Brief History of Japan
Without to have left customs so rooted in the town as the respect towards the national nature,
ancestors and heroes, “the Earth of the Rising Sun” is at the moment the second world-wide
economic power with thirteen centuries of history signed per periods of international isolation and others where it has concerned cultures and ideas until being assimilated, like the writing, the confucianismo and the Eastern buddhism and western industrialization, this last one like policy of government from aims of century XIX.
The Japanese society, between centuries XII and XIX, was feudal because the unifying mechanism was similar to the one of medieval Europe: the emperors were governing officials, but the power remained into the hands of powerful noble cuts, you run or shogunes (men
military). In 1633, during the Tokugawa period, the shogunato closed all relation with the outer world with the exception of contacts restricted with merchants in the port of Nakasaki. Isolated, between hermetically half-full of century XVII and half of century XIX, Japan was a prosperous preindustrial society that maintained great cities and a complex bureaucracy. Nevertheless, the country had to open itself to the international trade after receiving to the fleet of American commodore Matthew Perry (1853-54), whom they followed other powers western. Last shogun Tokugawa was overthrown and in 1869 Mutsuhito emperor settled in Edo, red-baptize Tokyo, adopting the real name of “Meiji” (1867-1912). The feudal system was abolished and numerous adopted western institutions, including a legal system and of government, along with other reforms in economic, social and the military thing that transformed the country into a dangerous industrial, military and economic rival for the European powers and the United States.
In a lapse of few Japan years it passed of a feudal system to another one of advanced Capitalism thanks to the intervention of the State and acquired a considerable international prestige when rescuing to the European diplomatic delegations in Beijing during the rebellion of the Boxers in 1900 and to sign a military deal with England in 1902. By then their imperialistic ambitions in the Distant East took it to defeat to China (1894-95) and the annexation of Korea in 1910. The Japanese victory in the Russian-Japanese war (1904-05) supposed the first victory of a yellow town on a white town.
The search of raw materials and markets was one of the moving bodies of the Japanese foreign policy during him century XX due to the strong demographic pressure on a poor territory in natural resources. The Japanese produced excellent products cheap, but as the western nations limited the exports, they could not acquire the food and raw materials that needed.
World War I was the opportunity to make economic and political conquests in the Asian continent. Accidentally, the country that forced the opening from Japan to the West - United States was he himself who overcame it in World War II.
Between 1920-30 Japan it fluctuated between the expansionistic policy of his military service and pacific means of the economic expansion. Before economic, political and military the wall, that had not been able to break by pacific means, beginning a period authoritarian and militarista that I end the defeat to the United States in front of.
Finalized World War II, the United States continued occupying Japan until 1952, after which the country would begin an important economic recovery that it would give back the prosperity.
Japan is today a power thanks to strategic policies that they have allowed to establish patterns of development that have taken and organized the country with a glance put in the future and in which can represent the technological advance.
By LUCIANO DIFILIPPO