Japan’s Greatest Samurai: A Ranked Field Guide
Here is the trick of any “greatest samurai” list. Oda Nobunaga rode out of Kiyosu to attack the Imagawa […]
Japan’s Most Decisive Battles: Nine Fights That Shaped the Country
In 1560, an Imagawa army of about 25,000 men sat down to a victory feast in a wooded valley west
Japan’s Greatest Traditional Crafts: Ten Things Still Being Made by Hand
The angle of a Japanese roof tile has not changed in fourteen centuries. The standard hon-gawara ridge slope built today,
Japan Through the Ages: A Walk Through 1,200 Years of History
The same patch of central Kyoto where Emperor Kanmu laid out his new capital in 794 is where, in 1947,
Edo: 268 Years of Peace No One Quite Believed Would Last
Between the rifle smoke clearing at Sekigahara in October 1600 and the rifle smoke rising at Toba-Fushimi in January 1868,
Heisei: Thirty Years of Lost Decades, Disasters, and the Japan Most Visitors Actually Saw
On the last trading day of 1989, the Nikkei 225 closed at 38,915.87. That number then fell, kept falling, and
Muromachi Era: When Yoshimasa Burned Kyoto and Built the Silver Pavilion
On the morning of 27 May 1467, in the streets north-east of the Imperial Palace in Kyoto, two warlords called
Showa: Sixty-Three Years That Took Japan From War to Walkman
On the night of 14 August 1945, palace technicians in Tokyo recorded a four-and-a-half-minute speech onto two small phonograph discs.
Azuchi-Momoyama: Thirty-Five Years That Invented Modern Japan
In the spring of 1591, with cherry trees flowering in the inner garden of his Kyoto palace at Jurakudai, Toyotomi
Meiji: How Japan Industrialised in 44 Years (and Got Away With It)
On 6 April 1868, a fifteen-year-old emperor stood at the Kyoto Imperial Palace and signed a document of five sentences