Discover Japan

                     JAPAN

An archipielago in the Pacific, Japan is separated from the east coast of Asia by the Sea of Japan. Japan's four main islands are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, and Shikoku.

The capital of Japan is Tokyo. Other large cities are Yokohama, Osaka and Nagoya.

The monetary unit is the yen and the emperor is Akihito.

Japan is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary government. The prime minister is Yoshihiko Noda.

Legend attributes the creation of Japan to the sun goddes, from who the emperors where descended.The first of them was Jimmu, supposed to have ascended the throne in 660 B.C. Japanese history begins in approximately A.D. 400, when the Yamato clan managed to gain control of other family groups in central and western Japan. Contact with Korea introduced Buddhism to Japan at about this time. Through the 700s Japan was much influenced by China, and the Yamato clan set up an imperial court similar to that of China. In the ensuing centuries, the authority of the imperial court was undermined as powerful gentry families vied for control. At the same time, warrior clans were rising to prominence as a distinct class know as samurai. In 1192, the Minamoto clan set up a military government under their leader, Yorimoto. He was designated shogun (military dictator). For the following 700 years, shoguns from a succession of clans ruled in Japan, while the imperial court existed in relative obscurity.

First contact with the West came in about 1542, when a Portuguese ship off course arrived in Japanese waters. Portuguese traders, Jesuit missionaries, and Spanish, Dutch and English traders followerd. Suspicious of Christianity and of Portuguese support of a local Japanese revolt, the shoguns of the Tokugawa period prohibited all trade with foreign countries; only a Dutch trading post at Nagasaki was permitted. Western attempts to renew trading relations failed until 1853, when Commodore Mathew Perry sailed an American fleet into Tokyo Bay. Trade with the West was forced upon Japan under terms less than favorable to the Japanese. Strife caused by these actions brought down the feudal world of the shoguns. In 1868, the emperor Meji came to the throne, and the shogun system was abolished.