Japan

From the mid-sixteenth century onwards, Japanese feudal lords competed with one another in the construction of massive and imposing castles. Today many of them have been lovingly restored.

For nearly four hundred years the “Peaceful and Tranquil City” was the administrative centre of Japan, writes George Woodcock, and for more than a thousand years remained the home of the Japanese Emperors.

Shipwrecked in 1609, Spanish administrator Rodrigo de Vivero y Velasco became a guest of the shogun and wrote a detailed account of his 10 months in Japan.

Peter Mandler explains how the anthropologist Margaret Mead, author of best-selling studies of ‘primitive’ peoples, became a major influence on US military thinking during the Second World War.

J.D. Hargreaves reviews the delicate truce that existed between Britain and Japan in the early years of the twentieth century.

David Woodward recounts how, after a voyage from the Baltic of 11,000 miles, the Russian Second Pacific Fleet was dramatically destroyed off the coast of Korea by the Japanese.

Roger Hudson expands on an image of Russian ships destroyed by the Japanese at Port Arthur, 1904.

Japan flexed its muscles and launched a full-scale invasion of China following an incident on July 7th, 1937.

For over two centuries from 1641, Nagasaki – and the island of Dejima – was the only place in Japan open to foreigners. How were Europeans received there?

The historical roots of the dispute between China and Japan over control of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands reveal a great deal about the two countries’ current global standing, says Joyman Lee.