Meiji period

The new nation was developed under the ratification of constitutional monarchy which was implemented by the Meiji Emperor. The key changes that promoted democracy and modernization of Japan state were the shifting of power to the Japanese population. Consequently, the new system of governance was characterized by land ownership, protection of citizen’s rights…

SOCIAL HIERACHY: The Japanese Feudal period was the time when Japan was ruled by Shoguns and warlords. During the feudal period the emperor's rule was restricted to religious matters. (1192-1868) Different Social Classes were possessed based on the Power and prestige. Ancient Japanese Hierarchy was majorly divided into two categories, the Noble Class and the Peasant Class. It was then divided into the Emperors, the Daimyo and the Samurai. The peasant Class was made up of the Farmers, the…

Yanagita Kunio had a method with his folktales and legends that made him stand out. His search for the origins of Japan’s unique culture led to him being the first, and many would agree, best folklorist, of the Meiji Period. Yanagita’s ability to make a lore, passed on by an informant, increasingly literary made his legends of Tōno distinguishable. This approach of evoking powerful emotions such as fear through a literary standpoint can have an impact on the reader by producing a physical…

Set in the early Meiji period, a time of transition from a feudal system, the Tokugawa Bakufu, to a modern westernized Japan, the first tension that is sensible is the one between modernity and tradition. Throughout the narrative themes of corruption and exploitation evoke…

Before the Dutch were well trusted by the Japanese, Francis Xavier and his follower were among the first Spanish Jesuits that landed in Japan in hope of spreading Christianity in 1549. The details of this period was called the ‘Christian Century,’ it was hardly documented for reasons unknown. However, after one hundred years of the ‘Christian Century,’ the Japanese began to seclude themselves from the outside their country for many reason. First, the Japanese were fearful of the influence…

across the nation. In the early 17th century, the Japanese actively protested and discriminated against Christianity and European culture. The country began to militarize and entered a period of “self-petrification” established by the Tokugawa Shogunate by the mid-17th century. The Tokugawa Shogunate is the period, which spanned about 260 years from 1608 to 1868, where Japan completely isolated itself from European…

The Second Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945, is widely considered to begin with the Marco Polo Bridge incident of July 1937 and end with the Japanese surrender in September 1945. I would argue that to understand the motives as to why Japan invaded China, it is essential to grasp their previous history of conflicts and tensions, beginning with the Japanese claim of Taiwan from China’s Qing Dynasty after the First Sino-Japanese war in 1895, right through to the invasion of Manchuria in 1931. This…

Culture defines art. According to Webster's dictionary, the definition of culture is the beliefs, customs, arts, etc., of a particular group, place, and or time. As time progresses and present becomes past, the ability to preserve a society lies on the capacity to transfer history through tangible forms. Art has the capacity to preserve society and its history; it preserves events and emotions that were once meaningful to an era. Animal symbolism in Chinese and Japanese art as seen in a war…

At the end of the nineteenth century, Japan was in a period that it worries about its national security and its covet of becoming an imperial power comparable to the Western colonizers. In 1853, when Commodore Perry from the United States potently open up the Tokugawa Japan to the world, the country was forced…

early Showa period. It is the purpose of this essay to explore to what extent was the ‘Taisho democracy’ actually democratic, between the years 1912 and 1926, the period which the Emperor Taisho reigned for until his death due to the length of this piece. Historian Andrew Gordon argues that the ‘Taisho Democracy’ era started at the end of the 1905 Russo-Japanese war, until the 1932 fall of the Seiyukai party cabinet, because of the emergence of popular liberalism towards the end of the Meiji…