History of Japan Crossword Puzzle for Kids

The History of Japan begins in prehistoric times, before any written records were kept. Archaeologists have found proof that people began living in Japan when the last Ice Age ended. The oldest texts we have from Japan were written in the 8th century AD.

Prehistory

Japan’s Paleolithic era covers a period from around 100,000 BC to around 12,000 BC.

Archeologists have found pottery and polished stone tools in Japan from this era. Some of them are kept in Tokyo National Museum. These tools are more than 32,000 years old.

The Jomon period lasted for about 10,000 years, from 10,000 BC to around 300 BC. This was the Mesolithic era for Japan. Some scholars say that during this period, Neolithic culture developed in Japan.

Archeologists have found several pieces of pottery from this period in Japanese history. Some are clay figures. Others are vessels and potteries of different shapes.

The Yayoi period covered about 550 years, from around 300 BC till around 250. The name came from a location in Tokyo.

Ancient and Classical Japan

The Ancient and Classical period covers about 900 years, beginning from the mid-3rd century till the end of the 12th century.

The period from the mid-3rd century until the mid-6th century is known as the Kofun period.

Kofun are large tombs where people who had social power were buried. Many of these were created during the Kofun period. Buddhism had not reached Japan by this time.

During this period, the Yamato dynasty started to take more action against Korea and China. In the 4th century, they started to advance to Korea to get iron. This allowed Chinese and Korean technologies and cultures to be introduced to Japan.

The Yamato dynasty also fought with Goguryeo and Silla, which were kingdoms in Korea. In the 5th century, the five kings of Wa tried to make friends with China.

Feudal Japan

The period from around the 12th century to the 19th century is called feudal period in the history of Japan. The Japanese Emperor was the head of the government, but he had no real power. Many powerful families (called daimyo and military groups called shogun) ruled Japan during this period. The feudal period of Japan is generally sub-divided into different periods named after the shogunate which ruled during that period.

The years 1185 to 1333 are known as the Kamakura period. This is named after city of Kamakura which was the center of power of the Kamakura shogunate. Minamoto no Yoritomo was the founder and first shogun of the Kamakura shogunate. Mongols tried to invade Japan between the years 1272 and 1281. Japanese were successful at driving away the Mongols. But, this badly affected Japan. Shogunate also became weak and its rule ended in 1333. For a short time, Go Daigo became the emperor of Japan.

The Muromachi period began in 1336 and ended in 1573. Emperor Go-Daigo lost his throne. The government of the Ashikaga shogunate took control of most of Japan. This period ended in 1573. In that year the 15th and the last shogun named Ashikaga Yoshiaki was forced to leave the capital Kyōto.

In 1542, a Portuguese ship reached Japan and made the first direct contact with European culture, including the knowledge of firearms. In the next few years, merchants and also some Christian missionaries from European countries, mainly Portugal, the Netherlands, England, and Spain, reached Japan.

Azuchi-Momoyama period covers the years from 1568 to 1600. During these years, different parts of Japan became united again. Japan's military power grew. In 1592, Japan wanted to conquer China. At that time China was ruled by the Ming Dynasty. Toyotomi Hideyoshi was one of the main leaders of Japan. He sent an army of 160,000 samurai to Korea. The Japanese could not win and retreated back to Japan. In 1597, Japan again sent an army to Korea. In 1598, Toyotomi Hideyoshi died. After his death, the Japanese dropped the idea of conquering Korea and China.

Edo period

During the Edo period, Japan had many small rulers. There were about 200 of them. They were called daimyo, and they were all ruled by the Tokugawa shogunate which was led by the Tokugawa clan. The shogunate's capital moved to Edo, modern-day Tokyo. Fifteen shoguns controlled the Tokugawa shogunate during the Edo Period.

Tôjin-yashiki, the Chinese merchant colony on a square island was south of Dejima where the Dutch merchants were. Japanese prostitutes from the Maruyama red light district of Nagasaki visited both the Dutch and Chinese men to have sex with them. Japanese artists drew erotic paintings of the foreign men having seen with Japanese women.

Japanese peasant men were not required to kill wives who committed adultery but samurai were. The majority of the Japanese people in this period were townspeople, fisher people or peasant commoners and they did not take adultery, virginity or paternity of their children as serious issues unlike the samurai families. Japanese commoner women and men mixed with each other and had out of wedlock or bastard children through adultery and they made up the majority of prostitutes. Japanese commoners did not have surnames until the Meiji restoration in the 19th century.

The Edo period is a very important period in the history of Japan. The main developments include:

Samurai became the highest group in Japanese society. Farmers, artisans, and merchants were lower than the Samurai.

Meiji Restoration

The Meiji Restoration is an important period of history of Japan. Emperor Meiji ruled Japan and regained power from the shogunate. The Meiji Restoration began with the Boshin War of 1868. Emperor Meiji wanted Japan to become Westernized. Many changes occurred in Japan’s government and culture.

The Iwakura Mission or Iwakura Embassy was a Japanese diplomatic voyage to the United States and Europe conducted between 1871 and 1873 by leading statesmen and scholars of the Meiji period. Although it was not the only such mission, it is the most well-known and possibly most significant in terms of its impact on the modernization of Japan after a long period of isolation from the West. The mission was first proposed by the influential Dutch missionary and engineer Guido Verbeck.

Many Japanese buildings, products and planes were copies of western ones like the Tokyo dome of 1988 which copied the 1981 Metrodome, the Japanese DSK A 25 in 1954 which copied the BMW's R 25 of 1951, the Japanese zero fighter of 1939 which copied the Gloster F.5/34 of 1937 and the Toshiba vacuum cleaner of 1931 which copied GE's electric cleaner of 1928 and Seiki's Nippon camera of 1941 which copied Leica Illa's camera of 1935 and Shigeru Mizuki's rocketman in 1958 which copied DC Comics superman of 1938. The "Japanese" military planes Kawasaki Ki-5, Kawasaki Army Type 92 and Kawasaki Army Type 88 were designed by aircraft engineer Richard Vogt, a German.

The Japanese let volunteers from Okinawa into their army since 1890 and in 1898 Okinawa was given universal military conscription and were parts of all arms of the Japanese military, unlike Koreans where there was no conscription until the very last year of World War II since the Japanese did not trust Koreans unlike Okinawans. Taiwanese were also distrusted by the Japanese, with volunteers from Taiwan only allowed in 1942 and conscription only implemented in 1945.

At the end of the 19th century, many Japanese believed that Japan needed to expand in order to face Western foreign powers. This resulted in wars with its neighboring counties. In 1894-1895, Japan and China had a war. Another war took place with Russia in 1904-1905. Japan became a world power after these wars. Russian influence continued to grow inside China.

World War I

In 1914, the First World War broke out. Japan also entered the war. It attacked several places (of East Asia), which were colonies of Germany. After the war ended in 1919, Japan developed very fast. It became one of the major powers of Asia.

World War II

Japanese in Canada were interned as potential fifth columnists. Japanese in Australia were also interned as potential fifth columnists. Latin American countries like Peru also expelled their Japanese residents to the US to be interned during the war. Mexico also interned Japanese.

A huge proportion of Japanese Brazilians were pro Axis and some engaged in terrorist activities to sabotage Allied war efforts. Many Japanese even suffered mass delusion when the war ended and believed that Japan had won the war and that the Allied fleet was wiped out.

Japanese Americans were funding the Japanese military before the Pearl Harbor attack.

Before the beginning of the Second World War, Japan was fighting with China. This is called Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). According to the United States government's Department of State's Office of the Historian, the US did nothing to help China against the Japanese from 1937 to 1940 when Japan and China were engaged in total war. US officials and policymakers did not want to help. Japan's military obtained the majority of its iron, steel and oil from the United States between 1937 and 1940. The treaty of commerce between the United States and Japan continued until January 1940 and even then the United States did not embargo Japan right away. The United States only began giving aid to China after 1940 when Japan and China already fought for three years. When the Second World War broke out in 1939, Japan went to the side of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The fighting continued for 4 years. When the USA dropped the first atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan accepted defeat and surrendered in 1945.

Japan launched a surprise attack on the Clark Air Base in Pampanga on December 8, 1941, just ten hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Aerial bombardment was followed by landings of ground troops on Luzon. The defending Philippine and United States troops were under the command of General Douglas MacArthur. Under the pressure of superior numbers, the defending forces withdrew to the Bataan Peninsula and to the island of Corregidor at the entrance to Manila Bay.

Text adapted from the Simple English Wikipedia article “History of Japan” (revision 10861371, 2026-05-18), authors, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.