We are going to divide Japanese history into several historical periods. Interestingly, most of the Japanese historical periods are named after the capital cities of the time. However, since the end of the 19th century the periods been named after the ruling emperor. For starters here is a list of the periods:

Classical Japan

Asuka/Early Japan (538–710)

Nara (710–794)

Heian (794–1185)

Medieval/Feudal Japan

Kamakura (1192-1333)

Muromachi-Ashikaga (1338-1573)

Azuchi-Momoyama (1573-1600)

Edo (1600-1868)

Modern Japan

Meiji (1868-1912)

Taisho (1912-1926)

Showa (1926-1989)

Heisei (1989-present)

In this article I am going to cover Japanese history until the Taisho period, which is the beginning of the 20th century. So without further ado, let us dive in!

One could argue that the first most important event in Japanese history is the ascension of the first god-emperor, Jimmu. According to the legends the current Japanese Imperial family originates from Jimmu himself. The first Emperor was no more no less but a descendant of Amaterasu, the goddess of sun. The legends and stories surrounding Jimmu and his ascension are extremely fascinating. Unfortunately, he is rarely remembered in modern Japan because of the associations that people started drawing with fascism. As you might have guessed this was a result of the Japanese using Shinto and Jimmu as a symbol for their nationalism during the WWII.

The following 100 years would conclude what the historians call the Early Japan or Asuka Period. The next era is known as Nara. During the Nara period Japan started prospering. Japan was bearing Chinese influences and it could be seen in literature, language, architecture and even religion. However, one of the most important things that happened during the Nara Period was the recognition of the Emperor as the central figure in the government. The Emperor also started to be interpreted as the leader of the indigenous Japanese religion, Shinto.

The third and final period of Classical Japan is known as Heian, named after the then capital Kyoto. During this period Japanese culture flourished. Arts became more refined and less dependent on their Chinese counterparts. The Emperor and most of the aristocracy spent their time writing uta (Japanese short poems commonly known as haiku or tanka), enjoying the beauties of nature and neglecting the politics. As a result, some of the best, and I cannot stress this enough, pieces of Japanese literature both in poetry and prose have been written during this period of Japanese history. However, the Emperor’s lack of interest towards politics and leadership led to a change in Japanese government, with the Emperor becoming merely a symbolic figure and the shogun holding the real power.

The above mentioned events lead us to Kamakura Period. The period is named after the military centre of the time. While the Emperor and his court were still situated in Kyoto, the real power was concentrating around the shogun, the military leader of the state. You could say that Kamakura period is responsible for the rise of the warrior class, the development of the samurai code of honour – Bushidō, and most importantly the infamous seppuku – a ritual act of suicide to protect one’s honour. The Kamakura Period also gave rise to Zen Buddhism since it could be applied perfectly to many samurai disciplines.

During Muromachi Period Japan’s political life fell into chaos and ordeal, which led to many gruesome wars and massacres. Nonetheless, despite the chaotic political situation, spiritual life and arts kept prospering under the influences of Zen. Tea ceremony – sadō, calligraphy – shodō, flower arrangements – kadō, and theatre peaked and reached their heights.

Azuchi-Momoyama Period was filled with fighting and endless wars, the most famous of them being the Ōnin War. The second half of Azuchi-Momoyama is widely known as the Era of the Warring States – Sengoku Jidai. You may recognize such names as Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu. These three are the men who have coined the history of Japan. Talking about each of them would take an unnecessarily long amount of time, thus we shall move on. It is just important to keep in mind that at this point in time, Japan had been in a political chaos for decades.

The following Edo/Tokugawa Period is famous for bringing over 200 years of lasting peace to the land and its people. The Tokugawas who became the ruling family in Japan and were named shogun, managed to reunify the country which was basically crumbling away from all of the endless fighting. Even though the Tokugawas brought peace to the country, they established a bakufu – a military state. Many new rules were introduced and most interestingly, the country closed its gates to the rest of the world, becoming a sakoku (lit. a closed country). However after 200 years, the ideologies started changing, and the foreign countries such as the USA came banging on the walls that Japan had built all over itself. The Edo Period came to a more or less bloody end in 1868 when the Shogunate in Edo/Tokyo fell. This was the beginning of the Meiji Restoration.

With the Shogunate collapsing, Japanese intellectuals, aristocrats and politically powerful people decided to bring back the glory of the ancient days and put the young 15-years old Emperor Meiji on the Chrysanthemum Throne. Meiji Period was in a sense an era of enlightenment for Japan. Schools started opening up all over the countries, first universities were established, a constitution was written, and so on. All in all life started prospering and shifting to Western standards. Even though Japan faced the Russo-Japanese War during the end of the Meiji Period, in general Emperor Meiji himself is highly revered and always addressed to with respect even in contemporary Japan.

This concludes my crush course on Japanese history. I decided to stop at the beginning of the 20th century, since otherwise we won’t have enough space to write it all down! Taisho and Showa are also very important periods of Japanese history, however each of them is too massive and extensive to be covered in a short article.

The last thing that I want to add is that Japan has not seen a war since the end of WWII. The Japanese were on the losing side and gave up their rights of maintaining an army. Nonetheless, this might have been the push that the country needed to move in the direction of industrialisation. Ever since Japan has become one of the largest manufacturers and economy’s in the world!

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For starters, I want to discuss the concept of culture. What is culture? According to Oxford Dictionary the word culture stands for the following: the customs and beliefs, art, way of life and social organization of a particular country or group.

Now that we have cleared this one thing up let’s check out some interesting facts about Japanese culture.

Religion

An important part of a culture is religion, after all. It must be noted that the Japanese concept of religion is very vague. They live according to many religious customs, but one cannot say that Japanese people are religious.
The two major religions in Japan are Shinto and Buddhism. These two have been introduced to Japan in totally different eras and situations. You could say that Shintoism is indigenous to Japan, unlike Buddhism, which was introduced to Japan from China. Nevertheless, these two complete each other perfectly: Shintoism is a religion about life and Buddhism provides a general idea of what happens to one’s soul after death.

Martial Arts

I think nobody would find it surprising to see this section coming up. While martial arts has deep roots in China too, Japan has some variations unique only to itself. To put it very simply, martial arts are a more sophisticated version of a certain aspect of being a warrior. I think the most famous one would be karate-dō. If you are in Japan for a long period of time you might get a chance to either personally experience some martial arts or at least watch yearly national tournaments. Here are some names worth remembering if you are into martial arts: kyuudō, iaidō, kendō, aikidō and so much more.

Artistic “dō”s

You might have noticed that in the upper section the names of the mentioned martial arts end with dō. Dō (道) literally means a road/way in Japanese, hence the way of the sword, the way of the bow, etc. While all of the above mentioned have a certain level of artistic expressionism to them, the most artistic dō-s would be the following: sadō – Japanese tea ceremony, shodō – calligraphy or artistic writing, and finally kadō – the art of flowers, i.e. ikebana.
It is important to keep in mind that the Japanese samurai and lords were usually very skilled in the above mentioned three, since it is said that these are necessary for perfecting one’s capability in martial arts.

Japanese theatre

If you are into visual artistics, I think Japanese theatre might be an interesting experience for you. There are three main types: kabuki, noh, bunraku. Out of all of these the most famous one would be kabuki which in a sense is the combination of drama, music and dance. I personally have been to kabuki performances twice, and I must say it’s quite amusing. Kabuki might be difficult to understand since there is not much talking happening. The performances I saw were both presented by a single actor who would act out a couple of characters. It is confusing, that’s for sure, but the confusion in itself is very satisfying. Believe me, this is an experience you wouldn’t regret.

Geisha

You have certainly heard the term geisha, probably even seen the movie Memoirs of a Geisha (if you haven’t yet, make sure to watch it, it’s an amazing movie). Nowadays geisha do not really have the same standing as they did in previous eras, but you can see young girls who are still learning the arts of a geisha if you visit Gion district in Kyoto. If you ever happen to be in Kyoto, one of the must-do things would be visiting Gion.

Japanese Traditional Attire

When it comes to Japanese traditional attire the word kimono automatically jumps to one’s mind. By the way, in Japanese the kanji for kimono literally stand for “things to wear”. I find this to be a bit cute. But anyway, there is also yukata which is a summer version of a kimono, and is generally cheaper, as well as has less layers. Many places in Japan offer you the opportunity to wear a yukata and walk around in the city for a day, and for a very nice price of around $30-40. The case is a bit different with kimono though, since these have enormous prices and can cost more than a car!

Japanese Cinematography

Japan has produced some of the best movies in the 20th century. A name that comes to your mind immediately would be that of Akira Kurosawa, a world renowned film director. Some of his rather famous works would be Seven Samurai, Rashomon, The Hidden Fortress. It is amazing as it is that he has made these fabulous movies, but it must be mentioned that his The Hidden Fortress is actually what inspired Star Wars. If you watch the movie you’ll see the similarities in the plot. I actually would highly recommend to watch at least a few of his movies.

Japanese Language

This is probably one of the most off putting factor for many foreigners who would like to move to Japan, be it for work or for studies. To be honest, it is easy to learn how to speak (if we don’t consider the different levels of formality present in the language), however the main challenge is when it comes to reading and especially writing in Japanese. To make things even more complicated there are THREE writing systems in Japanese: kanji, hiragana, katakana. Each of these has a main purpose and specific situation to being used. Unfortunately, even if you master hiragana and katakana, kanji can be a big problem, since there are over 2000 symbols in this system!

Japanese Literature

Japanese literature has very old roots. Early medieval Japanese literature is very sophisticated, but can be a bit tough to understand if you’re not very informed about Japanese history. But fret not! Modern Japanese literature is just as amazing. Some of the best authors since early 20th century would be Soseki Natsume, Ryuunosuke Akutagawa, Osamu Dazai, Ango Sakaguchi. All of them have amazing novels and short stories. Another famous name would be Haruki Murakami. The guy has some very controversial storylines and often uses magical realism in his works. You should definitely check him out!

This is it for our mini crash course of Japanese culture! I hope it was of interest to you and can become a basis for looking into matters that might interest each and every of you individually.

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