Empire of Japan (TNO:ANM)
Empire of Japan[a] 大日本帝國[b] | |
|---|---|
| 1868–1992 | |
| Capital | Kyoto (1868-1869) Tokyo City (1869-1943) Tokyo (1943-1992) |
| Largest city | Tokyo City (1868-1943) Tokyo (1943-1992) |
| Official languages | Japanese |
| Recognised languages | Hokkien Mandarin Hakka Korean |
| Religion | State Shinto (state ideology) |
| Demonym(s) | Japanese |
| Government | Unitary absolute monarchy (1868-1889)
Unitary parliamentary semi-constitutional monarchy
|
| Emperor | |
• 1868-1912 | Meiji |
• 1912-1926 | Taishō |
• 1926-1989 | Shōwa |
• 1989-1992 | Heisei |
| Prime Minister | |
• 1885-1888 (first) | Itō Hirobumi |
• 1992 | Yasuhiro Nakasone |
| Legislature | None (rule by decree) (1868-1871) House of Peers (1871-1889) Imperial Diet (since 1889) |
| House of Peers (1889-1947) | |
| House of Representatives (from 1890) | |
| Historical era | |
| 3 January 1868 | |
| 11 February 1889 | |
| 25 July 1894 | |
| 8 February 1904 | |
| 23 August 1914 | |
| 18 September 1931 | |
| 7 July 1937 | |
| 7 December 1941 | |
| 23 December 1992 | |
| Area | |
| 1962 | 1,364,904 km2 (526,992 sq mi) |
| Currency | Japanese yen |
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The Empire of Japan, at the time referred to as the Japanese Empire, Imperial Japan or simply Japan, was the period in Japanese history between the Meiji Restoration in 1868 and the Japanese revolution in 1992. At its territorial peak, it stretched over 1.364 million square kilometres across Asia and the Pacific. Its possessions stretched as far west as Fangchenggang in Guangdong to as far east as Long Beach in the continental United States.
Japan before 1868 had been ruled by the Tokugawa clan as a military dictatorship known as a shogunate since the 17th century. Backlash to the perceived (and real) decline of Japan during the Bakumatsu period resulted in the overthrow of the Shogunate system and the end of feudalism in Japan. The Meiji Restoration, which restored power to the Emperor, sought to radically transform Japan from an agrarian, feudal state to an industrialized and westernized state on parr with the western nations of Europe. Japan's modernization is often regarded as the fastest modernization of any country to date. Japan's rapid industrialization and militarization in a region where its neighbors (like the Qing dynasty and Korea) had stagnated contributed to its emergence first as a regional power and, after the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War and World War I, a Great Power. Economic and political decline during the 1920s, particularly the Great Depression, motivated a period of nationalism and militarism in the country, which started with the invasion of Manchuria and culminated with Japan's war across Asia and the Pacific in the late 1930s to 40s.
Japan's measure to create a united East Asia under the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere ended up successful with their victory over the Allies in World War II. Nominally the system they created was a co-equal economic union and cooperative among the member states, but in practice its member states (with the exception of Thailand and Azad Hind) were glorified puppet states of Japan to be economically exploited. Japan's superpower status owed itself to the hegemony it held over East Asia and the Pacific; as a result, when the victory of China in the Great Asian War resulted in most of the sphere collapsing, Japan went into a heavy economic and political decline, brought on by an incapability to finance the large military and institutions that had once been required to protect and govern the empire. An economic crisis afterwards culminated in unrest which resulted in the overthrow of the Empire and the establishment of a socialist republic.