Japan Wallpapers

Japan: Japan (Nippon/Nihon, literally "the origin of the sun") is a country east of the Asian continent on the western edge of the Pacific Ocean. It is comprised of a chain of islands. The largest of the islands (known as the Home Islands) are, from north to south, Hokkaido (北海道), Honshu (本州, the largest island), Shikoku (四国), and Kyushu (九州). A number of smaller islands immediately surround these four, as well as one outlying group of small islands well to the south including Okinawa. Archaeological research indicates that Japan had already been occupied by early humans at least 500,000 years ago, during the Lower Paleolithic period. Over repeated ice-ages during the last million years, Japan was regularly connected by land bridges to the Asian mainland (by Sakhalin to the North, and probably Kyushu to the South), facilitating migrations of humans, animals and plants to the Japanese archipelago from the area that is now China and Korea. In 1854, U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry forced the opening of Japan to the West with the Convention of Kanagawa. The perceived weakness of the shogunate led many samurai to revolt, leading to the Boshin War of 1867-68. Subsequently the shogunate resigned and the Meiji Restoration returned the Emperor to power. Japan adopted numerous Western institutions in the Meiji period, including a modern government, legal system, and military. These reforms transformed the Empire of Japan into a world power which defeated China in the Sino-Japanese War and Russia in the Russo-Japanese War. By 1910, Japan controlled Taiwan, half of Sakhalin, and Korea. The early 20th century saw a brief period of "Taisho democracy" overshadowed by the rise of Japanese expansionism, leading to the invasion of Manchuria and the second Sino-Japanese War (1937). In 1941, Japan attacked the United States naval base in Pearl Harbor, bringing the two countries into World War II. After a long campaign in the Pacific Ocean, Japan lost its initial territorial gains, and the United States moved into range to begin strategic bombing of Tokyo, Osaka and other major cities and finally atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan eventually agreed to an unconditional surrender to the United States on August 15, 1945. Japan remained under US occupation until 1952. During that time, it adopted a new constitution that established the country as a pacifist constitutional monarchy. After the occupation, under a program of aggressive industrial development, protectionism, and deferral of strategic defense to the United States, Japan's gross national product rose to become the second-highest in the world. Despite a major stock market crash in 1989, from which the country has not fully recovered, Japan remains a global economic power and has recently begun to re-emerge as a strategic power, lending non-combat support to the Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. [br] [br] [br] [br] [br] [br]

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