Some men need no introduction. In Japan’s case, no one man needs less of an introduction than Oda Nobunaga. I’m willing to bet more Japanese people know his name than the full name of the current prime minister. Undoubtedly the most famous samurai of all time, he ranks in the top three of virtually every samurai ranking that has been conducted in the modern age….
Welcome to the Jōmon era―the most peaceful era in Japanese history. How do we know it was so peaceful? Well, of all the skeletal remains found from its 14,000-plus-year history, only 1.8% were found to contain evidence of assault―one-fifth of the percentage of similar civilizations from the same time period! For this and many other reasons, it’s relaxing to go back and look at the…
Every now and again history throws out a character so accomplished and yet so shrouded in mystery that they beg the question ‘Were they real?’. Of all such people, there are perhaps none so famous as Shōtoku Taishi. His face has adorned seven varieties of Japanese banknotes over the past hundred years―a feat unrivalled by any other historical figure. In the Heian era, he was…
Kofun are one of the best things about living in Japan―especially when you live in Kansai and you’re surrounded by them. Southern Nara and Eastern Ōsaka in particular are riddled with kofun to the point you feel like Indiana Jones just walking down the street. Some have been turned into parks, some museums and others have been reconstructed to appear the way archaeologists believed them…
Sushi is ubiquitous. With almost 200,000 Japanese restaurants worldwide, most of them serving some form of sushi, and the fact that sushi is ranking in more ‘Most popular foods’ lists than ever before, it’s arguably the most famous Japanese food in the world. But sushi didn’t always exist in the form we know it today. In fact, it has only existed in this form since…
Japan has experienced many battles in many forms over its long and varied history, from small personal skirmishes fought between political rivals and samurai clans to full-scale conflicts between groups of 100,000+, and even wars that lasted as long as a decade. Most had little to no impact on the country’s history and remain in the history books purely to give us a deeper insight…
We’ve reached the final part of this overview. For those of you who have stuck with it from the very beginning, thank you! For those of you who jumped in here for information on the Taishō/Shōwa eras, you have no idea how long this thing has been!! I was really hoping to keep it to ten parts, but Japanese history wouldn’t allow it; it’s just…
We’ve made it to the modern world! The age of the samurai is over. Japan has entered the Meiji era. No longer is it a closed-off, self-sufficient island that wants nothing to do with the outside world; it is now a fledgling nation ready to embrace the Western world and all its ideals. Slowly but surely, over the course of the Edo era, Dutch texts…
Welcome to part two of this overview of the Edo era. Whereas in part one we focussed on central administration and foreign policy, this time we’re going to be paying attention to labour issues, taxes and the economy. The second half of the Edo era was characterised by three major reforms, the need for which was brought about by depleting gold and silver supplies, an…
The Edo era: 1603 – 1867 We’ve reached the Edo era! For those of you who have been reading this series since the beginning, well done for having made it to this point. Only a little further to go until we’re into the modern age. We left off last time in 1616 with Tokugawa Ieyasu dying and leaving the Edo shōgunate in the hands of…
