Tim Stanley describes the Asama-Sansō Incident of 1972 and reveals the cyclical nature of political violence and the means of its defeat.

C.R. Boxer offers a study of Japanese isolationism between the mid-seventeenth and the mid-nineteenth century.

Richard Storry describes how the Army Mutiny of February 1936 was the climax of revolutionary nationalism in Japan. Its outcome meant action against China, and in the end led to Pearl Harbour

According to western stereotype, the Japanese at the time of the Second World War were passive and obedient automatons. Yet the realities of daily life in imperial Japan were complex and politically charged, argues Christopher Harding.

Geoffrey Evans describes how British and Indian forces recovered Burma from the Japanese during the Second World War.

The achievements of the Meiji regime in transforming Japan, within the space of half a lifetime, into one of the most powerful of modern states are justly regarded as among the most remarkable events in history. But the restoration of the Emperor and the fall of the Shogun was brought about at the cost of a fierce domestic struggle, writes Henry McAleavy, which involved many strange personalities and dramatic events.

In the 1860s a group of the younger Samurai launched the Meiji revolution in the Emperor's name. This event, writes Henry McAleavy, helped convert Japan into a modern country, with Western fashions and techniques imposed upon the national habits of centuries.

Her victory in the Russo-Japanese war, writes C. Platanov, which came to an end in September 1905, established Japan as a modern world-power.

The suffering of prisoners of war at the hands of the Japanese during the Second World War has coloured the British view of the conflict in the Far East. Clare Makepeace highlights a little known aspect of the captives’ story: their quest for compensation.

In 1862 a Japanese official mission visited England, nine years after the re-opening of their country to the world. Carmen Blacker describes how their strange attire and “inscrutable reticence” surprised the mid-Victorian public.



August issue of History Today

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