipathy towards Russia had hardened after the Sino-Japanese War, when Russia pressured Japan into renouncing Chinese territory that Russia itself then occupied.
1910 Now free from any Russian threat, Japan formally annexes Korea, in which it had had an increasing interest since the 1870s. The international community makes no real protest.
1912 Emperor Meiji (Mutsuhito) dies, having seen Japan rise from a remote pre-industrial nation to world-power status in just half a century. His mentally disabled son Yoshihito succeeds him.
1914–15 Japan utilises the involvement of many Western countries in WWI in Europe to occupy German territory in the Pacific in 1914 (legitimately, as Britain’s ally) and in 1915 to aggressively present China with the ‘Twenty-One Demands’.
1920s Japan becomes increasingly disillusioned with much of the West, feeling unfairly treated, such as in the Washington Conference naval ratios (1921–22) and the USA’s immigration policies in 1924.
1931 Increasingly defiant of the West, Japan invades Manchuria on a pretext, and withdraws dramatically from the League of Nations after criticism from it. Japan’s behaviour becomes more aggressive.
1937 During its attempted occupation of China, Japan perpetrates one of the world’s greatest atrocities at Nanjing, torturing and killing around 250,000 people, mostly innocent civilians.
1941 Japan enters WWII by striking Pearl Harbor on 7 December, with no prior warning, destroying much of the USA’s Pacific Fleet and thereby bringing the USA into the War.
1942 After early successes, Japan’s expansion is thwarted at the Battle of Midway in June, with significant carrier loss. From this point on Japan is largely ‘on the back foot’.
1945 After intensive firebombing of Tokyo in March, on 6 August Hiroshima becomes the first-ever victim of an atomic bombing, followed on 9 August by another bombing on Nagasaki, leading Hirohito to announce surrender on 15 August.
1945–52 Japan experiences a US-led occupation, the constructive policies of which revive Japanese morale and facilitate a remarkable and rapid economic recovery. Hirohito is spared from prosecution as a war criminal, puzzling many Japanese.
1970s & 1980s Japan is widely seen as having achieved an economic miracle and is admired as a model economic superpower, though its ‘Bubble Economy’ of the late 1980s is seen as fragile and becomes a cause for concern.
1989 Controversial Emperor Hirohito (posthumously Emperor Shōwa) dies after reigning 63 years, and his son Akihito succeeds him, the new reign name being Heisei. This translates literally as ‘Full Peace’, seemingly in contrast to Hirohito’s reign.
1990s–early 2000s After its ‘Bubble Economy’ bursts in the early 1990s, Japan enters a decade of economic recession that erodes corporate loyalties and brings about a reorientation of values, including a more ‘Western’ idea of individual rights.
1995 On 17 January an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.2 hits Kōbe, killing over 5000 people. A few months later the AUM religious group is responsible for a sarin gas attack that kills 12 and injures thousands in a Tokyo subway.
2002 Japan’s economy starts a sustained recovery, and Japan successfully co-hosts the soccer World Cup with Korea. However, problems such as a rapidly ageing society and less than fully harmonious relations with other Asian nations still remain.
2006 Prince Hisahito is born on 6 September, and is third in line for the throne under current succession laws. His birth makes him