In April, 1945, the 2nd World War was very far from over. A huge invasion of the French mainland was planned for June. Japan, however, was seen by…
Category: History of Japan
More thoughts on that Yalta Conference
In February, 1945, the second ‘Big Three’ conference took place at Yalta in the Crimea. The first had been in Teheran in Persia. What was agreed at Yalta…
Commodore Perry & the ‘Unequal Treaties’
Matthew Galbraith Perry was born into the American ruling class in 1794. He entered the Navy in his teens and was soon a naval officer. It was as…
War in the air Part III: the Pacific
The carrier-based Japanese air force began the war in the air over the Pacific Ocean by attacking without prior warning the US naval base at Pearl Harbor. The…
The Shogunates of Japan
A ‘Shogun’ was a Japanese general of armed forces, but he was also chief of a system of government which dates from the end of the 12th century….
The War in the Pacific
Officially, this war lasted from December 1941, when the United States entered the Second World War, until 1945. But the Pacific War really started with the Sino-Japanese War…
The Forty-Seven Ronin
At the beginning of the eighteenth century an incident took place in Japan that rapidly occupied the front pages of world (and worldly) newspapers. Indeed, the happening provided…
The ‘Showa’ Restoration (Japan)
The Showa Restoration . The word showa means ‘Enlightened Peace’ in English. It was chosen as a ‘reign name’ by the Emperor Hirohito. It is hard not to…
(Thomas) Woodrow Wilson
The twenty-seventh President of the United States was born in 1856 in Virginia, son of a Presbyterian minister. The family were slave-owners. Thirty-four years later Woodrow was made…