50 Fun Facts About Japanese History

Which Japanese video game giant began in 1889 as a maker of handmade hanafuda playing cards?

Nintendo was founded by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi to make flower cards by hand. It only turned to video games in the 1970s.

Which invaders' two 13th-century fleets were wrecked off Japan by typhoons later named kamikaze?

The Mongols under Kublai Khan, founder of China's Yuan dynasty, tried in 1274 and again in 1281. That August a great typhoon smashed their fleet at anchor, and the storms became known as the divine wind.

Which modern city grew from a fishing village called Edo into the seat of Japan's shoguns?

Tokyo took its present name in 1868, after the last shogun was overthrown and the emperor moved in. As Edo it had about a million people by 1721, perhaps the most of any city on Earth.

Which Japanese theatre form, founded by a woman in 1603, saw women banned from its stage in 1629?

Kabuki began when former shrine maiden Izumo no Okuni led a troupe of female dancers on a dry riverbed. After the ban, male actors called onnagata took over the women's roles.

In which country did soldier Hiroo Onoda keep fighting World War II from the jungle until 1974?

The Philippines finally saw him surrender when his old commander, by then a bookseller, flew to Lubang Island to relieve him of duty. Onoda handed his sword to President Marcos.

Which term describes a samurai without a master, like the forty-seven who avenged their lord in 1703?

Rōnin from the Akō domain waited nearly two years before killing the official behind their master's death. Forty-six were then ordered to take their own lives, and one was pardoned.

Which US commodore steamed his black ships into Edo Bay in 1853 to force Japan open to trade?

Matthew Perry came back in 1854 to sign the Convention of Kanagawa, which opened two ports. His gifts included a miniature steam locomotive and one hundred gallons of whiskey.

Which city, struck off the 1945 atomic bomb target list, was Japan's imperial capital for over a thousand years?

Kyoto was spared when US Secretary of War Henry Stimson had it removed from the list. Emperors had held court there from 794 until 1869, through wars, fires and earthquakes.

Which world first in transport opened between Japan's capital and Osaka days before the 1964 Summer Olympics?

A bullet train, the Shinkansen, began running on 1 October 1964 as the world's first high-speed rail line. Its opening was timed to coincide with the Games.

Which port city became the second and last ever hit by an atomic bomb, three days after Hiroshima?

Nagasaki was only the secondary target: the bomber Bockscar set out for Kokura and diverted with fuel running low. The two attacks remain the only uses of nuclear weapons in war.

Which US naval base did Japan strike without warning on 7 December 1941, drawing America into World War II?

Pearl Harbor lost four battleships sunk that morning, but all three of the Pacific Fleet's aircraft carriers happened to be away. The US declared war on Japan the next day.

Which native Japanese religion honours spirits called kami and marks its shrines with torii gateways?

Shinto has no single founder and no single sacred text, unlike Christianity or Islam. Its kami are believed to inhabit all things, from forces of nature to landmarks.

Which crop measured a feudal lord's wealth in Japan, counted in units called koku?

Rice farming ended the hunter-gatherer way of life as people settled in one place. One koku was reckoned enough to feed one person for a year.

Which emperor, whose 1945 radio broadcast announced Japan's surrender, reigned for 62 years until his death in 1989?

Hirohito had never been heard by ordinary Japanese before that broadcast, and his formal Classical Japanese was unfamiliar to many listeners. No emperor in Japan's history has reigned longer.

Which American general ran the Allied occupation of Japan from 1945 until President Truman removed him in 1951?

Douglas MacArthur oversaw reforms that gave Japanese women the vote. His land reform bought up more than a third of Japan's farmland and resold it to the farmers who worked it.

Which warlord, the third of Japan's three great unifiers, won the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600?

Tokugawa Ieyasu, once a child hostage of a rival clan, founded a shogunate that ruled Japan from 1603 until 1868. Oda Nobunaga, the first unifier, had long been his ally.

Which country's traders, the first Europeans to reach Japan, brought firearms ashore on Tanegashima in 1543?

Portugal gave Japan more than guns: tempura and pan, the word for bread, both arrived with its ships. For centuries the Japanese simply called a firearm a tanegashima.

Which 11th-century work by court lady Murasaki Shikibu is often called the world's first novel?

The Tale of Genji came from a woman whose real name is unknown: Murasaki Shikibu is only a descriptive name. She had mastered Chinese, a language Heian women were not meant to learn.

Which flower gives its name to the throne of Japan's emperors and appears on Japanese passport covers?

Chrysanthemum blooms with sixteen petals form the imperial crest. During the Meiji period nobody but the emperor was permitted to use it.

Which samurai moral code became known worldwide through Nitobe Inazō's bestselling book on the soul of Japan?

Bushido reached the West through a book Nitobe wrote in English while living in the United States. US President Theodore Roosevelt was among its readers.

Which country did Japan annex in 1910 and rule as a colony named Chōsen until 1945?

Korea was renamed Chōsen, the Japanese reading of Joseon, the name of its old ruling dynasty. Japanese rule ended only with defeat in World War II.

Which European power did Japan stun in a 1904–05 war, destroying its fleet at the Battle of Tsushima?

Russia's Baltic Fleet sailed for seven months to reach the fight, only to be destroyed. It was the first major victory of the modern era by an Asian power over a European nation.

Which Japanese volcano's last confirmed eruption, in 1707, blanketed the east of the country in ash?

Mount Fuji erupted from December 1707 into February 1708, in what is called the Hōei eruption. The ash-fall was followed by landslides and starvation.

Which Japanese prefecture's Daiichi nuclear plant suffered meltdowns after the tsunami of March 2011?

Fukushima was the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, rated Level 7, the top of the international scale. The wave struck the plant about 50 minutes after the earthquake.

Which port, a fishing village until foreign trade arrived in 1859, was levelled by the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake?

Yokohama lost nearly all its buildings, and fires fanned by the winds of a nearby typhoon did most of the damage. Some 2.5 million people across the region were left homeless.

Which Europeans alone could trade with Japan during two centuries of isolation, confined to the tiny island of Dejima?

The Dutch were moved to the fan-shaped artificial island in 1641 and kept apart from Japanese society. Only their ships and Chinese ones were allowed in.

Which artist, known by at least thirty names in his lifetime, made the woodblock print The Great Wave off Kanagawa?

Hokusai influenced Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet when a craze for Japanese art swept Europe in the late 19th century. The wave is his most famous print.

Which city, Japan's first permanent capital from 710, is home to Tōdai-ji and its giant bronze Buddha?

Nara held the court until 784. Its roaming deer are regarded as heavenly animals, because legend says a god rode in on a white one to guard the new capital.

Which sovereign right does Article 9 of Japan's 1947 constitution, written under US occupation, forever renounce?

Waging war was renounced, along with the threat or use of force to settle disputes. Japan nonetheless founded its Self-Defense Forces in 1954.

Which island's 1945 battle produced the famous photograph of US Marines raising a flag on Mount Suribachi?

Iwo Jima's famous image actually shows the second flag-raising, when a larger replacement flag went up. It won the Pulitzer Prize in the same year it was taken.

Which June 1942 naval battle, often called the turning point of the Pacific War, cost Japan four aircraft carriers?

Midway turned on intelligence: US code breakers had worked out the date and place of the attack, so an ambush was waiting. All four Japanese fleet carriers present were sunk.

Which Japanese prefecture, once the independent Ryukyu Kingdom, stayed under US administration from 1945 until 1972?

Okinawa kept its own kings, who paid tribute to China, until Japan annexed the islands in 1879 and turned the kingdom into a prefecture.

Which English navigator, the model for the hero of James Clavell's novel Shōgun, reached Japan in 1600?

William Adams was the first Englishman to reach Japan, and rose to be an adviser and direct vassal of the shogun. He was granted swords, land and the name Miura Anjin.

Which swordsman, famed for an undefeated record in dozens of duels, wrote The Book of Five Rings in his final years?

Miyamoto Musashi became renowned for fighting with two blades at once. He was also an artist, and left a second short work called The Path of Aloneness.

Which Japanese city's hilltop castle, nicknamed the White Heron, survived a 1945 bombing that burned the town around it?

Himeji Castle was struck on its top floor by a firebomb that failed to explode. In 1993 it became one of Japan's first UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

Which hero of the Meiji Restoration, often called the last true samurai, died leading the 1877 Satsuma Rebellion?

Saigō Takamori helped build the new government, then grew disillusioned and became the reluctant leader of samurai who rose against it. His bronze statue was unveiled in Ueno Park in 1898.

Which sun goddess, said to have hidden in a cave and darkened the world, do Japan's emperors claim as an ancestor?

Amaterasu shut herself in the Heavenly Rock-Cave after her brother Susanoo hurled a flayed horse into her weaving hall. Texts from the 8th century trace the imperial house to her grandson Ninigi.

Which prehistoric Japanese period is named after pottery decorated by pressing cords into wet clay?

Jōmon translates the straw-rope pattern that American zoologist Edward Morse described on sherds he dug up in 1877. The pottery style is among the oldest in the world.

Which shape, seen from above, do Japan's giant ancient burial mounds such as Daisen Kofun take?

A keyhole outline, with one square end and one round, marks the most common type of kofun. The largest of all, in Osaka Prefecture, is attributed to Emperor Nintoku.

Which family-run business empires, such as Mitsui and Mitsubishi, were broken up by the Allied occupation after 1945?

Zaibatsu each answered to a single family at the top, and the Big Four also counted Sumitomo and Yasuda. Looser alliances of banks and manufacturers called keiretsu took their place.

Which shaman queen of Yamatai, recorded in 3rd-century Chinese chronicles, received a gold seal from the Wei court?

Himiko sent an embassy to the Chinese state of Wei in 238, whose court named her Queen of Wa, Friend of Wei. Where her realm lay, and where she is buried, remain disputed.

Which Jesuit co-founder landed at Kagoshima in 1549 to lead the first Christian mission to Japan?

Francis Xavier was guided by Anjirō, a Japanese man who had sailed to Malacca to find him. The local lord welcomed the mission, then banned conversions a year later on pain of death.

Which clan dominated Heian-period Japan by marrying its daughters to emperors and monopolising the post of regent?

Fujiwara power peaked under Michinaga, father of six empresses or consorts and grandfather of three emperors. He never formally took the title of kampaku, regent to an adult emperor.

Which gold-leaf-coated Zen temple, once shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu's villa, was burned down by a novice monk in 1950?

Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavilion, was rebuilt in 1955. Novelist Yukio Mishima turned the story of the young monk who set the fire into a book the following year.

Which civil war of 1467–1477 left the capital in ruins and opened Japan's Sengoku, or Warring States, period?

The Ōnin War grew out of succession quarrels inside great warrior families and the shogun's own house. It began the disintegration of the shogunate's power.

Which European state's constitution was the main model for Japan's Meiji Constitution, proclaimed in 1889?

Prussia appealed because its system left the monarch an active ruler with real political power. Itō Hirobumi led a mission overseas in 1882 to study constitutions first-hand.

Which regent, credited with Japan's Seventeen-Article Constitution, has appeared on yen banknotes from 100 to 10,000?

Prince Shōtoku also sent China's Sui emperor a letter that holds the earliest known written reference to Japan as the land of the rising sun.

Which object joins a sword and a jewel as the three Imperial Regalia of Japan, standing for wisdom?

A mirror stands for wisdom, beside the sword for valour and the jewel for benevolence. All three are kept from public view, seen by tradition only by the emperor and certain priests.

Which warlord founded Japan's first shogunate after his clan won the Genpei War, having grown up in exile?

Minamoto no Yoritomo was spared as a boy on account of his age and sent away rather than killed. His rule began a feudal age of government by warriors.

Which commander, who studied at Harvard and opposed war with the US, planned Japan's 1941 strike on the Pacific Fleet?

Isoroku Yamamoto knew American strength first-hand from two postings as naval attaché in Washington. US fighters shot down his plane over Bougainville in 1943.