Japan

Japan’s responsibility for ‘comfort women’ is avoided by the state and written out of national histories. Activists are working to make Japan confront its past.

Puccini’s opera revealed misunderstandings and stereotypes on both sides of the East-West divide.

This episode takes us back to 1853 and the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry’s fleet of ships into Edo Bay.

After a disastrous Second World War, Japan abolished its armed forces and embraced pacifism. With renewed tensions in East Asia, can it last?

When it comes to rapid world-changing events, the Meiji Restoration has few equals.

A teenager shipwrecked on a Pacific atoll helped transform relations between Japan and the United States.

A map of the Japanese city from the Edo period was one of the earliest produced for general use. 

Japan’s vast Asian empire became home to more than a million female settlers, who told their stories in an effort to keep in contact. 

Angered by his native country’s rush towards western-style modernisation, the acclaimed Japanese author committed a shocking act of protest.