Around the 4th century B.C., the Yayoi people from the Korean Peninsula immigrated to the Japanese archipelago and introduced iron technology and agricultural civilization. The first human habitation in the Japanese archipelago has been traced to prehistoric times around 30,000 BC. Portugal and Japan started their first affiliation in 1543, when the Portuguese became the first Europeans to reach Japan by landing in the southern archipelago. It was originally founded as Heian in 794, and had its golden age during the court's heyday from 794 to 1185. [287] Japan's system of lifetime employment largely collapsed and unemployment rates rose. Large, Stephen S. (2007). Few definite historical facts are known about the secretive lifestyles of the ninja, who became the subject of many legends. "Oligarchy, Democracy, and Fascism," in, Maher, Kohn C. (1996). [16] Historian Hanihara Kazurō has suggested that the annual immigrant influx from the continent ranged from 350 to 3,000. There was also a serious attempt to overthrow the Imperial house during the middle Nara period. [142] In the area of numeracy – approximated by an index measuring people's ability to report an exact rather than a rounded age (age-heaping method), and which level shows a strong correlation to later economic development of a country – Japan's level was comparable to that of north-west European countries, and moreover, Japan's index came close to the 100 percent mark throughout the nineteenth century. "Geisha". Rhee, Song-Nai et al. After Nobunaga was assassinated in 1582 by Akechi Mitsuhide, his successor Toyotomi Hideyoshi unified the nation in 1590 and launched two unsuccessful invasions of Korea in 1592 and 1597. 7", "Some Aspeccts of Portuguese Influence in Japan, 1542–1640", Bulletin of the National Museum of Japanese History, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_Japan&oldid=1001155681, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles containing Japanese-language text, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. [276] In 1960, the massive Anpo Protests saw hundreds of thousands of citizens take to the streets in opposition to the US-Japan Security Treaty. The Reform began with land reform, based on Confucian ideas and philosophies from China. Behind the scenes, Yoritomo's wife Hōjō Masako became the true power behind the government. [124] In 1603, Emperor Go-Yōzei declared Tokugawa Ieyasu shōgun, and Ieyasu abdicated two years later to groom his son as the second shōgun of what became a long dynasty. Sony Corporation was founded in Tokyo, Japan. In Hinsley, FH (ed.). For years certain scholars have claimed that the bearers of the Jōmon culture were ancestors of the Ainu, an indigenous people of northern Japan. [240] The Japanese superbattleship Yamato was sunk en route to aid in the Battle of Okinawa. Morton, W Scott and Olenike, J Kenneth (2004). After consolidating its control over Hokkaido (through the Hokkaidō Development Commission) and annexing the Ryukyu Kingdom (the "Ryūkyū Disposition"), it next turned its attention to China and Korea. The victory of the Minamoto clan was sealed in 1185, when a force commanded by Yoritomo's younger brother, Minamoto no Yoshitsune, scored a decisive victory at the naval Battle of Dan-no-ura. [82], The samurai armies of the whole nation were mobilized in 1274 and 1281 to confront two full-scale invasions launched by Kublai Khan of the Mongol Empire. Shōtoku authored the Seventeen-article constitution, a Confucian-inspired code of conduct for officials and citizens, and attempted to introduce a merit-based civil service called the Cap and Rank System. Chaiklin, Martha (2013). [33] Since then, Buddhism has coexisted with Japan's native Shinto religion, in what is today known as Shinbutsu-shūgō. [162], The shogunate's failure to oppose the Western powers angered many Japanese, particularly those of the southern domains of Chōshū and Satsuma. Japanese citizens were allowed to return. [118] Hideyoshi's land survey designated all those who were cultivating the land as being "commoners", an act which effectively granted freedom to most of Japan's slaves. The English term shogunate refers to the bakufu. 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