History

(Soshu, Late 16th Century) 

• Japanese warrior and government official who overthrew the shogun at the time, Ashikaga Yoshiaki whom he had helped become shogun in the first place, in 1573 marking the end of the Ashikaga shogunate.
• His actions as a virtual dictator restored stable governments led to the unification of Japan. Only half of the provinces were unified under his rule. Unifying the entire country would not be completed until after his death.
• He died in 1582 when one of his retainers, Akechi Mitsuhide, revolted and led rebel forces in an attack on his postion. Trapped and wounded, Nobunaga likely commited seppuku or ritual self disembowelment (Ebisawa, 2020)

( Unknown Author, 1890s)

• Emperor Mutsuhito was the emperor of Japan from 1867 to 1912
• During his reign, Japan was dramatically transformed from a feudal country into one of the great powers of the world
• He supported the need for modernization along Western lines. He even embraced Western ideas and innovations into his own life such as eating Western foods and wearing Western clothes. Though he also stuck close to his Japanese Roots by composing 100,000 poems in the traditional Japanese style in his lifetime (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2019-A)

(Corcuera, 2016) 

• It was the first treaty Japan signed with a western nation and marked the end of isolation.
• In July 1853, Commodore Matthew C Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay with a fleet of warships and demanded the Japanese open their ports to US ships for supplies.
• When Perry returned in February 1854, the Japanese, aware they were no match for the warships, agreed to admit US ships to the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate and to accept a US consul at Shimoda (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2019-B)

(Caron & Levy, 1945)

• On August 5th 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima by the U.S, and a second bomb was dropped on August 9th 1945 in Nagasaki.
•  About 100,000 people were killed in Hiroshima while between 35,000-40,000 people were killed in Nagasaki. 
  
• This led to the Japanese to surrender to the allies on  August 10th bringing World War II to an end (Royde-Smith, & Hughes, 2019)

(Encyclopædia Britannica, 2020)

• On March 11, 2011 an earthquake struck off the coast of Honshu, which caused damage on land and initiated a series of large tsunami waves that devastated  many coastal regions, most notably in the Tohoku region. 
• The official death toll was between 18,500-20,000 people. Most of the deaths were caused by the Tsunami itself.
• The earthquake also caused the Fukushima Nuclear Accident by damaging the backup generators which would lead to a nuclear meltdown and several explosions, which led to a rise in high levels of radiation (Rafferty, & Pletcher, 2020)