title: Military history of Japan

text: One of the greatest samurai was Kusunoki Masashige. He lived during the Kamakura period and represents the ideal of samurai loyalty. Kusunoki fought against the Kamakura shogunate in the Genkō War (1331–1333) to restore power to Emperor Go-Daigo. Kusunoki was also a brilliant tactician and strategist. The defense of two key Loyalist fortresses at Akasaka, the Siege of Akasaka, and Chihaya, the Siege of Chihaya, helped enable Emperor Go-Daigo to briefly regain power. In 1333, Go-Daigo rewarded Kusunoki with governorship of Settsu Province and Kawachi Province. The Meiji government posthumously gave Kusunoki the highest decoration of Senior First Rank in 1880. Kusunoki "stands in the history of his country as the ideal figure of a warrior, compact of civil and military virtues in a high degree".


title: Military history of Japan

text: The shogunate fell in the wake of the 1331 Genkō War, an uprising against the shogunate organized by the Emperor Go-Daigo. After a brief period under true Imperial rule, the Ashikaga shogunate was established in 1336, and a series of conflicts known as the Nanboku-chō wars began. For over fifty years, the archipelago became embroiled in disputes over control of Imperial succession, and thus over the country.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Battles grew larger in this period, and were less ritualized. Though single combats and other elements of ritual and honorable battle remained, organized strategies and tactics under military commanders began to emerge, along with a greater degree of organization of formations and divisions within armies. It was in this period, as well, that weaponsmithing techniques emerged, creating so-called "Japanese steel" blades, prone to breaking yet extremely precise and sharp. The katana, and myriad similar or related blade weapons, appeared at this time and would dominate Japanese arms, relatively unchanged, through the mid-20th century. As a result, it was also during this period that the shift of samurai from being archers to swordsmen began in a significant way.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The Sengoku Period is marked by social upheaval, political intrigue and near-constant military conflict. Less than a century after the end of the Nanboku-chō Wars, peace under the relatively weak Ashikaga shogunate was disrupted by the outbreak of the Ōnin War (1467–1477). This was a civil war between the Ashikaga shogunate and numerous daimyō. The ancient capital of Kyoto was converted into a battlefield and a heavily fortified city that suffered severe destruction.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The authority of both the shogunate and the Imperial Court had weakened, and provincial Governors ("shugo") and other local samurai leaders emerged as the "daimyōs", who battled each other, religious factions (e.g. the Ikkō-ikki), and others for land and power for the next 150 years or so. The period has come to be called the Sengoku period, after the Warring States period in ancient Chinese history. Over one hundred domains clashed and warred throughout the archipelago, as clans rose and fell, boundaries shifted, and some of the largest battles in all of global pre-modern history were fought.


title: Military history of Japan

text: A great many developments and significant events took place during this period, ranging from advances in castle design to the advent of the cavalry charge, the further development of campaign strategies on a grand scale, and the significant changes brought on by the introduction of firearms. The composition of the army changed, with masses of "ashigaru", footsoldiers armed with long lances ("yari"), archers, and, later, gunners serving alongside mounted samurai. Naval battles likewise consisted of little more than using boats to move troops within range of bow or arquebus, and then into hand-to-hand fighting.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The long-standing rivalry between the daimyo Takeda Shingen of Kai Province and Uesugi Kenshin of Echigo Province are legendary. The Battles of Kawanakajima between the armies of Shingen and Kenshin (1553–1564) are one of the most cherished tales in Japanese military history and the epitome of Japanese chivalry and romance. They're mentioned in epic literature, woodblock printing and movies.


title: Military history of Japan

text: In the first conflict between Shingen and Kenshin they were very cautious, only committing themselves to indecisive skirmishes. There were a total of five engagements at Kawanakajima. Only the fourth battle was a serious, all-out battle between the two. During the fourth battle, Kenshin's forces cleared a path through the Takeda troops and Kenshin engaged Shingen in single combat. Kenshin attacked Shingen with his sword while Shingen defended with his Japanese war fan (tessen). Both lords lost many men in this fight, and Shingen in particular lost two of his main generals, Yamamoto Kansuke and his younger brother Takeda Nobushige. After the death of Shingen, Tokugawa Ieyasu borrowed heavily from Shingen's governmental and military innovations after he had taken leadership of Kai Province during Toyotomi Hideyoshi's rise to power. Many of these designs were used by the Tokugawa shogunate.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The Hōjō clan, in and around the Kantō region, were among the first to establish networks of satellite castles, and the complex use of these castles both for mutual defense and coordinated attacks. The Takeda, under Takeda Shingen, developed the Japanese equivalent of the cavalry charge. Though debate continues today as to the force of his charges, and the appropriateness of comparing them to Western cavalry charges, it is evident from contemporary sources that it was a revolutionary development, and powerful against defenders unused to it. The of particular interest or significance are too numerous to list here. Suffice to say this period saw a myriad of strategic and tactical developments, and some of the longest sieges and largest battles in the history of the early modern world.


title: Military history of Japan

text: This was the final phase of the Sengoku period. It's named for the increasingly important castle-cities, is marked by the introduction of firearms, after contact with the Portuguese, and a further push towards all-out battle, away from individual combats and concepts of personal honor and bravery.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The arquebus was introduced to Japan in 1543, by Portuguese on board a Chinese ship that crashed upon the tiny island of Tanegashima in the southernmost parts of the Japanese archipelago. Though the weapon's introduction was not seen to have particularly dramatic effects for several decades, by the 1560s thousands of gunpowder weapons were in use in Japan, and began to have revolutionary effects upon Japanese tactics, strategy, army compositions, and castle architecture.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The 1575 Battle of Nagashino, in which about 3,000 arquebusiers led by Oda Nobunaga cut down charging ranks of thousands of samurai, remains one of the chief examples of the effect of these weapons. Highly inaccurate, and taking a long time to reload, arquebusses, or "hinawa-jū" () as they are called in Japanese, did not win battles on their own. Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and other commanders developed tactics that honed arquebus use to the greatest advantage. At Nagashino, Nobunaga's gunners hid behind wooden barricades, embedded with large wooden spikes to ward off cavalry, and took turns firing volleys and reloading.


title: Military history of Japan

text: As in Europe, the debilitating effects of wet (and therefore largely useless) gunpowder were decisive in a number of battles. But, one of the key advantages of the weapon was that unlike bows, which required years of training largely available only to the samurai class, guns could be used by relatively untrained footmen. Samurai stuck to their swords and their bows, engaging in cavalry or infantry tactics, while the "ashigaru" wielded the guns. Some militant Buddhist factions began to produce firearms in foundries normally employed to make bronze temple bells. In this manner, the Ikkō-ikki, a group of monks and lay religious zealots, turned their Ishiyama Honganji cathedral-fortress into some of the most well-defended fortresses in the country. The "ikki" and a handful of other militant religious factions thus became powers unto themselves, and fought fierce battles against some of the chief generals and samurai clans of the archipelago.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Though civil strife continued to rage as it had for the previous century, the battles growing larger and more tactically complex, it was at this time that the many "warring states" began to be united. There were 3 powerful daimyō who unified the Japanese archipelago. In the second half of the 16th century, Japan was first fully unified by daimyō Oda Nobunaga and then by Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The third daimyō who unified Japan was Tokugawa Ieyasu after the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600. This resulted in 268 years of uninterrupted rule by the Tokugawa clan.


title: Military history of Japan

text: With an ambition to conquer China's Ming Dynasty, Toyotomi Hideyoshi requested passage through the Korean peninsula from the King of Joseon. Upon being refused, Hideyoshi launched invasions of Korea with an army of 158,800 soldiers between 1592 and 1598. The Japanese army quickly captured several major cities from the unprepared Joseon kingdom including the capital, causing the king to retreat and request military aid from China. With the arrival of the Chinese army, the joint Chinese-Korean troops pushed the Japanese army down to the southeast of the Korean peninsula where a military stalemate was established by 1594. Concurrently, the "Righteous Army" of Korean civilians waged guerilla warfare and Admiral Yi Sun-sin repeatedly disrupted the Japanese supply lines at sea. After Hideyoshi's death, the Council of Five Elders ordered the remaining Japanese forces in Korea to retreat.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The Battle of Sekigahara was the last major battle of the Sengoku period on October 21, 1600. This was a huge battle between the forces loyal to Toyotomi Hideyori versus Tokugawa Ieyasu. Hideyori's Western Army consisted of many clans from Western Japan with a total of 120,000 men. The Eastern Army was 75,000 men strong with clans from Eastern Japan. The decisive victory of the Eastern Army solidified the rule of Tokugawa Ieyasu. In 1603, Ieyasu was appointed with the title of "shōgun" by Emperor Go-Yōzei. This made Ieyasu the nominal ruler of the whole country of Japan. The Tokugawa shogunate was the last shogunate until the Meiji Restoration in 1867.


title: Military history of Japan

text: This period was one of relative peace under the authority of the Tokugawa shogunate, a forced peace that was maintained through a variety of measures that weakened the "daimyōs" and ensured their loyalty to the shogunate. Since 1660, Japan had 200 years of peace with no major domestic or foreign conflicts. The Tokugawa peace was ruptured only rarely and briefly prior to the violence that surrounded the Meiji Restoration of the 1860s.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The lack of warfare caused the samurai to increasingly become courtiers, bureaucrats, and administrators rather than warriors. The conduct of samurai served as role model behavior for the other social classes.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Miyamoto Musashi was one of the most famous Japanese swordsman, philosopher, strategist, writer and rōnin who lived from 1584 to 1645. He became the Kensei (sword saint) of Japan. He had a unique double-bladed swordsmanship (Nito-Ichi-ryū) and an undefeated record in 61 duels. He wrote the classic Japanese martial arts literature The Book of Five Rings and Dokkōdō (The Path of Aloneness).


title: Military history of Japan

text: The Tokugawa Shogunate enforced the policy of "Sakoku" ("closed country"), which prohibited most foreign contact and trade between 1641 and 1853. Under the policy, most foreign nationals were barred from entering Japan and common Japanese people couldn't leave. By restricting the daimyōs' ability to trade with foreign ships coming to Japan or pursue trade opportunities overseas, the Tokugawa shogunate could ensure none would become powerful enough to challenge its supremacy.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The Siege of Osaka, which took place in 1614–1615, was essentially the last gasp for Toyotomi Hideyori, heir to Hideyoshi, and an alliance of clans and other elements who opposed the shogunate. A samurai battle on a grand scale, in terms of strategy, scale, methods employed, and the political causes behind it, this is widely considered the final conflict of the Sengoku period.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Outside of the siege of Osaka, and the later conflicts of the 1850s to 1860s, violence in the Edo period was restricted to small skirmishes in the streets, peasant rebellions, and the enforcement of maritime restrictions. Social tension in the Edo period brought a number of rebellions and uprisings, the largest of which was the 1638 Shimabara Rebellion. In the far north of the country, the island of Hokkaido was inhabited by Ainu villagers and Japanese settlers. In 1669, an Ainu leader led a revolt against the Matsumae clan who controlled the region, and it was the last major uprising against Japanese control of the region. It was put down in 1672. In 1789, another Ainu revolt, the Menashi–Kunashir Rebellion, was crushed.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The Bakumatsu were the final years of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the isolationist Sakoku policy between 1853 and 1867. The appearance of gunboat diplomacy in Japan in the 1850s, and the forced so-called "opening of Japan" by Western forces, underscored the weakness of the shogunate and led to its collapse. Though the actual end of the shogunate and establishment of an Imperial Western-style government was handled peacefully, through political petitions and other methods, the years surrounding the event were not entirely bloodless. Following the formal termination of the shogunate, the was fought in 1868–1869 between the Tokugawa army and a number of factions of nominally pro-Imperial forces.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Since the first visit of Commodore Perry to Edo Bay in July 1853, Japan lacked industrial and military power to prevent western coercion with unequal treaties that took advantage of Japan. Japan had antiquated and decentralized military forces. The feudal lords were pressured into signing multiple treaties with the Americans known as "The Unequal Treaties".


title: Military history of Japan

text: Thereafter in 1853 six island fortifications with cannon batteries were built at Odaiba in Edo Bay by Egawa Hidetatsu for the Tokugawa shogunate. The purpose was to protect Edo from another American incursion. Thereafter Industrial developments started in order to build modern cannons. A reverbatory furnace was established by Egawa Hidetatsu in Nirayama to cast cannons. It was completed in 1857.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Japan was determined to avoid the fate of other Asian countries which were colonized by western imperial powers. The Japanese people and the government with Emperor Meiji realized that in order to preserve the independence of Japan it had to modernize to become an equal of the western colonial powers. In 1868 Tokugawa Yoshinobu resigned which ended the Tokugawa dynasty and the last shogunate. The Meiji Restoration restored practical abilities and the political system under Emperor Meiji. This caused enormous change in Japan's political and social structure from the late Edo Period to the early Meiji Period. Japan set out to "gather wisdom from all over the world" and embarked on an ambitious program of military, social, political, and economic reforms. Japan quickly transformed in one generation from an isolated feudal society to a modern industrialized nation state and an emerging great power.


title: Military history of Japan

text: After a long period of peace, Japan quickly rearmed and modernized by importing western weapons, then manufacturing them domestically, and finally by manufacturing weapons of Japanese design. During the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), Japan became the first modern Asian nation to win a war against a European nation. In 1902, it became the first Asian nation to sign a mutual defense pact with a European nation, Britain.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Japan was influenced by Western imperialism in Asia which caused Japan to participate as a colonial power. Japan was the last major power to enter the race for global colonization. It expanded rapidly, with colonial acquisitions, from 1895 till 1942. The Empire of Japan was one of the largest in history. It included colonies in Manchuria, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Indochina, Burma and many Pacific islands. In 1937, Japan had one-sixth the industrial capacity than the USA. The Japanese industry was dependent on the shipment of raw materials from Japan's overseas territories and foreign imports. A series of increasingly stringent economic embargoes on raw materials by the United States such as the Japanese Oil Embargo (1940–1941) pushed the Empire of Japan into conflict with the United States.


title: Military history of Japan

text: In the mid-19th century Japan didn't have a unified national army. The country consisted of feudal domains ("han") with the Tokugawa shogunate (bakufu) in overall control since 1603. The bakufu army was a large force, but only one among others. The Shogunate's efforts to control the nation depended upon the cooperation of its vassal Daimyos' armies.


title: Military history of Japan

text: From 1867, Japan requested various Western military missions in order to help Japan to modernize its armed forces. The first foreign military mission in Japan was held by France in 1867.


title: Military history of Japan

text: On June 29, 1869 Emperor Meiji founded a Shinto shrine called Tōkyō Shōkonsha in Kudan, Tokyo (present-day Chiyoda, Tokyo). It was established in the wake of the Boshin War (1868–1869) to honor those who died for the Emperor. It was renamed to Yasukuni Shrine by the Emperor in 1879 which literally means "Pacifying the Nation". The Emperor wrote a poem "I assure those of you who fought and died for your country that your names will live forever at this shrine in Musashino." The Yasukuni Shrine commemorates the honor and achievements of the millions of men, women, children and pets who died in service of Japan from the Boshin War to the First Indochina War (1946–1954). Later the shrine would include the worship of all who died serving in wars involving Japan since 1853 such as the Taishō and Shōwa period.


title: Military history of Japan

text: In 1871, the politicians Iwakura Tomomi and Ōkubo Toshimichi led the organization of a national army. It consisted exclusively of 10,000 strong samurai. Ōkubo was also a samurai of Satsuma and he was one of the Three Great Nobles of the Restoration and one of the main founders of modern Japan.


title: Military history of Japan

text: In 1873, the Imperial government asked the newly appointed War Minister to organize a national army for Japan. So Yamagata convinced the government and enacted a conscription law in 1873 which established the new Imperial Japanese Army. The law established military service for males of all classes, for a duration of 3 years, with an additional 4 years in the reserve. Yamagata modernized and modeled it after the Prussian Army. Duke Yamagata Aritomo was born in a lower ranked samurai family from Hagi. He was a field marshal in the Imperial Japanese Army and twice Prime Minister of Japan. He was one of the main architects of the military and political foundations of early modern Japan. Yamagata Aritomo is regarded as the father of Japanese militarism.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The principal officer training school for the Imperial Japanese Army was established as the Heigakkō in Kyoto in 1868. It was renamed in 1874 to the and relocated to Ichigaya, Tokyo. The second Army Academy was built by the second French Military Mission to Japan. The inauguration was in 1875. This was an important Military Academy for Japanese Army officers. It is on the same ground as the modern Japan Ministry of Defense. The second French Military Mission also helped reorganize the Imperial Japanese Army, and establish the first draft law (January 1873). Some members of the mission became some of the first western students of Japanese martial arts in history. Such as Étienne de Villaret and Joseph Kiehl were members of the dojo of Sakakibara Kenkichi and learned Jikishinkage-ryu. Captain Jules Brunet, initially a French artillery advisor of the Japanese central government, eventually took up arms alongside the Shōgun Tokugawa Yoshinobu's army against the Imperial troops during the Boshin War.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Class distinctions were mostly eliminated during modernization to create a representative democracy. The samurai lost their status as the only class with military privileges. However, during the Meiji period, most leaders in Japanese society (politics, business and military) were ex-samurai or descendants of samurai. They shared a set of values and outlooks that supported Japanese militarism. Thus the military class that began with the samurai in 1192 AD continued to rule Japan.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The Constitution of the Empire of Japan was enacted on November 29, 1890. It was a form of mixed constitutional and absolute monarchy. The Emperor of Japan was legally the supreme leader, and the Cabinet were his followers. The Prime Minister would be elected by a Privy Council. In reality, the Emperor was head of state but the Prime Minister was the actual head of government.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The Sino-Japanese War was fought against the forces of the Qing dynasty of China in the Korean Peninsula, Manchuria, and the coast of China. It was the first major conflict between Japan and an overseas military power in modern times.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The conflict was primarily over influence in Korea. After more than six months of unbroken successes by Japanese land and naval forces and the loss of the port of Weihaiwei, the Qing government sued for peace in February 1895.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The war demonstrated the failure of the Qing dynasty's attempts to modernize its military and fend off threats to its sovereignty, especially when compared with Japan's successful Meiji Restoration. For the first time, regional dominance in East Asia shifted from China to Japan; The prestige of the Qing Dynasty, along with the classical tradition in China, suffered a major blow. The Qing's loss of Korea as a tributary state sparked an unprecedented public outcry. Throughout most of history Korea was a tributary state and vassal state of multiple Chinese dynasties. Japan's victory of the First Sino-Japanese War put Korea completely under Japanese control. Korea became a Japanese vassal state.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The signed between Japan and China ended the war. Through this treaty, Japan forced China to open ports for international trade and cede the southern portion of China's Liaoning province as well as the island of Taiwan to Japan. China also had to pay a war indemnity of 200 million Kuping taels. As a result of this war, Korea ceased to be a tributary state of China, but fell into Japan's sphere of influence. However, many of the material gains from this war were lost by Japan due to the Triple Intervention. Korea was fully annexed by Japan with the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1910 signed by Ye Wanyong, Prime Minister of Korea, and Terauchi Masatake, who became the first Japanese Governor-General of Korea.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The Japanese occupation of Taiwan was strongly resisted by various interests on the island, and was only completed after a full-scale military campaign requiring the commitment of the Imperial Guards Division and most of the 2nd and 4th Provincial Divisions. The campaign began in late May 1895 with a Japanese landing at Keelung, on the northern coast of Taiwan, and ended in October 1895 with the Japanese capture of Tainan, the capital of the self-styled Republic of Formosa. The Japanese defeated regular Chinese and Formosan formations relatively easily but their marching columns were often harassed by guerillas. The Japanese responded with brutal reprisals, and sporadic resistance to their occupation of Taiwan continued until 1902.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The Eight-Nation Alliance was an international military coalition set up in response to the Boxer Rebellion in the Qing Empire of China. The eight nations were the Empire of Japan, the Russian Empire, the British Empire, the French Third Republic, the United States, the German Empire, the Kingdom of Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the summer of 1900, when the extra-jurisdictional international legations in Beijing came under attack by Boxer rebels supported by the Qing government, the coalition dispatched their armed forces, in the name of "humanitarian intervention", to defend their respective nations' citizens, as well as a number of Chinese Christians who had taken shelter in the legations. The incident ended with a coalition victory and the signing of the Boxer Protocol.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Following the First Sino-Japanese War, and the humiliation of the forced return of the Liaotung peninsula to China under Russian pressure (the "Triple Intervention"), Japan began to build up its military strength in preparation for further confrontations. Japan promulgated a ten-year naval build-up program, under the slogan "Perseverance and determination" (Jp:臥薪嘗胆, Gashinshoutan), in which it commissioned 109 warships, for a total of 200,000 tons, and increased its Navy personnel from 15,100 to 40,800.


title: Military history of Japan

text: These dispositions culminated with the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). The battleship "Mikasa" was the flagship of admiral Tōgō Heihachirō. At the Battle of Tsushima, the Mikasa with Admiral Tōgō led the Combined Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy into what has been called "the most decisive naval battle in history". The Russian fleet was almost completely annihilated: out of 38 Russian ships, 21 were sunk, 7 captured, 6 disarmed, 4,545 Russian servicemen died and 6,106 were taken prisoner. On the other hand, the Japanese only lost 117 men and 3 torpedo boats. This overwhelming victory made admiral Tōgō one of Japan's greatest naval heroes.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 marks the emergence of Japan as a major military power. Japan demonstrated that it could apply Western technology, discipline, strategy, and tactics effectively. The war concluded with the Treaty of Portsmouth. The complete victory of the Japanese military surprised world observers. The consequences transformed the balance of power in East Asia.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The Battle of Yalu River was the first major land battle during the Russo-Japanese War from 30 April to 1 May 1904. It was also the first victory in decades of an Asian power over a European power. It marked Russia's inability to match Japan's military prowess.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Western powers viewed Japan's victory over Russia as the emergence of a new Asian regional power. With the Russian defeat, some scholars have argued that the war had set in motion a change in the global world order with the emergence of Japan as not only a regional power, but rather, the main Asian power.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The Empire of Japan was a member of the Allies during World War I. As an ally of Great Britain, Japan declared war on Germany in 1914. Japan quickly seized the German island colonies the Mariana Islands, Caroline Islands and Marshall Islands in the Pacific.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The Japanese seaplane carrier "Wakamiya" conducted the world's first successful naval-launched air raids on 5 September 1914 and during the first months of World War I from Kiaochow Bay off Tsingtao. On 6 September 1914 was the very first air-sea battle in history. A Farman aircraft launched by Wakamiya attacked the Austro-Hungarian cruiser Kaiserin Elisabeth and the German gunboat Jaguar off Tsingtao. Four seaplanes bombarded German land targets. The Germans surrendered on 6 November 1914.


title: Military history of Japan

text: During the Russian Civil War the Allied Powers intervened in Russia. The Empire of Japan sent the largest military force of 70,000 soldiers to the eastern region. They supported anti-communist White forces in Russia. The Allied Powers withdrew in 1920. The Japanese military stayed until 1925 following the signing of the Soviet–Japanese Basic Convention. A small group of Japanese cruisers and destroyers also participated in various missions in the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Sea.


title: Military history of Japan

text: In 1921, during the Interwar period, Japan developed and launched the , which was the first purpose-designed aircraft carrier in the world. Japan subsequently developed a fleet of aircraft carriers that was second to none.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Already controlling the area along the South Manchuria Railroad, Japan's Kwantung Army further invaded Manchuria (Northeast China) in 1931, following the Mukden Incident, in where Japan claimed to have had territory attacked by the Chinese. By 1937, Japan had annexed territory north of Beijing and, following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, a full-scale invasion of China began. Japanese military superiority over a weak and demoralized Chinese Republican army allowed for swift advances down the eastern coast, leading to the fall of Shanghai and Nanjing (Nanking, then capital of the Republic of China) the same year. The Chinese suffered greatly in both military and civilian casualties. An estimated 300,000 civilians were killed during the first weeks of Japanese occupation of Nanjing, during the Nanking Massacre.


title: Military history of Japan

text: In September 1940, Germany, Italy, and Japan became allies under the Tripartite Pact. Germany, which had previously trained and supplied the Chinese army, halted all Sino-German cooperation, and recalled its military advisor (Alexander von Falkenhausen). In July 1940, the U.S. banned the shipment of aviation gasoline to Japan, while Imperial Japanese Army invaded French Indochina and occupied its naval and air bases in September 1940.


title: Military history of Japan

text: In April 1941, the Empire of Japan and the Soviet Union signed a neutrality pact and Japan increased pressure on the Vichy French and Dutch colonies in Southeast Asia to cooperate in economic matters. Following Japan's refusal to withdraw from the Republic of China (with the exclusion of Manchukuo) and Indochina; the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands imposed an embargo (July 22, 1941) on gasoline, while shipments of scrap metal, steel, and other materials had virtually ceased. Meanwhile, American economic support to China began to increase.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Hideki Tojo was a politician and general of the Imperial Japanese Army. Politically, he was a fascist, nationalist, and militarist. Tojo served as Prime Minister of the Empire of Japan during most of the Pacific War (his tenure being October 17, 1941, to July 22, 1944). Tojo supported a preventive war against the United States.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Isoroku Yamamoto was the most famous military commander. He was a Fleet Admiral of the Imperial Japanese Navy and the commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet during World War II. Isoroku's extensive naval career started when he served on the armored cruiser Nisshin during the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). He oversaw many naval operations such as the attack on Pearl Harbor, Battle of the Java Sea, Battle of the Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway. He became an exalted naval hero.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Hiroyoshi Nishizawa was arguably the most successful Japanese flying ace of the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service with an estimated 120 to 150 victories.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and against several other countries on December 7–8, 1941, the United States, United Kingdom, and other Allies declared war. The Second Sino-Japanese War became part of the global conflict of World War II. Japanese forces initially experienced great success against Allied forces in the Pacific and Southeast Asia, capturing Thailand, Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, and many Pacific Islands. They also undertook major offensives in Burma and launched air and naval attacks against Australia. The Allies turned the tide of war at sea in mid-1942, at the Battle of Midway. Japanese land forces continued to advance in the New Guinea and Solomon Islands campaigns but suffered significant defeats or were forced to retreat at the battles of Milne Bay, the Kokoda Track, and Guadalcanal. The Burma campaign turned, as the Japanese forces suffered catastrophic losses at Imphal and Kohima, leading to the greatest defeat in Japanese history up to that point.


title: Military history of Japan

text: From 1943 onwards, hard-fought campaigns at the battles of Buna-Gona, the Tarawa, the Philippine Sea, Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and others resulted in horrific casualties, mostly on the Japanese side, and produced further Japanese retreats. Very few Japanese ended up in POW camps. This may have been due to Japanese soldiers' reluctance to surrender. The Battle of Okinawa was the bloodiest battle of the Pacific War. The total number of casualties shocked American military strategists. This made them apprehensive to invade Japan's main islands, because it would result in a very high death toll. The brutality of the conflict is exemplified by US troops taking body parts from dead Japanese soldiers as "war trophies" or "war souvenirs" and Japanese cannibalism.


title: Military history of Japan

text: During the Pacific War, some units of the Imperial Japanese Army engaged in war crimes. This was in particular the mistreatment of prisoners of war and civilians. Between 1937 and 1945, approximately 7,357,000 civilians died due to military activity in the Republic of China. Mistreatment of Allied prisoners of war through forced labour and brutality received extensive coverage in the west. During that period there were significant underlying cultural differences, because according to Bushido it was cowardly and shameful to surrender to the enemy. Thus soldiers who surrendered had relinquished their honor and didn't deserve respect or basic treatment. Fred Borch explained:


title: Military history of Japan

text: The Japanese government has been criticized for inadequate acknowledgement of the suffering caused during World War II in history teaching in its schools which caused international protest. However, many Japanese officials such as Prime Ministers, Emperors, Chief Cabinet Secretaries and Minister for Foreign Affairs made more than 50 war apology statements from 1950 to 2015. Japan also paid billions of dollars in war reparations for 23 years from 1955 till 1977. Other countries have exploited the war guilt to boost nationalism and hostility against Japan. For example, the Chinese Communist Party uses patriotism as a tool to alleviate social discontent over internal problems. The Jiang Zemin government chose patriotism as a way to counterbalance the decline in socialist ideology. This caused patriotism to be fostered through the Chinese educational system with an anti Japanese nature. The anti-Japan protests in China in April 2005 were mostly young people with nationalist views. The Chinese police force stood by idly during the violent protests.


title: Military history of Japan

text: On August 6 and August 9, 1945, the U.S. dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. An estimated 150,000–246,000 people died as a direct result of these two bombings. Japan didn't have nuclear weapon technology so this new type of atomic bomb was a surprise. Hiroshima was totally unprepared. 69% of Hiroshima's buildings were destroyed and 6% damaged. At this time, on August 8, the Soviet Union entered the war against Japan.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945, and a formal Instrument of Surrender was signed on September 2, 1945, on the battleship USS "Missouri" in Tokyo Bay. The surrender was accepted, from a Japanese delegation led by Mamoru Shigemitsu, by General Douglas MacArthur, as Supreme Allied Commander, along with representatives of each Allied nation. A separate surrender ceremony between Japan and China was held in Nanking on September 9, 1945.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Throughout history Japan has never been fully invaded nor conquered by a foreign power. Japan also never capitulated to a foreign power, thus Japan was unwilling to surrender. However, Japan couldn't counter the destructive nuclear bombs of America. So the Japanese thought it was better to accept the humiliating Potsdam Declaration and rebuild Japan rather than continue fighting with millions of casualties and decades of guerrilla warfare. On August 15, 1945, a broadcast of a recorded speech of Emperor Shōwa was released to the public. The last sentence is indicative:


title: Military history of Japan

text: Following the surrender, Douglas MacArthur established bases in Japan to oversee the postwar development of the country. This period in Japanese history is known as the Occupation, when for the first time in history Japan was occupied by a foreign power. U.S. President Harry Truman officially proclaimed an end to hostilities on December 31, 1946. As the de facto military ruler of Japan, Douglas MacArthur's influence was so great that he was dubbed the . The Allies (led by the United States) repatriated millions of ethnic Japanese from colonies and military camps throughout Asia. This largely eliminated the Japanese Empire and restored the independence of its conquered territories.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Upon adoption of the 1947 constitution, Japan became the State of Japan (Nihon Koku, ). The Empire of Japan was dismantled and all overseas territories were lost. Japan was reduced to the territories that were traditionally within the Japanese cultural sphere pre-1895: the four main islands (Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, and Shikoku), the Ryukyu Islands, and the Nanpō Islands. The Kuril Islands also historically belong to Japan. The Kuril Islands were first inhabited by the Ainu people and then controlled by the Japanese Matsumae clan in the Edo Period. However, the Kuril Islands weren't included due to a dispute with the Soviet Union.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Over the course of the war, Japan displayed many significant advances in military technology, strategy, and tactics. Among them were the "Yamato"-class battleship, aircraft carrier innovation (e.g. Hōshō), the Sen-Toku submarine bomber carriers, Mitsubishi Zero fighters, Kamikaze bombers, type 91 torpedo, Nakajima Kikka, Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka, Kaiten human torpedoes and the Kairyū-class submarine.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Post World War II, Japan was deprived of any military capability after signing the surrender agreement in 1945. The U.S. occupation forces were fully responsible for protecting Japan from external threats. Japan only had a minor police force for domestic security. Japan was under the sole control of the United States. This was the only time in Japanese history that it was occupied by a foreign power.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Unlike the occupation of Germany, other countries such as the Soviet Union had almost zero influence in Japan. West Germany was allowed to write its own constitution under supervision of the Allies. West Germany was at the forefront of the Cold War and wasn't required to include a pacifist clause in their constitution. Meanwhile, General Douglas MacArthur had near complete control over Japanese politics. Japan's 1947 constitution was mostly written by the United States and under the guidelines of General Douglas MacArthur. This changed Japan's previous authoritarian system of quasi-absolute monarchy to a form of liberal democracy with a parliamentary-based political system. The constitution guarantees civil and human rights. The Emperor changed to a symbolic status as "the symbol of the State and of the unity of the people." Douglas MacArthur included Article 9 which says Japan forever renounces war as an instrument for settling international disputes and declares that Japan will never again maintain "land, sea, or air forces or other war potential". Japan became a pacifist country since September 1945. The trauma of World War II produced strong pacifist sentiments among the nation.


title: Military history of Japan

text: There were growing external threats of the Cold War and Japan didn't have adequate forces to counter it. During the Korean War (1950–1953) Japan was the forward logistics base and provided many supplies for US and UN forces. The unilateral renunciation of all military capabilities was questioned by conservative politicians. These sentiments were intensified in 1950 as occupation troops were moved from Japan to the Korean War (1950–53). This left Japan virtually defenseless and vulnerable. They thought a mutual defense relationship with the United States was needed to protect Japan from foreign threats. In July 1950 the Japanese government, with the encouragement of the US occupation forces, established a National Police Reserve (警察予備隊 Keisatsu-yobitai). This consisted of 75,000 men equipped with light infantry weapons. This was the first step of its postwar rearmament. In 1952, , the waterborne counterpart of NPR, was also founded.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The Allied occupation of Japan ended after the signing of the Treaty of San Francisco on September 8, 1951, which became effective on April 28, 1952, thus restoring the sovereignty of Japan.


title: Military history of Japan

text: On 8 September 1951 the Security Treaty Between the United States and Japan was signed. The treaty allowed United States forces stationed in Japan to deal with external aggression against Japan while Japanese ground and maritime forces dealt with internal threats and natural disasters. The United States was permitted to act for the sake of maintaining peace in East Asia and could exert its power on Japanese domestic quarrels. The treaty has lasted longer than any other alliance between two great powers since the Peace of Westphalia treaties in 1648.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Accordingly, in mid-1952, the National Police Reserve was expanded to 110,000 men and renamed the National Safety Forces. The Coastal Safety Force was an embryonic navy that was transferred with the National Police Reserve to the National Safety Agency.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Strict civilian control over the military was established with the 1947-constitution to prevent the military from regaining overwhelming political power. Thus soldiers, sailors and airforce members cannot be involved in political activities. The Defense Agency of Japan stated that:


title: Military history of Japan

text: The war-renunciation clause of Article 9 was the basis for strong political objections to any sort of armed force other than a conventional police force. In 1954, however, separate land, sea, and air forces were created for defensive purposes, under the command of the Prime Minister. The 1954 Self-Defense Forces Act (Act No. 165 of 1954) reorganized the National Security Board as the Defense Agency on July 1, 1954. Afterward, the National Security Force was reorganized as the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF), which is the de facto post-war Japanese army. The Coastal Safety Force was reorganized as the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF), which is the de facto Japanese Navy. The Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF) was established as a new branch of the JSDF. General Keizō Hayashi was appointed as the first Chairman of Joint Staff Council—professional head of the three branches. Conscription was abolished on 3 May 1947. Enlistment in the JSDF is voluntary at 18 years of age and older.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The Far East Air Force, U.S. Air Force, announced on 6 January 1955, that 85 aircraft would be turned over to the fledgling Japanese air force on about 15 January, the first equipment of the new force.


title: Military history of Japan

text: On 19 January 1960, the unequal status of Japan with the United States was corrected with the amended Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan by adding mutual defense obligations. This treaty requires the US to pre-inform Japan of US army mobilization and to not impose itself concerning Japanese domestic issues. Japan and the United States are obligated to assist each other if there's an armed attack in territories administered by Japan. Japan and the United States are required to maintain capacities to resist common armed attacks. This established a military alliance between Japan and the United States.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Japan is the only country to have suffered nuclear attacks in history. Thus in 1967, Prime Minister Eisaku Satō outlined the Three Non-Nuclear Principles by which Japan stands against the production or possession of nuclear weaponry. However, due to its high technology level and large number of operating nuclear power plants, Japan is considered to be "nuclear capable", i.e., it could develop usable nuclear weapons within one year if the political situation changed significantly. Thus many analysts consider Japan a "de facto" nuclear state. Numerous politicians such as Shinzo Abe and Yasuo Fukuda explained that Japan's constitution doesn't ban possession of nuclear weapons. They should be kept at a minimum and used as tactical weapons. The 1951 US-Japan Security Treaty puts Japan under the US nuclear umbrella.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The last Japanese soldiers of World War II to surrender were Hiroo Onoda and Teruo Nakamura in 1974. Onoda was an intelligence officer and second lieutenant in the Imperial Japanese Army. He continued his campaign after WWII for 29 years in a Japanese holdout on Lubang Island, the Philippines. He returned to Japan when he was relieved from duty by his commanding officer, Major Yoshimi Taniguchi as per the order of Emperor Shōwa in 1974. Teruo Nakamura was an Amis aborigine from Japanese Taiwan in the Takasago Volunteer Unit of the Imperial Japanese army. He was stationed on Morotai Island, Indonesia and discovered by a pilot in mid-1974. Nakamura was repatriated to Taiwan in 1975.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Throughout the post-war Shōwa period, the Japanese had a low opinion of the JSDF. They were seen as remnants of the imperial military who caused a severe loss and humiliating surrender of World War II. They were considered "tax thieves" (zeikin dorobo) for being expensive and unnecessary while Japan had decades of booming economy. So the JSDF was still trying to find its place in Japanese society and earn respect and trust from the public. The SDF was managed by the Japan Defense Agency which had little political influence compared to ministries. The JSDF had good personnel and equipment, but mainly served a supplementary role for the US military against the Soviet Union.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Japan had record high economic growth during the Japanese economic miracle. By the 1970s Japan ascended to great power status again. It had the world's second largest economy. However, its military power was very limited due to pacifist policies and article 9 of the 1947 constitution. Japan exerted disproportionately small political and military influence in the world. This made Japan an abnormal great power.


title: Military history of Japan

text: During the Gulf War (1990–1991) the Japan Self-Defense Forces couldn't participate due to restrictions of the 1947 constitution. However, Japan did make a financial contribution of $10 billion and sent military hardware. Japan's inability to send troops was regarded as a big humiliation. They learned that only making financial contributions (checkbook diplomacy) did not earn Japan international respect. Furthermore, Japan couldn't provide much support to US forces which caused frustration. This humiliation was decisive in making policymakers and military planners determined to depart from Japan's pacifist foreign policy.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Since 1991, the JSDF has conducted international activities to provide support for peacekeeping missions and disaster relief efforts as well as to help prevent conflict and terrorism. Particularly humanitarian aid such as helping the victims of the 1995 Kobe earthquake and humanitarian, reconstruction assistance in Iraq (2003 till 2009).


title: Military history of Japan

text: The Guidelines for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation were revised in 1997 which increased the scope for the JSDF as rear-support for US forces by providing logistics support near Japan.


title: Military history of Japan

text: On May 28, 1999, the Regional Affairs Law was enacted. It allows Japan to automatically participate as "rear support" if the United States begins a war under "regional affairs".


title: Military history of Japan

text: The modern Japan Self-Defense Forces is one of the most technologically advanced armed forces in the world. The JSDF ranked as the world's fourth most-powerful military in conventional capabilities in a Credit Suisse report in 2015. It has the eighth-largest military budget in the world with just 1% of GDP (2011).


title: Military history of Japan

text: Since 1991 the JSDF has participated in dozens of international peacekeeping operations including UN peacekeeping and disaster relief. From 1991 to 2016 the JSDF had approximately 32 overseas dispatches. These were mainly in Southeast Asia, South Asia and the Middle East.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Japan has been a member of the United Nations since 18 December 1956 and served as a non-permanent Security Council member for a total of 20 years. Japan is one of the G4 nations seeking to gain permanent membership of the Security Council. In 2004, the former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan announced a plan to expand the number of permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council. Despite being the third largest national economy in the world in terms of nominal GDP, with global political influence, some debate whether or not a country with no official standing military can be considered a world power that should have a permanent seat on the council.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The Anti-Terrorism Special Measures Law was passed on October 29, 2001. It allows the JSDF to contribute by itself to international efforts to the prevention and eradication of terrorism. While on duty the JSDF can use weapons to protect themselves and others who come under their control. Previously Japan's policy was non-involvement.


title: Military history of Japan

text: On 22 December 2001, the Battle of Amami-Ōshima was a six hour long confrontation with an undercover North Korean spy and infiltration ship. The spy ship was heavily armed and 400 km north west of the Japanese island Amami Ōshima. The spy ship didn't heed warnings of the Japanese Coast Guard and tried to escape. 12 patrol boats and 13 planes of the JCG and 2 MSDF destroyers chased the ship. Eventually the spy vessel opened fire and, after receiving fire from JCG cutters, sunk with self-destructive explosion. All 15 crew members died. This was the first time since World War 2 that Japan attacked and sank a foreign ship in Japan's sea territory.


title: Military history of Japan

text: On March 27, 2004, the Japan Defense Agency activated the Special Operations Group with the mandate under the JGSDF as its Counter-terrorist unit.


title: Military history of Japan

text: On June 8, 2006, the Cabinet of Japan endorsed a bill elevating the under the Cabinet Office to full-fledged cabinet-level . This was passed by the National Diet in December 2006, and has been enforced since January 9, 2007.


title: Military history of Japan

text: In 2007, Prime Minister Shinzō Abe said that Japan's constitution did not necessarily ban possession of nuclear weapons, so long as they were kept at a minimum and were tactical weapons, and Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda expressed a similar view.


title: Military history of Japan

text: On January 9, 2007, Section 2 of Article 3 of the Self Defense Forces Act was revised. JSDF activities abroad were elevated from "miscellaneous regulations" to "basic duties". This fundamentally changed the nature of the JSDF because its activities are no longer solely defensive. JMSDF ships can be dispatched worldwide such as in activities against pirates. The JSDF's first postwar overseas base was established in Djibouti, Somalia (July 2010).


title: Military history of Japan

text: Since 2010, Japan reemerged as a major military power. Various policies increased the role of Japan's military in its foreign policy. Japan's 2010 National Defense Program Guidelines changed its defense policy from a focus on the former Soviet Union to China.


title: Military history of Japan

text: After a decade of defense spending cuts, Japan increased its defense budget in 2013. The Cabinet of Japan approved the National Security Strategy (NSS) in December 2013. This explains what instigated Japan's military resurgence:


title: Military history of Japan

text: China is using military force in the skies and seas to unilaterally change the status quo in the South China Sea and East China Sea. This is based on China's assertions that are incompatible with the established order. China also lacks transparency of its military and national security policies.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The Japanese are concerned about a gradual decline in commitment by the United States to support Japan in a multi-polarizing world. Thus since 2010 Japan has moved to a more autonomous security policy while maintaining the U.S.-Japan alliance. Japan has increased its power projection capabilities such as with the development of homemade long-range cruise missiles, the Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade and the modification of two "Izumo"-class destroyers into de facto aircraft carriers with F-35Bs. There's gradual integration among the three JSDF branches so they can operate more autonomously from the US.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The United States maintains American military bases in Japan as part of the U.S.-Japan alliance of 1951. Most US military are in Okinawa Prefecture. In 2013 there were approximately 50,000 U.S. military personnel stationed in Japan with 40,000 dependents and 5,500 American civilians employed by the United States Department of Defense. The United States Seventh Fleet is based in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture. The 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force (III MEF) is based in Okinawa. 130 USAF fighters are stationed in the Misawa Air Base and Kadena Air Base. U.S. Fleet Activities Yokosuka is the largest and strategically most important U.S. naval base in the western Pacific. The base was previously the headquarters of the Yokosuka Naval District of the Imperial Japanese Navy, but now only a small portion of it is used by the JMSDF. Kadena Air Base is the largest and most active US Air Force base in the Far East. Japan pays 75% ($4.4 billion) of all US basing costs. Japan's willingness to host the majority of the US Armed Forces in Asia makes Japan essential to America's security policy in the Indo-Pacific. This helps the U.S. to project military force in the Pacific and Asia. The U.S.-Japan alliance is the cornerstone of peace, stability and economic prosperity in the Pacific.


title: Military history of Japan

text: On December 4, 2013, the National Security Council was established to coordinate the national security policies of Japan.


title: Military history of Japan

text: In June 2014, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his cabinet agreed to lift the long-term ban on Japanese troops engaging in combat abroad. This was in a bid to strengthen the Japanese situation amid an ever-growing Chinese military aggression and North Korea's nuclear weapons programme.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The JSDF Act was amended in 2015 in order to make it illegal for JSDF personnel/staff to participate in collective insubordination or to command forces without authority or in violation of orders, which was stated to be the reason why Japan was involved in China in World War II.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Until 2015, the U.S.-Japan alliance was a regional alliance with an exclusively defense oriented policy on defending Japan. The "Guidelines for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation (2015)" changed it into a global alliance with global military cooperation and greater U.S.-Japan coordination. It removed the regional restrictions that the alliance was only for Japan and the surrounding area. This allowed Japan to assume a global military role such as in the Indo-Pacific. It was the first defense cooperation guidelines revision since 1997. Former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry reaffirmed that America has an ironclad commitment to Japan's security which covers all territories under Japan's administration. Constitutional reinterpretations of Article 9 and military legislation have expanded the role of the JSDF such as collective self-defense with allies.


title: Military history of Japan

text: On 18, September 2015, the National Diet enacted the 2015 Japanese military legislation, a series of laws that allow Japan's Self-Defense Forces to collective self-defense of allies in combat for the first time under its constitution. The Self-Defense Forces may provide material support to allies engaged in combat internationally. It also allows JSDF troops to defend weapons platforms of foreign countries that contribute to Japan's defense. The justification is that by not defending/supporting an ally, it would weaken alliances and endanger Japan. These were Japan's broadest changes to its defense laws since World War II.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Since March 2016, Japan's Legislation for Peace and Security enables seamless responses of the JSDF to any situation to protect the lives and livelihood of Japanese people. It also increases proactive contributions to peace and security in the world and deepens cooperation with partners. This enhanced the Japan-US alliance as global partners to promote peace and security in the region and the international community.


title: Military history of Japan

text: As of 2012, Japan and its allies want to maintain a "Free and Open Indo-Pacific" (FOIP). This means any country can freely navigate across the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean from Asia to Africa for economic purposes. By implementing and guarding the rule of law in the oceans, peace, stability and prosperity can be promoted. The FOIP strategy became the official policy of Japan and the United States in 2017. This is the opposite to China's Belt and Road Initiative where China seeks to become the main economic partner with major or dominant influence in countries in Eurasia, the Middle-East and Africa. There are territorial disputes in the South China Sea, because China claims nearly the whole South China Sea and wants to control the vital sea lanes in Asia. China built military outposts on islands which intimidate and violate the territorial claims of other countries like Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei and the Philippines. One third of global seaborne trade ($3 trillion) passed through the South China Sea in 2017.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Japan activated the Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade, its first marine unit since World War Two, on April 7, 2018. They're trained to counter invaders from occupying Japanese islands. Japan didn't have an amphibious force since the Imperial Japanese Navy Land Forces. 50 ARDB soldiers were deployed with 4 armored vehicles for the first time in an overseas training exercise with American and Filipino marines in Operation Kamandag in Luzon, the Philippines from 2 to 11 October 2018. This was the first time that Japanese armored vehicles landed on foreign soil since World War II.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The Ministry of Defense said from 1 October 2018, the maximum age for enlisted personnel and non-commissioned officer applicants will be raised to 32 from 26 to secure "a stable supply of Self-Defense Forces (military) personnel amid a declining pool of recruits due to the recently declining birth rate."


title: Military history of Japan

text: The Ministry of Defense is developing supersonic glide bombs to strengthen the defense of Japan's remote islands, including the Senkaku Islands. The anti-surface strike capability will be used to help the Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade's landing and recapture operations of remote islands.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Military cooperation increased significantly with other like-minded democratic countries such as India, Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. Such as on 2 October 2018, British troops of the Honourable Artillery Company (HAC) exercised together for the first time with Japanese GSDF soldiers in Oyama, Shizuoka prefecture. This also marked the first time in history that foreign soldiers other than Americans exercised on Japanese soil. The purpose was to improve their strategic partnership and security cooperation. Lieutenant General Patrick Sanders said that Japan won't have to fight alone.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The Ministry of Defense allocated $57 million for research and development of a hypersonic missile in the 2019 Defense Budget. It could travel five times the speed of sound (Mach 5) or faster. A scramjet engine prototype, jet fuel technology and heat-resistant materials will be built with testing from 2023 to 2025.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Japan christened the 84-meter long, 2,950 tons Oryu submarine on October 4, 2018. It is Japan's first submarine powered by lithium-ion batteries and was developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force will utilize it by March 2020.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The JGSDF and the Indian Army conducted their first joint military exercise in the Indian state of Mizoram from 27 October to 18 November 2018. It's primarily anti-terror drills and improving bilateral cooperation with 60 Japanese and Indian officers.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Japan and the United States conducted the biggest military exercise around Japan thus far in the biennial Keen Sword from 29 October to 2 November 2018. It included a total of 57,000 sailors, marines and airmen. 47,000 service members were from the JSDF and 10,000 from the U.S. Armed Forces. A naval supply ship and frigate of the Royal Canadian Navy also participated. There were simulations of air combat, ballistic missile defense and amphibious landings.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Since 2008, the number of scrambles by the JASDF to intercept Chinese aircraft has increased rapidly. In 2010 there were scrambles against 31 Chinese aircraft and 193 Russian aircraft. In 2018 this increased to 638 Chinese aircraft and 343 Russian aircraft. Chinese aircraft flight paths are mostly in the East China Sea, around the Ryukyu islands and through the Korea Strait. Russia frequently conducts flights orbiting Japan.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The Ministry of Defense reported in fiscal 2018 that there were 999 scrambles by JASDF jets against mainly Chinese and Russian unidentified aircraft. That is the second highest amount of scrambles by the JASDF since 1958. 638 (64%) were Chinese aircraft and 343 (34%) were Russian aircraft. On June 20, 2019, two Russian bombers (Tupolev Tu-95) violated Japanese airspace twice on the same day.


title: Military history of Japan

text: In December 2018, the Ministry of Defense announced they would procure an additional 63 F-35As and 42 F-35Bs. This increases the total F-35 Lightning II procurement from 42 to 147.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The Japanese government approved the first ever JSDF dispatch to a peacekeeping operation that's not lead by the United Nations. Two JGSDF officers will monitor a cease-fire between Israel and Egypt at the Multinational Force and Observers command in the Sinai peninsula from 19 April till 30 November 2019.


title: Military history of Japan

text: On 19 April 2019, Japan and the United States confirmed that cyberattacks are also covered by the bilateral security treaty. This will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Defense cooperation will increase for outer space, cyber and electronic warfare.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Defense Minister Takeshi Iwaya announced plans to deploy Type 12 surface-to-ship missiles in March 2020. They have an increased range of 300 km and will be used to protect the southern Ryukyu Islands. Japan is also developing high-speed gliding missiles with a range of 1000 km.


title: Military history of Japan

text: People's Liberation Army Navy vessels (PLAN) increasingly make incursions in the Western Pacific Ocean via the Miyako Strait. The Miyako Strait is one of the few international waterways through which China can access the Pacific Ocean. There is also increased Chinese naval and aerial activity near the Senkaku islands which are owned by Japan, but claimed by China. This puts the Southern Ryukyu Islands at the forefront of Japan's national defense. By 2030 China could have four aircraft carriers. Meanwhile, Japan only has two relatively small Izumo-class carriers. Each Izumo can carry just 10 F-35s. There are currently no plans to build bigger multi-purpose operation destroyers though experts say Japan needs at least four carriers for effective use in real combat situations.


title: Military history of Japan

text: China's military spending increased a lot in 20 years. In 2019 China was the second highest military spender with $250 billion (1.9% of GDP). This strengthened its military power in the seas and skies around Japan. Comparatively, Japan's expenditure was $46.6 billion (0.9% of GDP). Japan still depends on America for deterrence and offensive attack capabilities due to Article 9 of the 1947 constitution.


title: Military history of Japan

text: In May 2019, the JMSDF participated for the first time in two quadrilateral naval exercises. It included the and . It was also the first extended naval deployment of marines of the Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade. The first exercise was a four-way sail-through in the South China Sea with naval ships of the United States, India, Japan and the Philippines. The second was the La Pérouse exercise in the Bay of Bengal with France, United States, Australia and Japan.


title: Military history of Japan

text: On May 28, 2019, President Donald Trump inspected the , the second ship in the Izumo class, during his visit in Japan and supported the country's effort for an active role in the defense and security of the Pacific region. This was the first ever inspection by a U.S. president of a Japanese warship. Trump also stated that the will help defend Japan and America against threats in the region and far beyond.


title: Military history of Japan

text: There is increasing support among Japanese to change Japan from being a pacifist to a "normal" country with an official military. In April 2019, a Kyodo News poll showed 45% thought Article 9 of the constitution should be revised. This support for revision is partially due to: the hostility of North Korea, an increasingly assertive China, and unstable relations with Russia due to territorial disputes that prevent a peace treaty being signed. There are territorial disputes involving the Senkaku Islands, Liancourt Rocks, and the Kuril Islands. Japanese claim that the U.S. has failed to properly address these issues, so Japan must grant itself the means to adequately protect itself.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Attempts have been made by multiple Governments of Japan to amend the Japanese Constitution so that Japan can have an official and normal military with offensive capabilities to share an equal burden of national security duties. This was prevented by an anti-war sentiment among the populace and politicians. In May 2017, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe set a 2020 deadline for revising the Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, a clause in the national Constitution of Japan outlawing war as a means to settle international disputes involving the state. This charter was written by the United States.


title: Military history of Japan

text: The 'Defense of Japan 2019' white paper lists China as a bigger threat than North Korea. Defense Minister Taro Kono said "The reality is that China is rapidly increasing military spending," "China is deploying air and sea assets in the Western Pacific and through the Tsushima Strait into the Sea of Japan with greater frequency." The paper downgraded South Korea for exiting a military intelligence-sharing pact. This could make it more difficult to manage threats from North Korea.


title: Military history of Japan

text: On October 21, 2019, a senior U.S. military officer in Tokyo said that "Japan's avoidance of offensive weaponry under its constitution is no longer acceptable." The officer stated that Japan needs to rethink its rejection of offensive weapons and that the government should discuss it with the public. The officer also mentioned restrictions that limit the US forces and the JSDF's preparation for contingencies. The officer said that the government of Japan should inform the public about the threats of China and North Korea. In particular China's military buildup with ballistic missiles and its antagonistic behavior threatens Japan and other countries.


title: Military history of Japan

text: On September 10, 2020, Japan and India signed a military pact called the Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA). The pact allows them to exchange logistical support and supplies. This includes transportation and cross-use of facilities during joint exercises and U.N. peacekeeping operations and to share food, fuel, spare parts. Narendra Modi and Shinzo Abe believe it will boost a Free and Open Indo-Pacific region and to deter Chinese aggression in Asia. Japan already had such agreements with Australia, Canada, France, UK and USA.


title: Military history of Japan

text: Australia and Japan agreed in-principle to sign a Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA) on 17, November 2020. This will enhance and streamline strategic and defense co-operation. Prime Minister Morrison said it is a "pivotal moment in the history of Japan-Australia ties".


title: Military history of Japan

text: In 2021, the NHK reported that the Chinese military used a hacker group called Tick for cyberattacks on nearly 200 Japanese research institutions and firms. A member of the China's Communist Party used a false name to rent servers in Japan from which the cyberattacks were conducted.


title: Military history of Japan

text: , the Japanese government has discovered that foreign groups funded with Chinese capital are involved in at least 700 land sales within of U.S. military bases—and Japanese Self-Defense Force, Coast Guard, and space development facilities—in Japan. In Kanagawa Prefecture, a Chinese government–linked land buyer acquired multiple high-rise buildings and other locations overlooking the bases. Similar instances were found in Okinawa Prefecture and Tottori Prefecture. In 2017, the "Sankei Shimbun" reported that Chinese capital had purchased land in Hokkaido equivalent to the acreage of 513 Tokyo Domes. The Japanese Diet intends to pass a foreign land use control bill.


title: Military history of Japan

text: What distinguishes Japan from other countries is that Japan was near continuously ruled by the military class with the shōgun, daimyo and samurai in the top of the Japanese social structure for 676 years (from 1192 till 1868). In 1192, the shōgun Minamoto no Yoritomo and the Minamoto clan established a feudal military government in Kamakura. The Emperor was above the shōgun and revered as the sovereign, but merely a figurehead. The Imperial Court nobility was a nominal ruling court with little influence. The actual ruling class were Japanese military figures: the shōgun (military dictator), daimyo (feudal lords) and the samurai (military nobility and officers). The samurai were idolized and their conduct was role model behavior for other social classes. This resulted in Japanese culture to have a long militaristic heritage. In human history only a few countries had a warrior caste at the top of their social structure, a class that was practically above the aristocracy. Few military governments lasted more than 600 years.


title: Military history of Japan

text: One key difference between ancient China and Japanese society was the development of the samurai class in Japan. Feudal China had four classes: Confucian literati and landlords, peasants, artisans and merchants. The Confucian literati and landlords were at the top of Chinese social structure. Japanese feudal society was also stratified, but had the samurai class in the top of Japanese society since the 12th century. Thus many experts consider pre-modern Japan a "warrior nation" as the ideals, ideologies of the samurai permeated through Japanese culture and society. Such as bushido and the Japanese proverb "Hana wa sakuragi, hito wa bushi" (, literally "the [best] blossom is the cherry blossom; the [best] man is the warrior"). Comparatively the Chinese idiom is "Haonan budang Bing, Hao tie bu dading" (, means "Good iron is not cast into nails; good men are not made into soldiers").


title: Military history of Japan

text: In 1551, during the Sengoku Period, the Navarrese Roman Catholic missionary Francis Xavier was one of the first westerners who visited Japan. Francis described Japan as follows:


title: Military history of Japan

text: The Meiji Restoration consolidated the political system under the Emperor of Japan with practical abilities. The shogun and daimyo were abolished. Their domains were returned to the emperor. Power was mainly transferred to a group of people called the Meiji oligarchy and the Genrō who helped restore imperial power. The Genrō were retired senior statesmen and informal advisers to the emperor. All Genrō except Saionji Kinmochi were descendants of medium or lower ranking samurai families from Satsuma and Chōshū. They were instrumental in overthrowing the Tokugawa Shogunate in the Boshin War (1868–1869).


title: Military history of Japan

text: In 1873, Emperor Meiji abolished the samurai class in favor of a western-style conscripted army. They lost their privileges such as the only class allowed to wield weapons. Many samurai volunteered as soldiers, and many advanced to be trained as officers. Much of the Imperial Japanese Army officer class was of samurai origin, and were highly motivated, disciplined, and exceptionally trained. Many samurai were literate and well-educated. Such as Baron Sadao Araki who served as the Minister of Education and Iwasaki Yatarō who founded Mitsubishi in 1870. So most leaders in Japanese society during the Meiji period (military, politics and business) were ex-samurai or descendants of samurai. They shared a set of values and outlooks. This caused Japanese militarism to dominate the political and social life of the Empire of Japan. The military class has arguably been the de facto rulers of Japan for about 753 years from 1192 until 1945, starting with the first shogun until the last ex-samurai politicians. The 1947 constitution transformed Japan into a pacifist country. The former soldiers gained other professions such as salaryman. Douglas MacArthur was dubbed the for being the military governor of Japan from 1945 to 1951.


title: Military history of Japan

text: In modern Japan, the warrior heritage is remembered and revered. For example, famous samurai and soldiers in literature (e.g. Miyamoto Musashi, Hiroo Onoda), festivals (Shingen-ko Festival), martial arts, movies, entertainment, art and feudal castles. Cultural practices like the Japanese tea ceremony, monochrome ink painting, Japanese rock gardens and poetry such as the death poem are associated with the samurai and were adopted by warrior patrons throughout the centuries (1200–1600). There are influential Japanese people in business and politics who are descendants of samurai families. The ideals of the samurai and bushido are integral parts of Japanese culture. The ideologies that originated from Japan's military class are adapted and utilized when necessary.


title: Glass House

text: The Glass House, or Johnson house, is a historic house museum on Ponus Ridge Road in New Canaan, Connecticut built in 1948–49. It was designed by architect Philip Johnson as his own residence. It has been called his "signature work".


title: Glass House

text: The Glass House has been "universally viewed as having been derived from" the Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe according to Alice T. Friedman, though the Farnsworth House was not completed until 1951, two years after the Glass House. Johnson curated an exhibit of Mies van der Rohe work at the Museum of Modern Art in 1947, featuring a model of the glass Farnsworth House. It was an important and influential project for Johnson and for modern architecture. The building is an example of minimal structure, geometry, proportion, and the effects of transparency and reflection. The estate includes other buildings designed by Johnson that span his career. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1997. It is now owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and is open to the public for guided tours, which begin at a visitors center at 199 Elm Street in New Canaan.


title: Glass House

text: The house is an example of early use of industrial materials in home design, such as glass and steel. Johnson lived at the weekend retreat for 58 years; 45 years with his long time companion David Whitney, an art critic and curator who helped design the landscaping and largely collected the art displayed there.


title: Glass House

text: The house is mostly hidden from the street. It is behind a stone wall at the edge of a crest in Johnson's estate overlooking a pond. Grass and gravel strips lead toward the building. The house is long, wide and high. The kitchen, dining and sleeping areas were all in one glass-enclosed room, which Johnson initially lived in, together with the brick guest house. Later, the glass-walled building was only used for entertaining. The exterior sides of the Glass House utilize charcoal-painted steel and glass. The brick floor is 10 inches above the ground. The interior is open with the space divided by low walnut cabinets; a brick cylinder contains the bathroom and is the only object to reach floor-to-ceiling.


title: Glass House

text: The house builds on ideas of German architects from the 1920s ("Glasarchitektur"). In a house of glass, the views of the landscape are its "wallpaper" ("I have very expensive wallpaper," Johnson once said.) Johnson was also inspired by the design of Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House. The Glass House contains a collection of Bauhaus items including furniture designed by Mies.


title: Glass House

text: Johnson is quoted as saying that his idea for Glass House grew from "a burnt wooden village I saw once where nothing was left but foundations and chimneys of brick." Mark Lamster, in his biography of Johnson "The Man in the Glass House", notes that this was plausibly Johnson's attempt to "intentionally re-create the 'stirring spectacle' that was the burning of Jewish shtetls he had witnessed driving through Poland with the Wehrmacht". Historian Anthony Vidler went further stating that the Glass House could be read as "a Polish farmhouse 'purified' by the fire of war of everything but its architectural 'essence'".


title: Glass House

text: The pastoral landscape surrounding the buildings was designed by Johnson and Whitney, with manicured areas of gravel or grass, trees grouped in what Johnson called outdoor "vestibules", and with care taken in the shape of the slopes and curves of the ground. In part, the landscape was a reflection of a landscape painting, "The Funeral of Phocion" by School of Nicolas Poussin (circa 1648) placed in a seating area of Glass House. The view through the glass walls to the landscaped grounds was strikingly similar, as Johnson designed it to resemble Poussin's picture. The estate overlooks the valley of the small Rippowam River to the west (seen from the back of Glass House, past a grassy rise). To the north and south are sloping scenery that particularly mimic the painting.


title: Glass House

text: Johnson's rambling estate also includes 14 structures Johnson designed, including the "Brick House" (1949–1950), which serves as a guest house, the Pavilion on the Pond (1962), Painting Gallery (1965) with 20th-century American art, Sculpture Gallery (1970) with 20th-century American art, the Study (1980), the Ghost House (1982), the Kirstein Tower (1985) (named for Johnson's friend dance choreographer Lincoln Kirstein), and "Da Monsta" (1995).


title: Glass House

text: The collection of structures vary between rectangular and circular. The rectangularity of the Glass House itself is complemented with a circular brick fireplace. The Brick House, also rectangular, faces the Glass House, but a nearby concrete, circular sculpture by Donald Judd (untitled, 1971) and small circular pools on either side of it serve to soften the rectangular effect, although structures and objects throughout the estate are arranged to show patterns or repetitions of curves and angles.


title: Glass House

text: Several buildings on the property served specific functions: the Glass House served for entertaining, the study was used for work and the galleries for storing and displaying the art collection. Johnson called other buildings his "follies" because their size, their shape or both made them unusable, such as the low-ceilinged Pavilion on the Pond or the Ghost House, a structure built with chain-link fencing on the foundation of an old barn and with lilies planted inside, inspired by his friend architect Frank Gehry. Three other existing vernacular houses on the estate (Popestead, Grainger, and Calluna Farms) were remodeled by Johnson.


title: Glass House

text: The red and black "Da Monsta", built without right angles and from modified gunite, is one of the few structures visible from the road. Near it is a -high entrance gate, fashioned out of a sailboat boom. In the 1997 documentary, "Philip Johnson: Diary of an Eccentric Architect", Johnson discusses the buildings he built on the property (his "diary") with a focus on "Da Monsta", at that time the latest structure. Philip Johnson was a friend and supporter of both Frank Gehry and Peter Eisenman – the influence of both seems evident in the form of Da Monsta. However, Johnson claimed that his original inspiration for Da Monsta came from the design for a museum in Dresden by artist and friend Frank Stella. In fact, when Johnson first made a model of this structure, he named it “Dresden Zwei,” or “Dresden Two,” and presented it to Stella. The name was chosen after a conversation with architecture critic Herbert Muschamp, as Johnson felt the house had the quality of a living thing.


title: Glass House

text: The Painting Gallery building is built underground with an entrance modeled on Agamemnon's Tomb. Large-scale 20th-century paintings by Frank Stella, Robert Rauschenberg, Julian Schnabel, Andy Warhol, and Cindy Sherman and more are displayed on a system of three revolving racks of carpeted panels. Johnson and Whitney acquired a large collection over 40 years, but much was donated to the Museum of Modern Art during their lifetime. The gallery still includes an 8-foot tall portrait of Johnson by Andy Warhol, which repeats the same pensive image of the architect nine times in a grid format. Whitney, an art curator and friend of Warhol, Johns, and Rauschenberg, took the lead in shaping the art collection.


title: Glass House

text: Johnson spent three years designing the structure, which was originally one of two buildings (along with the brick guest house) on what was then an tract.


title: Glass House

text: The Glass House resulted in recognition for Johnson, not just in architectural circles, but also among the public at large. The house was featured in "Life" magazine, and the "New York Times Magazine" published a set of cartoons about it. "What really sets Johnson apart [...]" Michael Sorkin wrote in 1978, "is his aptitude for publicity." The Glass House "established Johnson as the titular leader" of Modernist style in 1949. "If it was Mies van der Rohe who provided the real inspiration for the Glass House [...] it was only Johnson who could have built the house and lived in it himself. Johnson's career began when he turned himself into the Man in the Glass House. In an instant, he became the austere apostle for modern architecture—or rather the modern apostle for austere architecture." As "Life" magazine put it in 1949: "Except when entertaining, Johnson lives alone, servant-less and accompanied only by weather, paintings and books."


title: Glass House

text: The building created such a stir that at one point a police officer was posted nearby to keep out trespassers, and Johnson put up a sign near the street, stating: "This House Is "Now Occupied" Please Respect the Privacy of the Owner. It will be Open to the Public "on specified days"". "New York Times" architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff wrote in 2007 that Glass House was "once one of the most famous houses in the United States. [...] [I]ts celebrity may have done more to make Modernism palatable to the country's social elites than any other structure of the 20th century."


title: Glass House

text: The home also created a stir for Mies van der Rohe, who "stormed out in a huff when he saw it", Ouroussoff wrote. Obviously derived from Mies's Farnsworth House, the fact that it was finished earlier could easily have made the German architect wonder whether others would get the impression that Johnson had instead done pioneering work for Mies, and it could be seen that "Johnson's vision lacked the intellectual rigor and exquisite detailing that were so critical to Mies's genius", according to Ouroussoff.


title: Glass House

text: As a curator at the Museum of Modern Art, Johnson had publicized Mies' work, and the American acknowledged his debt to the German architect, particularly in a 1950 interview in "Architectural Digest" magazine. Even though Johnson's building was completed a year before Mies's glass house, Johnson's building "was universally viewed as having been derived from it", according to Alice T. Friedman. Johnson curated an exhibit of Mies work at the Museum of Modern Art in 1947, featuring a model of the glass Farnsworth House.


title: Glass House

text: Before beginning his architectural career, from 1934 Johnson was a follower of the radical populist Louisiana Governor Huey Long, and, then, after Long was assassinated, of Father Charles Coughlin, an extreme anti-Semitic priest who detested President Roosevelt. Johnson became a correspondent of Coughlin's newspaper. During his trips to Germany, Johnson wrote a positive review of "Mein Kampf", submitted articles where he decried the "decline in fertility...of the white race", described his visits to Hitler Youth camps, and gave favourable coverage of the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939. Johnson Ian Volner wrote in his biography of Johnson that when being associated with Nazism was no longer advantageous for the architect he was able to "cover his tracks, [by] burning the bulk of his incriminating letters and articles in the brick-clad fireplace of his landmark Glass House.” In 1940, with the war looming, Johnson abruptly abandoned journalism and fascism, and entered architecture school. He was investigated by the FBI for his earlier contacts with the Nazis, was eventually cleared for military service, and served in the Army until the end of the War.


title: Glass House

text: For many Yale University architecture students, it was considered a rite of passage for decades after the house was built to sneak onto the property and see how long they could walk around until Whitney discovered them and told them to leave.


title: Glass House

text: Johnson wanted to preserve his estate as a public monument "with the aim of cementing his legacy", even building Da Monsta as a visitors pavilion, according to architecture critic Nicolai Ourousoff (although after Johnson's death, National Trust officials decided instead to build a Visitor Center in downtown New Canaan).


title: Glass House

text: The house was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1997. The house was the place of Philip Johnson's passing on January 25, 2005, at the age of 98. Whitney, his partner, died later the same year and left a bequest to support programming and maintenance of the site. Johnson passed on ownership of the Glass House to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which opened it to visitors in April 2007. The trust expanded the size of the property, buying adjacent lots which extended it to .


title: Glass House

text: When the Glass House estate first opened for public tours in 2007, tickets sold out quickly. By July 2010, 15,000 visitors had taken the tour.


title: Glass House

text: The "Encyclopedia of American Architecture" (1980) described the Glass House as being "still considered one of [Johnson's] best buildings".


title: Glass House

text: According to Nicolai Ouroussoff, Glass House is inferior to Farnsworth House in "intellectual rigor" and exquisite detailing. He wrote that the steel I-beams at the corners of Johnson's building "are clumsily detailed—especially disconcerting in a work of such purity." Nevertheless, the building is "a legitimate aesthetic triumph", with the glass walls beautifully layering silhouetted and reflected images layered on each other, the critic wrote. "[T]he classical references alluded to by its thin brick base and the symmetrical proportions of its frame demonstrate the range of Johnson's historical knowledge." Ouroussoff criticized the underground picture gallery as too "dark and somber", and said the ability to flip the paintings on movable walls is a more rigid situation than it might first appear, since only six works can be seen at any one time. Ouroussoff praised the sculpture gallery as pleasingly open and rejected criticism that the shadows cast by rafters beneath the skylights distorted the look of the sculpture—he thought the changing shadows enhanced the artwork.


title: Glass House

text: Tour groups are limited to 15 people and include a 3/4-mile walk through the estate. Tours begin and end at the Visitor Center in downtown New Canaan, Connecticut (across from the train station), where vehicles transport each group to the site near the New Canaan–Stamford border. "Standard" tours last 90 minutes and flash photography is not allowed. There is a pure glass tour that only visits the house and is an hour long. Extended tours last two hours and cost more. Tours at twilight and "personalized" tours are also offered. Special Events include a "Dine with Design" picnic and film festival, as well as regularly scheduled Conversations in Context which feature prominent figures in the architecture and design community and take place for a limited number inside The Glass House.


title: Glass House

text: The Visitor Center, which was designed to reflect Johnson's uncluttered aesthetic, includes a "media wall" with multiple video loops running simultaneously on a wall with 24 computer screens. The screens, not meant to be viewed in any order, are meant to reflect the many facets of the architecture, art, landscaping and other features of the estate. When the Visitor Center opened, each of the screens was running a video loop of between two and 20 minutes, centered on a different theme, with a quotation from Johnson, Whitney, or their friends or colleagues.


title: Glass House

text: Along with regular tours, special tours are offered for architects and for artists and museum curators. The latter tours may spend extra time in the Painting Gallery and Sculpture Gallery.


title: North Wilkesboro Speedway

text: North Wilkesboro Speedway is a short oval racetrack located on U.S. Route 421, about east of the town of North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, or 80 miles north of Charlotte. It measures and features a unique uphill backstretch and downhill frontstretch. It has previously held races in NASCAR's top three series, including 93 Winston Cup Series races. The track, a NASCAR original, operated from 1949, NASCAR's inception, until the track's original closure in 1996. The speedway briefly reopened in 2010 and hosted several stock car series races, including the now-defunct ASA Late Model Series, USARacing Pro Cup Series, and PASS super late models, before closing again in the spring of 2011. It was re-opened in August 2022 for grassroots racing and will host the 2023 NASCAR All-Star Race and a NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race, with further renovations planned after the events.


title: North Wilkesboro Speedway

text: Years before the 1948 founding of NASCAR, Wilkes County and the surrounding areas were known as the moonshine capital of America. The local economy was pushed toward liquor after the Great Depression had stripped the profitability of farming and the region's undulating topography offered places to hide liquor stills during the Prohibition Era. Its location in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains was also convenient for distillers and distributors of moonshine. North Wilkesboro native and NASCAR driver Benny Parsons recalled of the era "Trust me, there was nothing to do in the mountains of North Carolina back in the 30s, 40s, and 50s. You either worked at a hosiery mill, a furniture factory, or you made whiskey."


title: North Wilkesboro Speedway

text: In 1945, Enoch Staley attended a stock car race in South Carolina sponsored by Bill France. Enoch was inspired by the races and was impressed by the large crowds attending the new sport, so he decided to build a track in his native Wilkes County, and he asked France to promote the races and assist with their operation.


title: North Wilkesboro Speedway

text: Enoch and his partners, Lawson Curry, Jack Combs, and Charlie Combs, purchased farmland near North Wilkesboro and began building an oval racetrack. When their initial investment of $1,500 was exhausted, they were forced to amend the original design of the track, hence the completed track was not a perfect oval. The front stretch was left with a downhill slope, and the backstretch had an uphill slope. Construction was completed in late 1946.


title: North Wilkesboro Speedway

text: North Wilkesboro Speedway opened its doors on May 18, 1947, as a dirt track. France promoted the first official event as a modified race, including heat races and a feature race. While an attendance of about 3,000 people was expected, a crowd in excess of 10,000 was there to see one of the famous Flock brothers win the race.


title: North Wilkesboro Speedway

text: On October 16, 1949, North Wilkesboro Speedway held the eighth and final race of the 1949 NASCAR Strictly Stock Division. Kenneth Wagner won the first Cup pole at the track with a speed of 57.563 mph on the dirt surface. A total of 22 drivers competed in the race. Bob Flock, in his Bob Christian-owned 1949 Oldsmobile, passed Bill Blair's fading Cadillac with 20 laps to go and won by about 100 yards over Lee Petty. At the end of the day Robert "Red" Byron walked away as the first NASCAR champion.


title: North Wilkesboro Speedway

text: North Wilkesboro carried a reputation as one of the fastest short-tracks in auto racing in the late 1940s and 1950s. In 1950, speeds reached 73 mph at the track, compared to the next fastest short-track, Charlotte Speedway, where top speeds only reached 66 mph. Most of the fans in the early years of the sport saw the track as a great venue to watch races between the legendary racers of the time. Racing at North Wilkesboro was intense and physical.


title: North Wilkesboro Speedway

text: The 1950 Wilkes 200 was the second Grand National Series race held at North Wilkesboro Speedway. Twenty-six cars entered the race. Twenty-one-year-old Fireball Roberts qualified with a lap speed of 73.266 mph on the dirt track for his first ever Grand National pole, but engine problems dropped him out of the running. Fonty Flock started in the third position and led the most laps in the race with 104, but engine troubles also ended his day. Ultimately, Leon Sales led the last eight of the 200 laps to become the victor, the fourth NASCAR driver to win an event in his debut race. Jack Smith finished second after leading 55 laps.


title: North Wilkesboro Speedway

text: After hosting only one NASCAR event in 1949 and one in 1950, the track began running two Grand National Series events per year in 1951 (with the exception of 1956, when only one race was held; the track was being prepared for pavement). One race was held in the spring, normally in late March or early April, and another was held in the fall, normally in late September or early October. In 1957, Stanley had the 5/8-mile track paved.