Japan: Century 21 - Dragons and Tigers: A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia - page 343

first shogun , an all-powerful military leader who re-
warded his followers with lands and castle towns from
which they ruled the various provinces and often waged
war on one another. Eventually , Japan was unified under
the rule of the T Tokugawa line of shoguns who governed
Japan from 1603 to 1867 from a capital city of their own
choosing, Edo . Edo grew quickly under the shoguns' in-
fluence to become one of the biggest cities in the world.
It was renamed T okyo when the T okugawa shogunate
ended and imperial rule was restored.
From 1603 to 1854, Japan was essentially closed to
foreigners and Japanese themselves were not permitted
to leave the country . This was the shoguns' response to
the intrusion by Western powers that was changing other
parts of Asia and that threatened Japan. However, some
trading was permitted under close scrutiny in the southern
port of Nagasaki, far from Japan' s heartland. Then, in 1853,
an event took place that would change Japan forever. This
was the arrival in Edo (T (Tokyo) Bay of a squadron of armed
American ships under the leadership of Commodore
Matthew C. Perry . Because of superior military technology ,
Perry was able to engineer an unequal treaty with Japan
that favored the intruders and opened Japan for trade to
outsiders.
It became readily clear to the Japanese that they had
fallen behind Western nations in technology during their
time of isolation. The ensuing crisis hastened the demise
of rule by the shoguns and brought back to power the na-
tion' s emperor, who in turn moved his seat of authority
to then newly named T Tokyo.
Britain, an island nation in the Atlantic that had
acquired the largest colonial empire in the world, became
a model for Japanese modernizers who, under the forward-
thinking Meiji emperor and his advisors, led the trans-
formation of Japan. Confucian values were called upon
to educate the Japanese and move the nation into the
twentieth century . Foreign teachers of everything from
languages to technology were imported in great num-
bers. Japanese also began to study abroad. Japanese in-
dustry developed especially quickly , with huge
military-industrial conglomerates called zaibatsu rising
to great power. This time of fast-paced, catch-up mod-
ernization is referred to as the Meiji Period (1868-1912).

ments of Shinto with Buddhist practices. A person
might have a Shinto wedding and a Buddhist fu-
neral, for example. Shinto began as the worship of
spirits in nature and evolved into a belief system
focused on the relationship between natural har-
mony and human existence. In the late 1800s, the
Japanese government elevated Shinto into a nation-
alistic cult that worshipped the emperor as divine.
The more salient nationalistic elements of the reli-
gion were expunged after World War II.
Shinto is centered on places and nature. Certain
mountains, such as Mount Fuji, are considered sacred
and are climbed by thousands of people. Major
Shinto shrines attract large numbers of pilgrims.
The most notable of these is the Ise Shrine south of
Nagoya. It represents the cult of the emperor.

EXPANSIONISM AND EMPIRE
Japan' s industrialization was accompanied by an expan-
sion of its military might and acquisition of territory
(Chapter 1). Flexing its new muscles, Japan launched
wars with China in 1894-1895 and with Russia in
1904-1905. In 1895, it annexed Taiwan. In 1920, Japan
annexed the whole of Korea, which it ruled until 1945.
Manchuria became another Japanese colony in 1931.
Such expansion was Japan' s response to the colonial
ambitions of Europeans and Americans in Asia, and
reflected Japan' s vision of a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity
Sphere (GEACPS) in which “Asia would be for Asians.”
Y et Japanese rule was often harsh and oppressive, and
was opposed by rebellious patriots in the occupied
lands.
Many of Japan' s Asian neighbors still harbor resent-
ments against Japan for its time of colonialism, citing
specific atrocities that the country has yet to officially ac-
knowledge. The most famous of these is the December
1937 Nanking (Nanjing) Massacre, named for a Chinese
city in which up to 300,000 Chinese civilians were killed
and 20,000 women raped by Japanese troops. For Kore-
ans, a key unresolved issue is the conscription of thou-
sands of women as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers
during the occupation of their country .
Japan' s expansionism was brought to a halt in 1941
after its attack on the American naval base of Pearl
Harbor in Hawaii. Japan justified the attack by claiming
that Americans had interfered with its oil supply lines
in Asia. The United States entered World War II and be-
gan to push back against Japanese control in Asia. Al-
though Japanese troops managed to advance across a

Shintoism

While most Japanese are Buddhist, many follow
the ancient religion of Shinto for certain aspects of
their lives. However, most Japanese combine ele-