TIME: Almanac 1995

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<text id=93CT1742> <link 90TT0819> <link 90TT0554> <link 89TT2035> <link 89TT1217> <title> Japan--History </title> <history> Compact ALMANAC--CIA Factbook East Asia Japan </history> <article> <source>CIA World Factbook</source> <hdr> History </hdr> <body> Traditional Japanese records contain the legend that the nation was founded in 600 BC by the Emperor Jimmu, a direct descendant of the sun goddess and ancestor of the present ruling imperial family. About 405 AD, 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, which resulted in a strong affinity for China. From the establishment of the first fixed capital at Nara in 710 until 1867, the emperors of the Yamato dynasty were the nominal rulers, but actual power was usually held by powerful court nobles, regents, or "shoguns" (military governors). Contact With the West 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, growing suspicions that the traders and missionaries were actually forerunners of a military conquest by European powers caused the shogunate to place foreigners under progressively tighter restrictions. This culminated in the expulsion of all foreigners and the severing of all relations with the outside world, except severely restricted commercial contacts with Dutch and Chinese merchants at Nagasaki. This isolation lasted for 200 years, until Commodore Matthew Perry of the US Navy forced the opening of Japan to the West, with the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854. Renewed contact with the West profoundly altered Japanese society. In 1868, the shogun was forced to resign, and an emperor was restored to power. The feudal system subsequently was abolished, and many Western institutions were adopted, including a Western legal system and constitutional government along quasi-parliamentary lines. The Meiji Constitution initiated many reforms. Eventually, in 1898, the last of the galling "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. Wars with China and Russia 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 as well. 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 to 1952 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 unprecedented prosperity to the country. 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 Pacific islands north of the Equator formerly held by Germany. During the 1920s, the country progressed towards a democratic system of government. However. parliamentary government was not rooted deeply enough to withstand the economic and political pressures of the 1930s. During this period, military leaders were increasingly influential. Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 and set up the state of Manchukuo. In 1933, it 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 and was part of a chain of developments culminating in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. After almost 4 years of war, resulting in the loss of 3 million Japanese lives and including the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan signed an instrument of surrender on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Harbor on September 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; Korea was granted independence; southern Sakhalin and the Kuriles were occupied by the USSR; and the United States became the sole administering authority of the Ryukyu, Bonin, and Volcano Islands. The United States returned control of these islands to Japan by 1972 with the reversion of Okinawa. After the war, Japan was placed under international control of the Allied Powers through the Supreme Commander, Gen. Douglas MacArthur. US objectives were to ensure that Japan would become a peaceful nation and to establish democratic self-government supported by the freely expressed will of the people. Political, economic, and social reforms were introduced. The method of ruling through Japanese Diet (legislature) afforded a progressive and orderly transition from the stringent controls immediately following the surrender to the restoration of full sovereignty when the treaty of peace with Japan went into effect on April 28, 1952. Political Conditions Japan is one of the most politically stable of all war democracies, ruled for more than 40 years by moderate and conservative political interests. A generally close cooperation among politicians, an efficient and dedicated bureaucracy, and the business community have tended to give cohesion to national policymaking. The political organization representing Japanese moderate conservatism is the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). The party is a coalition of several well-organized factions, the success of which depends on the factional leaders' ability to obtain a position of power in the cabinet or party. In the February 1990 lower house elections, the Socialist party (JSP) increased its strength by 55 seats (from 83 to 138), making it overwhelmingly the largest opposition party. Continuing ideological conflict between the Marxist class- struggle approach of its left wing and the more pragmatic approach of the right wing has kept the JSP from consolidating its own position in the Diet, while disputes with other opposition parties have frustrated attempts to form more than temporary alliances. Although advocating reduction and eventual elimination of US military forces in Japan, the JSP has moved to broaden its dialogue with the United States. The Komeito (Clean Government Party) is a political affiliate of the Buddhist Soka Gakkai sect but has attempted to expand its base. The party grew rapidly in its early years, but membership has leveled off. The Komeito is moderate but joins the other opposition parties in parliamentary maneuvers against the LDP. The Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) is a moderate socialist party patterned after the European social democrats. Its membership broke away from the JSP in 1960. Much of its support is from private sector labor unions. No longer stridently revolutionary, the Japan Communist Party (JCP) rejects close ties with the Soviet Union and espouses a parliamentary road to power like the major West European communist parties. However, it remains hostile to the United States. It is highly unlikely that the JCP ever will have a broad electoral base. The LDP has ruled Japan continuously since its founding in 1955. Although Japanese politics are stable, the LDP cannot take its parliamentary majority for granted. In the 1989 upper house elections, the LDP scored an impressive victory in elections in February 1990. It won 275 races and, together with 11 conservative independents who subsequently joined the party, the LDP's 286 seats in the 512-seat chamber give it chairmanship and voting majorities in every committee. The LDP counts on the inability of its opponents to unite. Its excellent overall performance in achieving high levels of economic growth has improved the lot of the people in the postwar era, and it is still the only party that a majority of the public seems to trust to manage the economy. Source: U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs, February 1989. </body> </article> </text>