THE WORLD ATLAS

Empire · 1868–1947 · East Asia

Empire of Japan

Also known as Imperial Japan, Japan, Japan (USA)

In the Meiji Restoration of 1868, reformers overthrew the shogunate in the name of Emperor Meiji and set out to modernise Japan so it could resist the Western powers. They abolished the samurai class, built railways, factories and a conscript army, and adopted a constitution in 1889.

Japan defeated China in 1895, taking Taiwan, and stunned the world by defeating Russia in 1905; it annexed Korea in 1910. Militarists gained control in the 1930s, seizing Manchuria in 1931 and invading China in 1937. After attacking Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Japan overran Southeast Asia and the western Pacific, committing widespread atrocities. Following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered in 1945. Under American occupation a new constitution in 1947 made the emperor a symbol and renounced war.

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The National Diet Building in Tokyo, completed in 1936
The National Diet Building in Tokyo, completed in 1936 Kakidai · CC BY-SA 4.0
Years
1868–1947
Capital
Tokyo
Greatest extent
1942, about 7.40 million km²
Region
East Asia

c. 7.4M km² (Conrad 2014), including occupied territories in China, Southeast Asia and the Pacific

Legacy

Postwar Japan rebuilt into one of the world's largest economies, while memories of its wartime empire still strain relations with China and Korea.

Timeline of Empire of Japan

  1. Meiji Restoration restores imperial rule

    Since 1603 Japan had been ruled by the Tokugawa shoguns, military rulers who kept the emperor as a figurehead and limited contact with the outside world. After the American Perry Expedition of the 1850s forced Japan to open its ports, the shogunate faced economic and political crises and foreign pressure, and the domains of Satsuma and Chōshū led an alliance against it. On 3 January 1868 Emperor Meiji declared political power restored to the imperial house. The new government abolished the feudal domains and the samurai class and set out to industrialise and modernise Japan, creating the Empire of Japan.

  2. Shogunate loyalists of the Ezo Republic surrender at Hakodate

    Supporters of the Tokugawa fought on after the restoration in the Boshin War. When the new government's forces took the shogun's capital, Edo, the navy commander Enomoto Takeaki sailed north with part of the shogunate's fleet to the island of Ezo (Hokkaido). There his followers set up the Ezo Republic in January 1869, a short-lived state in which samurai elected their leaders. Imperial forces landed on the island and besieged Hakodate, and the republic was dissolved on 27 June 1869 after five months. Its surrender ended the Boshin War and left the Meiji government in control of all Japan, including Hokkaido.

  3. Ryukyu Kingdom abolished and annexed as Okinawa Prefecture

    The Ryukyu Kingdom, a chain of islands south of Japan, had long sent tribute to China while also being dominated by the Japanese domain of Satsuma. The Meiji government made it the Ryukyu Domain in 1872, with King Shō Tai as a vassal, and pressed it to cut its ties with China. In 1879 Japan abolished the kingdom and annexed it as Okinawa Prefecture, one of Japan's home prefectures. China protested, and talks brokered by the former US president Ulysses S. Grant led nowhere. The annexation extended Japan's territory south, towards Taiwan.

  4. Treaty of Shimonoseki: Taiwan and Penghu won from China

    Japan and Qing China competed for influence in Korea, a Chinese tributary state. In the war of 1894–95 the modernised Japanese army and navy defeated Chinese forces in Korea, destroyed the Beiyang Fleet's power at the Yalu River and took Port Arthur and Weihaiwei. By the Treaty of Shimonoseki, signed on 17 April 1895, China recognised Korea's independence, paid an indemnity of 200 million taels and ceded Taiwan, the Penghu Islands and the Liaodong Peninsula. Russia, Germany and France forced Japan to give back Liaodong a week later. Taiwan became Japan's first colony, and Japan emerged as a major power in East Asia.

  5. Treaty of Portsmouth: southern Sakhalin and Kwantung lease from Russia

    Japan and Russia both wanted control of Korea and Manchuria, and in February 1904 Japan attacked the Russian fleet at Port Arthur. Japan won a series of victories, including the capture of Port Arthur, the land battle of Mukden and the destruction of Russia's Baltic Fleet at Tsushima in May 1905. US President Theodore Roosevelt mediated peace talks, and on 5 September 1905 the Treaty of Portsmouth recognised Japan's dominance in Korea and gave it Russia's lease on the Liaodong Peninsula (the Kwantung Leased Territory), the South Manchuria Railway and the southern half of Sakhalin. The victory made Japan a great power and damaged Russia's prestige in Europe.

  6. Korea annexed

    After the war with Russia, Japan made Korea a protectorate in 1905 and took control of its foreign affairs and army. Korean resistance continued, while Japanese leaders such as Itō Hirobumi pressed for a full 'merger'. On 22 August 1910 representatives of the two empires signed the Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty, which came into force on 29 August, and the Korean Empire was abolished. Korea became a Japanese colony, ruled by a governor-general, for 35 years until Japan's defeat in 1945. The annexation gave Japan a foothold on the Asian mainland.

  7. Japan enters the First World War against Germany

    Japan was allied with Britain, and when the First World War broke out it saw a chance to seize Germany's possessions in Asia. Japan sent Germany an ultimatum and declared war on 23 August 1914. Japanese troops besieged the German base at Tsingtao (Qingdao) in China, which surrendered on 7 November, and the navy seized Germany's Pacific islands, the Marianas, Carolines and Marshalls, with little resistance. In 1915 Japan pressed its Twenty-One Demands on China. After the war Japan kept the islands as a League of Nations mandate, extending its empire across the western Pacific.

  8. Mukden Incident: Japanese army seizes Manchuria

    Japan's Kwantung Army guarded the South Manchuria Railway, and its officers wanted to seize all of Manchuria, rich in coal and farmland, from China. On 18 September 1931 Japanese officers secretly set off a small explosion on the railway near Mukden (Shenyang) and blamed Chinese troops. Using this as a pretext, and despite Tokyo's attempts to curb the army's insubordination, the army attacked Chinese forces and within months occupied all of Manchuria. The invasion showed that the army could drive Japanese policy, and it began fourteen years of Japanese aggression in China.

  9. Puppet state of Manchukuo proclaimed

    To give its conquest a show of legitimacy, Japan created a new state in Manchuria. On 1 March 1932 Manchukuo was proclaimed, with Puyi, the last Qing emperor of China who had abdicated as a child in 1912, as its nominal head; in 1934 he was made emperor. Real power lay with Japanese officials and the Kwantung Army. When the League of Nations endorsed the Lytton Report, which called Manchukuo a Japanese puppet, Japan withdrew from the League in 1933. Manchukuo, enlarged by the annexation of Rehe in 1933, became an industrial base and a large addition to Japan's sphere of control.

  10. Full-scale war with China begins

    Japanese troops based near Beijing clashed with Chinese troops at the Marco Polo Bridge (Lugou Bridge) on the night of 7 July 1937. Neither side backed down, and the incident escalated into a full-scale Japanese invasion of China. After a long battle for Shanghai, Japanese forces captured the Chinese capital, Nanjing, in December 1937 and carried out the Nanjing Massacre. Japan occupied much of eastern China, but the Chinese government retreated inland and kept fighting. The war in China, which killed millions, tied down much of Japan's army until 1945.

  11. Attack on Pearl Harbor; war with the United States and Britain

    Japan, still heavily dependent on American oil and other imports, decided to seize the resources of Southeast Asia, held by the United States, Britain and the Netherlands. On 7 December 1941 Japanese carrier aircraft attacked the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, sinking or damaging many battleships and killing 2,403 Americans. Within hours Japan also attacked the Philippines, Guam, Wake Island, Malaya, Singapore and Hong Kong. The United States and Britain declared war. The attack brought the US into the Second World War and began the Pacific War.

  12. Empire at its greatest extent, about 7.4 million km²

    In the months after Pearl Harbor, Japanese forces overran Malaya, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, Burma and many Pacific islands. In 1942 the empire and the lands it occupied covered about 7.4 million km², stretching from Manchuria and much of China to the borders of India and deep into the Pacific. But in June 1942 Japan lost four fleet carriers at the Battle of Midway, its navy's first decisive defeat and the turning point of the war. After Midway and the long fight for Guadalcanal, Japan was forced onto the defensive and steadily pushed back.

  13. Atomic bombings and Soviet invasion; surrender signed 2 September

    By mid-1945 Japan's navy was largely destroyed and its cities devastated by bombing, but its leaders refused to surrender. On 6 August the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima; on 9 August the Soviet Union invaded Manchuria, and hours later a second bomb destroyed Nagasaki. Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's surrender on 15 August, and the Instrument of Surrender was signed aboard USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945. The Soviets took southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, Japan lost its empire overseas, and Allied occupation followed.

Periods and reigns

Rulers

Realms on the map

Wars

Chapters

Sources