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East Asia · Empire, war and the modern states

Japan

drawn on the map 1953–2024

Modern Japan, under the 1947 "peace constitution," renounced war and became a parliamentary democracy with the emperor as symbol. Rebuilding from wartime devastation, it achieved the postwar "economic miracle," becoming the world's second-largest economy by the late 20th century (a technological and manufacturing leader).

Shown on the map
1953–2024
Peak area
416k km²
Region
East Asia

Overview

Modern Japan, under the 1947 "peace constitution," renounced war and became a parliamentary democracy with the emperor as symbol. Rebuilding from wartime devastation, it achieved the postwar "economic miracle," becoming the world's second-largest economy by the late 20th century (a technological and manufacturing leader). Despite the "Lost Decades" of stagnation after c. 1990, it remains a wealthy, stable democracy and major global cultural and economic power.

Common questions

What was Japan?
Modern Japan, under the 1947 "peace constitution," renounced war and became a parliamentary democracy with the emperor as symbol. Rebuilding from wartime devastation, it achieved the postwar "economic miracle," becoming the world's second-largest economy by the late 20th century (a technological and manufacturing leader).
When is Japan shown on the map?
The border data draws Japan 1953–2024. The source samples borders at fixed dates, so a span can begin late or run on past the end.
How large was Japan?
At its greatest extent drawn on this map, Japan covered about 416,000 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:

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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