East Asia · Empire, war and the modern states
Empire of Japan
1868–1947
The Empire of Japan (1868–1947) was the modern Japanese state from the Meiji Restoration to the post-WWII constitution. Rapid modernization ("rich country, strong army") made it Asia's first industrial great power.
- Existed
- 1868–1947
- Shown on the map
- 1868–1945
- Peak area
- 7.2M km²
- Region
- East Asia
Overview
The Empire of Japan (1868–1947) was the modern Japanese state from the Meiji Restoration to the post-WWII constitution. Rapid modernization ("rich country, strong army") made it Asia's first industrial great power. It won the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) and Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), annexed Korea (1910), and expanded into Manchuria (1931) and China (from 1937). Its attack on Pearl Harbor (1941) brought it into WWII; defeat in 1945 (after the atomic bombings) led to Allied occupation and a new pacifist constitution (1947).
Common questions
- What was the Empire of Japan?
- The Empire of Japan (1868–1947) was the modern Japanese state from the Meiji Restoration to the post-WWII constitution. Rapid modernization ("rich country, strong army") made it Asia's first industrial great power.
- When did the Empire of Japan exist?
- The Empire of Japan existed 1868–1947. On this map it is drawn 1868–1945.
- How large was the Empire of Japan?
- At its greatest extent drawn on this map, the Empire of Japan covered about 7.2 million km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.
Sources
This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia article for each polity as the basis of these profiles, supplemented by Encyclopaedia Britannica, chinaknowledge.de, the World History Encyclopedia, museum and university sources, and the academic works it lists. The article this entry is anchored on:
- Wikipedia — Empire of Japan en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_of_Japan
This entry was last updated .
This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made
Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.
Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).
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