Japan
Angered by his native country’s rush towards western-style modernisation, the acclaimed Japanese author committed a shocking act of protest. Alexander Lee reveals the journey that led to such an extreme conclusion.
Christopher Harding profiles Natsume Sōseki, ‘Japan’s Charles Dickens’, whose visit to London at the turn of the 20th century suggested ways of successfully combining western industrialism with ‘Japanese Spirit’.
An island nation with few resources, Japan was in a precarious enough position when it declared war on the United States in December 1941. That its powerful navy failed to learn the lessons of previous conflicts made matters even worse, as Malcolm Murfett explains.
A Japanese map produced during the Second World War encouraged children to follow the Empire's military effort, explains Kate Wiles.
In 1946 the International Military Tribunal for the Far East opened. Known as the Tokyo Trial, it sentenced to death or prison the top Japanese...
Tim Stanley describes the Asama-Sansō Incident of 1972 and reveals the cyclical nature of political violence and the means of its defeat.
C.R. Boxer offers a study of Japanese isolationism between the mid-seventeenth and the mid-nineteenth century.
Richard Storry describes how the Army Mutiny of February 1936 was the climax of revolutionary nationalism in Japan. Its outcome meant action against China, and in the end led to Pearl Harbour
According to western stereotype, the Japanese at the time of the Second World War were passive and obedient automatons. Yet the realities of daily life in imperial Japan were complex and politically charged, argues Christopher Harding.
Geoffrey Evans describes how British and Indian forces recovered Burma from the Japanese during the Second World War.
