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Japan

Yayoi, the shogunates, and the modern state.

1,895 CE – 1,945 CE

Colonial expansion across Korea, Taiwan, China and Southeast Asia, ending in defeat and occupation.

1,868 CE

Japan industrialises at extraordinary speed and becomes a major power within a generation.

1,603 CE – 1,868 CE

Two and a half centuries of peace, rigid order, and near-total isolation from the outside world.

1,274 CE – 1,281 CE

Two invasion fleets are wrecked by storms the Japanese called kamikaze — divine wind.

1,185 CE

Military households take real power; the emperor remains but does not rule.

794 CE – 1,185 CE

An aristocratic culture that produced The Tale of Genji, often called the first novel.

538 CE

Both come by way of Korea, and reshape Japanese religion, writing and government.

250 CE – 710 CE

Power consolidates around the Yamato court, the ancestor of the imperial line.

300 BCE – 300 CE

Migrants from the mainland bring wet rice farming and metal to the Japanese islands.