Showa Period - Japanese History - week three extra information
Our main business activity is teaching Japanese language in London, but during our ten week course we invite a guest speaker to talk about a particular Japanese cultural theme to our students each lecture. Our intention is to give our students a little bit extra Japanese education! This article is part of our week three Japanese History session and is designed to give you a little background into the subject.
If you are interested in learning Japanese in London then please visit our key facts page! To attend this particular Japanese lesson please follow this link
The Showa Period spans from 1926-1989, follows from the Taiso Period. As we mentioned in the preceding article, the short reign of Emperor Taisho saw the 20th century welcome Japan and this era is associated with a pretty turbulent time.
With the death of Taisho in 1926, Hirohito succeeded to the throne to begin the Showa Period. Japan's isolation from World War 1 had kept the nation free of Europe's war weary cynicism, and too, of the horrors of such war. But within a decade, Japan itself would be sliding into world war. Whatever the political, economic and social forces that produced the military government and the aggressive war effort, some observations can be made. The distribution of wealth was still uneven. The establishment factions included big business (the zaibatsu), the upper crust of government, and the military interests.
Political power within the country favoured establishment interests; suffrage was not universal. Non-establishment interests were weak because they had little recourse for expression, other than through imported political concepts - socialism and communism - that were distrusted and feared.
Japan, still sensitive to western righteousness regarding Asia even half a century after opening up to the west, felt insecure. This and domestic economic and demographic pressures made military hegemony seem a viable alternative, at least to the military. Indeed, the military and its supporters were increasingly frustrated by what they saw as ineffectual and compromising civilian policies.
The pivotal point was the Manchurian Incident of 1931, in which Japanese military forces occupied Manchuria and set up the state of Manchuguo. Protest over this action by the League of Nations resulted in Japan leaving the League and following a policy of isolation. Within the military itself, extremist factionalism grew, and during the 1930's several plots of one kind or another sought to take over power. The most famous is the 26th February Incident of 1936, a bloody military uprising that might have been a coup d'etat had it not been based on vague, romantic ideas that did not include a practical plan to how to use power. This bolstered the civilian resistance to military involvement in politics. But in the summer of 1937 war erupted in China and Japanese troops began a brutal campaign against the Chinese, notably in the occupation of Nanjing and the slaughter of between 150,000 and 300,000 civilians.
Seeking to discourage western intervention in Japan's Asian expansion, the Japanese military launched pre-emptive attacks not only on Pearl Harbour in December 1941 but against European colonial holdings throughout Asia. In less than a year, Japan possessed most of East Asia and the western Pacific. Japanese occupation was often savage and inhumane. But by 1945 Japan was on the defensive. Ignoring the Geneva Convention ban, the US continued its campaign of terror bombings on civilian areas of Japanese cities. The air raids were of an unprecedented ferocity. Many of the fire-bombs fell on the populations of Sumida-ku and other wards to the east of Tokyo during the 102 raids that were launched between January 1945 and Japan's surrender in August.
Despite Germany's defeat in May of 1945, Japanese military leaders would not yield. Japan's intransigence, combined with mounting pressure from the US scientific lobby keen to test the effects of their labour, saw the dropping, in mid-August of the same year, of atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
On 15th August 1945, Emperor Hirohito spoke on the radio - the first time commoners had heard his voice - and declared an unconditional surrender. Japan lost its empire, its emperor's claim to divinity, and the army. More than six million soldiers and civilians returned home to Japan.
A new 1946 constitution issued under the mandate of General Douglas MacArthur's occupation government guaranteed western-style liberties, established a British-style parliamentary system, dismantled the pre-war industrial zaibatsu, and renounced war as national policy. With the signing of the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, American occupation of the country ended and Japan regained its sovereignty a year later. Okinawa, however, remained under US control until 1972. To continue this article about the Showa Period please follow this link.
