Three emperors steered Japan from Meiji rise to 1945 radio surrender
The Empire of Japan lasted seventy-nine years under slogans to enrich the country, strengthen forces, and promote industry after the Boshin War restored imperial rule. Meiji, Taisho, and Showa reigned; early Pacific victories including Pearl Harbor ended with the emperor's 15 August 1945 broadcast and formal surrender on 2 September.
Two centuries of Tokugawa isolation ended after Commodore Matthew Perry's arrival led to the 1854 Convention of Kanagawa. Lopsided commercial treaties with Western powers bred a xenophobic movement demanding reverence for the emperor and the expulsion of foreigners. Satsuma samurai killed the Englishman Charles Lennox Richardson in 1862, and when Britain pressed for compensation its warships were fired on and bombarded Kagoshima in 1863; a multinational fleet shelled Shimonoseki the following year. Satsuma and Choshu allied in 1866 to topple the shogunate, and early in 1867 Emperor Komei died of smallpox, leaving his son Mutsuhito on the throne.
Tokugawa Yoshinobu handed his authority to the emperor on 9 November 1867, but his administration lingered. On 3 January 1868 Satsuma-Choshu troops took the Kyoto palace, and the next day the fifteen-year-old Meiji proclaimed direct imperial rule. Yoshinobu rejected this and marched on Kyoto, opening the Boshin War, which ended in May 1869 when loyalist holdouts in the breakaway Republic of Ezo on Hokkaido surrendered at Hakodate. The Charter Oath of April 1868 set the agenda for modernisation.
The new state moved fast. The Iwakura Mission of 1871 toured the world, failing to revise the unequal treaties but bringing home ideas; the constitution and courts followed Prussian models, and the samurai class was abolished along with its swords and topknots. Japan swapped Sakhalin for all the Kurils with Russia in 1875 and turned the Ryukyu kingdom into Okinawa Prefecture in 1879. From 1910 the empire included Korea and Taiwan as well as Karafuto.
Turmoil in the 1920s and the Depression bred militarism, and Japan joined Germany and Italy while its forces committed atrocities such as the Nanjing Massacre. After early triumphs including Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, defeats at Midway and Guadalcanal forced it onto the defensive. The loss of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria and the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought acceptance of the Potsdam terms on 14 August 1945. Douglas MacArthur ran the occupation, a new constitution took effect in May 1947, and Okinawa returned to Japanese rule only in 1972.
Source: Empire of Japan
