Empire of Japan

The Empire of Japan was the modern Japanese state that emerged from the Meiji Restoration of 1868 and pursued rapid modernisation and overseas expansion until its defeat in the Second World War.

The restoration ended the long rule of the Tokugawa shogunate, restored political authority to the emperor, and launched a sweeping program of reform aimed at transforming Japan into a strong, industrialised power capable of resisting Western imperialism. Within a few decades Japan built a modern army and navy, adopted Western technology, industry, and institutions, promulgated the Meiji Constitution, and developed a centralised state fused with emperor-centred nationalism. This drive for strength and status soon turned outward. Victory over China in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) brought Taiwan under Japanese control, and the stunning defeat of Russia in 1905 established Japan as a major world power and the dominant force in Korea, which it formally annexed in 1910. Japan acquired further territory and influence after the First World War. During the militarist and ultranationalist turn of the 1930s, Japan invaded Manchuria, established the puppet state of Manchukuo, and launched full-scale war against China in 1937, committing widespread atrocities. Seeking resources and regional hegemony, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and European colonial possessions in 1941, conquering vast areas of Southeast Asia and the Pacific and proclaiming a 'Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.' Its empire reached its greatest extent in 1942 before being rolled back by Allied counteroffensives. Devastated by sustained bombing, the loss of its fleet, and finally the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered in August 1945. Under Allied occupation the imperial system was dismantled, the emperor renounced claims to divinity, and a new pacifist constitution took effect in 1947, formally ending the Empire of Japan and inaugurating modern democratic Japan.

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