Traditional Japanese legend maintains that Japan was founded in 600 B.C.E. by the Emperor Jimmu, a direct descendant of the sun goddess and ancestor of the present ruling imperial family. About 405 C.E., the Japanese court officially adopted the Chinese writing system. During the sixth century, Buddhism was introduced. These two events revolutionized Japanese culture and marked the beginning of a long period of Chinese cultural influence.

From 710, the time of the establishment of the first fixed capital at Nara, until 1867, the emperors of the Yamato dynasty were the nominal rulers of Japan, but actual power was usually held by powerful court nobles, regents, or "shoguns" (military governors).

The first contact with the West occurred about 1542, when a Portuguese ship, blown off its course to China, landed in Japan. During the next century, traders from Portugal, the Netherlands, England, and Spain arrived, as did Jesuit, Dominican, and Franciscan missionaries.

During the early part of the 17th century, Japan's shogunate suspected that the traders and missionaries were actually forerunners of a military conquest by European powers. This caused the shogunate to place foreigners under progressively tighter restrictions. Ultimately, Japan forced all foreigners to leave and barred all relations with the outside world except for severely restricted commercial contacts with Dutch and Chinese merchants at Nagasaki. This isolation lasted for 200 years, until Commodore Matthew Perry of the U.S. Navy forced the opening of Japan to the West with the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854.

Within several years, renewed contact with the West profoundly altered Japanese society. The shogun was forced to resign, and the emperor was restored to power. The "Meiji Restoration" of 1868 initiated many reforms. The feudal system was abolished, and numerous Western institutions were adopted, including a Western legal system and constitutional government along quasi-parliamentary lines.

In 1898, the last of the "unequal treaties" with Western powers was removed, signaling Japan's new status among the nations of the world. In a few decades, by creating modern social, educational, economic, military, and industrial systems, the Emperor Meiji's "controlled revolution" had transformed a feudal and isolated state into a world power.

Japanese leaders of the late 19th century regarded the Korean Peninsula as a "dagger pointed at the heart of Japan." It was over Korea that Japan became involved in war with the Chinese Empire in 1894-95 and with Russia in 1904-05. The war with China established Japan's dominant interest in Korea, while giving it the Pescadores Islands and Formosa (now Taiwan).

After Japan defeated Russia, the resulting Treaty of Portsmouth awarded Japan certain rights in Manchuria and in southern Sakhalin, which Russia had received in 1875 in exchange for the Kurile Islands. Both wars gave Japan a free hand in Korea, which it formally annexed in 1910.

World War I permitted Japan, which fought on the side of the victorious Allies, to expand its influence in Asia and its territorial holdings in the Pacific. The postwar era brought Japan unprecedented prosperity. Japan went to the peace conference at Versailles in 1919 as one of the great military and industrial powers of the world and received official recognition as one of the "Big Five" of the new international order. It joined the League of Nations and received a mandate over islands, formerly held by Germany, in the Pacific Ocean north of the equator.

During the 1920s, Japan progressed toward a democratic system of government. Parliamentary government, however, was not rooted deeply enough to withstand the economic and political pressures of the 1930s, during which military leaders became increasingly influential.

Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 and set up the state of Manchukuo. In 1933, Japan resigned from the League of Nations. The Japanese invasion of China in 1937 followed Japan's signing the "anti-Comintern pact" with Nazi Germany the previous year. The invasion was part of a chain of developments culminating in the Japanese attack on the United States at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on Dec.7, 1941.

After almost four years of war, resulting in the loss of three million Japanese lives and including the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan signed an instrument of surrender on the U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Harbor on Sept. 2, 1945.

As a result of World War II, Japan lost all of its overseas possessions and retained only the home islands. Manchukuo was dissolved, and Manchuria was returned to China; Japan renounced all claims to Formosa (Taiwan); Korea was granted independence; southern Sakhalin and the Kuriles were occupied by the Soviet Union; and the United States became the sole administering authority of the Ryukyu, Bonin, and Volcano Islands. The 1972 reversion of Okinawa completed the United States' return of control of these islands to Japan.

After the war, Japan was placed under international control of the Allies through the Supreme Commander, General Douglas MacArthur. Political, economic, and social reforms were introduced, such as a freely elected Japanese Diet (legislature). The country's constitution took effect on May 3, 1947. The April 28, 1952 Treaty of Peace afforded a progressive and orderly transition to the restoration of full sovereignty from the stringent controls immediately following the 1945 surrender.

The post-World War II years saw tremendous economic growth in Japan, with the political system dominated by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Diet lower house elections on July 18, 1993 were a watershed event. The LDP, in power since the mid-1950s, failed to win a majority and saw the end of its four-decade rule.

A coalition of new parties and existing opposition parties formed a governing majority and elected a new Prime Minister, Morihiro Hosokawa, in August 1993. His government's major objective was political reform, consisting of a package of new political financing restrictions and major changes in the electoral system. The coalition succeeded in passing landmark political reform legislation in January 1994.

Under the 1994 legislation, the lower house electoral system was changed to one in which 300 members are elected in single-member districts and another 200 members are elected from proportional slates in 11 regions. The new electoral system also reduced the number of seats in previously over-represented rural areas and shifted seats to some urban areas.

In April 1994, Prime Minister Hosokawa resigned. Prime Minister Tsutomu Hata formed the successor coalition government, Japan's first minority government in almost 40 years. Prime Minister Hata resigned less than two months later.

Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama formed the next government in June 1994, a coalition of his Japan Socialist Party (JSP), the LDP, and the small Sakigake Party. The advent of a coalition containing the JSP and LDP shocked many observers because of their previously fierce rivalry. Prime Minister Murayama served from June 1994 to January 1996.

Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto succeeded Murayama, serving from January 1996 to July 1998. Hashimoto headed a loose coalition of three parties until the July 1998 upper house election, when the two smaller parties cut ties with the LDP. Following the disastrous LDP showing in the July 1998 elections, Hashimoto resigned. His former Foreign Minister Keizo Obuchi, who took office on July 30, 1998, succeeded Hashimoto as party president of the LDP and prime minister.

Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi died on May 14, 2000. He had been in a coma, kept alive only with the help of an artificial respirator since his stroke on April 2, 2000. On April 5, Japan's parliament elected Yoshiro Mori as the country's new prime minister, succeeding the ailing Obuchi who remained in a coma.

Last updated: 7/5/00

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