Japan in transformation, 1853–1945 — timeline

Key topic 1 · Japan opening up to China and the West, 1853–67

The Perry Mission and the opening of the ports

July 1853

Perry's squadron enters Edo Bay and refuses to leave, promising to return for an answer. Why this date: No fighting occurred, so the shogunate's authority was damaged by a demonstration rather than a defeat.

1854

The Convention of Kanagawa opens two ports and permits an American consul. Why this date: It ends two centuries of controlled seclusion and shows that the policy could not be defended.

1858

The Harris Treaty imposes extraterritoriality and fixed tariffs, followed by similar treaties with other powers. Why this date: These two clauses are the grievance that drives Meiji modernisation for the next fifty years.

The fall of the Tokugawa and the Choshu and Satsuma domains

1858

The shogunate signs the Harris Treaty after the imperial court refuses approval. Why this date: It converts a foreign policy decision into a question about the right to rule.

1863–64

Western squadrons bombard Kagoshima and the Shimonoseki batteries. Why this date: The domains leading the anti-foreign movement learn from their own defeats that Western technology must be acquired.

1866

Choshu and Satsuma form a secret alliance; a shogunate expedition against Choshu fails. Why this date: It demonstrates military weakness and creates the coalition that overthrows the regime.

1868

The Meiji Restoration proclaims direct imperial rule. Why this date: A revolution is carried out in the name of restoring an ancient authority, which is the paradox the option turns on.

Key topic 2 · Transformation, 1867–1895

The Meiji Constitution and political modernisation

1871

The domains are abolished and replaced by centrally governed prefectures. Why this date: It creates a national administration three years after the Restoration, which is the precondition for everything else.

1873

Conscription and the land tax reform are introduced. Why this date: They give the state an army of commoners and a predictable cash revenue, and both provoke serious resistance.

1889

The Meiji Constitution is granted, with the services reporting to the Emperor rather than the cabinet. Why this date: That clause is the constitutional reason civilian government could not control the army in the 1930s.

1890

The first Diet meets on a franchise of about one per cent of the population. Why this date: Representation was real and extremely narrow, which is the balance the strand has to hold.

The end of the samurai and the Restoration Coalition

1873

Conscription is introduced and the Restoration coalition splits over policy towards Korea. Why this date: It settles the priority of internal development over foreign action, and it creates the army that ends the samurai.

1876

Samurai stipends are commuted and the wearing of swords prohibited. Why this date: It removes the material and visible basis of a hereditary class and produces the rebellions that follow.

1877

The Satsuma Rebellion is defeated by the conscript army. Why this date: A class abolished by the revolution it had made is beaten in the field by the commoners it had governed.

1890

The Imperial Rescript on Education restates loyalty and filial piety as the basis of schooling. Why this date: It marks the limit of the enthusiasm for Western models and shows the framework of authority being reinforced.

Key topic 3 · An emerging power, 1895–1919

The industrial and commercial revolution of the Meiji period

1870s

The government builds model factories, arsenals and railways and hires foreign engineers. Why this date: It establishes that Japanese industrialisation began as a state project rather than a private one.

1880s

State enterprises are sold cheaply to well-connected houses; Matsukata's deflation squeezes rural incomes. Why this date: It creates the zaibatsu and a supply of cheap labour, which shape the economy for the next sixty years.

By 1914

Japan is the only industrial power in Asia, with its own shipyards and a textile export trade. Why this date: It measures the scale of the change in roughly forty years and sets up the resource problem that follows.

Taisho democracy and social change

1912

Emperor Taisho succeeds; a political crisis shows that opinion and the Diet can force a cabinet out. Why this date: It marks the shift of practical power from the Restoration oligarchs towards the parties.

1918

Hara Takashi forms the first cabinet resting on a party majority under a commoner prime minister. Why this date: It is the high point of the change, and it rests on convention rather than on law.

By 1926

Urban mass culture, a growing women's movement and a widening gap between city and village. Why this date: The social change is real, uneven and concentrated in the cities, which shapes the politics of the 1930s.

War with China and Russia, Korea, and Versailles

1895

Victory over China; the Triple Intervention forces the return of Liaodong. Why this date: It teaches that victory can be reversed by the powers, which shapes Japanese policy for two decades.

1902

The Anglo-Japanese Alliance is signed. Why this date: A European great power allies with a non-European state on equal terms, which is real recognition of status.

1905

Victory over Russia, ended by American mediation at Portsmouth. Why this date: The first defeat of a European great power by an Asian state in a modern war, with effects across Asia.

1910 and 1919

Korea is annexed; the racial equality proposal is rejected at Versailles. Why this date: Japan acts as an imperial power and is refused equality by the powers in the same decade, and both facts belong in a judgement.

Key topic 4 · Political and economic challenges, 1919–31

Suffrage, labour and the Peace Preservation Law

1918

The rice riots spread across the country and bring down a government. Why this date: It shows the political weight of urban and rural discontent and precedes the suffrage campaign's success.

1925

Universal male suffrage and the Peace Preservation Law are passed in the same year. Why this date: Enfranchisement and criminalised dissent arrive together, which is the single most quotable fact on this key topic.

1928

The Peace Preservation Law is amended to allow the death penalty for leaders. Why this date: It shows the repressive half of the 1925 bargain expanding while the electoral half stood still.

The Kanto earthquake and the impact of the Depression

1920

The wartime boom ends in a sharp recession as European competitors return. Why this date: It establishes that the 1920s were difficult before either the earthquake or the Depression.

September 1923

The Great Kanto Earthquake kills over a hundred thousand people and devastates Tokyo and Yokohama. Why this date: The relief measures propped up weak banks and postponed a financial crisis that arrived in 1927.

1930

Japan returns to the gold standard at the old parity as export prices are collapsing. Why this date: It intensified the first phase of the Depression, and the reversal at the end of 1931 began the recovery.

1931

Crop failure in the north-east compounds the collapse of silk and rice prices. Why this date: It produces the rural distress that shaped the outlook of the junior officers who acted that September.

Key topic 5 · Depression, empire and collapse, 1931–45

Tenko and the return to military dominance

1928–29

Mass arrests of communists under the Peace Preservation Law. Why this date: It creates the prison population among whom tenko then dissolves the organised left.

May 1932

Prime Minister Inukai is assassinated; party cabinets effectively end. Why this date: The light sentences that followed established that political murder carried little penalty.

1933

Senior imprisoned communist leaders recant, and mass recantations follow. Why this date: It removes organised left-wing opposition before the decisive years of the decade.

February 1936

The February 26 Incident is suppressed, and the army's political weight increases. Why this date: A failed mutiny strengthened the institution it embarrassed, which is the paradox this strand has to explain.

Manchukuo, the League and the Co-Prosperity Sphere

September 1931

The Mukden Incident is staged by Kwantung Army officers without orders from Tokyo. Why this date: It shows expansion beginning from below, which is a different explanation from a government decision.

1932

Manchukuo is proclaimed with the last Qing emperor as its nominal head. Why this date: The government endorses what it had ordered not to be done, which measures its powerlessness.

1933

The League adopts the Lytton Report; Japan gives notice of withdrawal, and no sanctions follow. Why this date: The first major test of collective security produces a report and a departure, and nothing else.

1940

The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere is proclaimed. Why this date: It supplies a doctrine for expansion whose practice contradicted its stated purpose.

The war in Southeast Asia, Hiroshima and surrender

July 1937

Full-scale war with China begins after the Marco Polo Bridge clash; Nanjing falls in December. Why this date: It commits Japan to a war it cannot end, which is what produces the embargoes and the move south.

1941

Oil is embargoed after the occupation of Indochina; Japan attacks Pearl Harbor in December. Why this date: The choice was withdrawal from China or war for oil, and the army would not accept the first.

March 1945

The firebombing of Tokyo kills on the order of a hundred thousand people in one night. Why this date: It establishes that the destruction of Japanese cities preceded the atomic bombings by months.

6–15 August 1945

Hiroshima, the Soviet declaration of war, Nagasaki, and the Emperor's broadcast. Why this date: The Soviet entry falls between the two bombs, which is why the argument about what caused the surrender is a real one.