30,000 years ago, humans set foot on the Japanese Islands. At that time, the shallow sea had not separated Japan from the mainland. Later, the sea water gradually rose. Looking back, ah! Suddenly they found that the sea water had separated them from the mainland, so these people began to settle in Japan. Overall, Japan is thought to have been founded by immigrants from northern Asia.
Since then, the Japanese have been living in a relatively closed island nation, just like Tarzan, swinging from one tree to another with "oh" and no words of their own. Chinese characters were introduced to Japan around the mid-to-late 4th century, and Japan has recorded literature since then. After that, a large amount of science, technology, and culture were continuously imported from China. Until the Meiji Restoration (1868), the Japanese were greedily learning from China and lived a relatively peaceful life without foreign invasion. Even in the Heian period, even a small porcelain bottle imported from China was worth showing off.
In 1603, the Tokugawa Shogunate established its rule, which lasted for 260 years. During the era of the third generation shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu, the shogunate system was established. Under the shogunate, the country was divided into various vassals, and the country was said to have "three hundred princes". Similar to China, the country was divided into four levels: scholars, farmers, industry and commerce, but these scholars were not Chinese scholars, but warriors. The Tokugawa shogunate had more control over the emperor than the previous shogunate, including the economy. It was often said that the emperor "wanted to write poetry, but had no paper."
In the 16th century, the Portuguese came to Japan and preached Catholicism to the Japanese people. The oppressed Japanese farmers quickly accepted Catholicism. The shogunate soon realized that Catholicism was a serious threat to the rulers and suppressed it vigorously. Killed 280,000 Catholics. However, this was not enough to prohibit people from practicing religion. The shogunate did not stop doing anything and simply imposed a total lockdown on the country. From 1633 to 1639, five consecutive lockdown orders were issued, stipulating that Catholics should be reported nationwide, denying Catholicism a foothold in Japan. It also prohibited all Westerners from trading in Japan. It also stipulated that Japanese overseas were not allowed to return to the country, and Japanese were not allowed to go to sea. A side effect of these orders was that the Japanese pirates along China's coast were wiped out. In Japan, Westerners were segregated to a small island called Dejima, isolated from the Japanese. The shogunate's measures achieved certain results, and since then the country has been peaceful and stable. However, in fact, the shogunate's policy of rejecting foreign civilization at the expense of superficial stability caused the development of the Japanese nation to stagnate, and the vitality of change that emerged in Japan in the early seventeenth century was suffocated. The Tokugawa shogunate's rule for more than two hundred years was considered by later Japanese to be synonymous with Japan's backward period.
The stability of the situation caused the samurai class to abandon their horses in Nanshan and indulge in entertainment, while the merchant class rose, and the daimyo samurai all worshiped at the feet of the merchants. A Japanese folk song said, "When the Osaka merchants are angry, the princes of the world are frightened. ". Moreover, the businessman also spent money to buy a samurai sword and transformed into a samurai.
After Japan locked itself down, only two countries could continue to trade with Japan. One was the Netherlands, because the Netherlands was a Protestant country and was not interested in missionary work and only focused on trade. The other country was China.
At the same time, practical books from the Netherlands were gradually introduced to Japan, forming Orchidology in Japan, which stood side by side with Confucianism and Chinese studies.
In 1754, Toyo Yamawaki published a report on human anatomy, marking the beginning of Japan’s enlightenment. Lanxue had a comprehensive impact on Japanese thought, culture and life. The shogunate discovered the threat of Ranxue to its rule and immediately suppressed it. However, Ranxue had completed the enlightenment of modern Japanese culture and shaken people's belief in the rule of the shogunate. People of insight began to think about how to make Japan accept the influence of advanced Western culture.
In 1840, the Opium War broke out, which shocked the whole country of Japan, and the image of the Chinese Empire began to collapse. However, the shogunate still indulged in the superficial stability and adopted the ostrich policy, not knowing that the disaster was coming.
In 1853, the U.S. Navy fleet led by General Perry used iron cannons to open Japan's closed door and signed an unequal trade agreement with Japan. Feeling that they were in prison, the Japanese turned around and began to learn advanced Western civilization from Europe and the United States in order to strengthen themselves and save the country. In 1868, the Meiji Restoration implemented a constitutional monarchy. In 1889, a new constitution was introduced. This constitution made Japan an advanced country recognized by Western countries. The Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895. In 1896, China sent students to Japan for the first time, which was a major reversal in the history of Sino-Japanese relations. What even more impressed the West and the whole world was that in the Russo-Japanese War from 1904 to 1906, Japan defeated the Western power Russia. After that, Japan continued to consolidate its economic strength, clarify its political system, and change its social structure. By the time of the death of Emperor Meiji in 1912, Japan had become a truly developed country.
After that, Japan began to take the dangerous path of militarism. After World War I and World War II, Japan was almost in ruins. By 1955, it took only ten short years to recover from the wounds of the war, and the economic strength reached pre-war levels. The first high-speed railway Shinkansen (Tokyo to Osaka) was opened in 1964, and the Tokyo Olympics was successfully held in the same year. After that, the economy developed rapidly. In 1972, its GDP surpassed that of Britain and France, making it the world's second largest economic power after the United States.
In 1853, four black ships of the American General Paley approached Edo, causing panic throughout Japan. The following year, Paley entered Japan again and forced the shogunate to sign the unequal treaty "Japan-US Goodwill Treaty". After that, European countries signed unequal treaties with Japan one after another, and Japan's era of isolation was broken.
During this period, Japan's only European friend, the Netherlands, wrote to the shogunate many times, kindly advising it to open as soon as possible to avoid a catastrophe like China. However, although the shogunate expressed gratitude, it refused to open. However, Japan's insightful people who care about the country and its people realize that only lifting the ban is the only way out for Japan, but the shogunate insists on locking down the country.
During this period, Sakuma Shoyama and Yokoi Kokusu were representatives of the founding theorists. They were inspired by Wei Yuan's "Hai Guo Tu Zhi" and proposed "Eastern morality, Western technology."
At the same time, Japan's traditional cultural system has also been impacted, and the Japanese have become suspicious of Chinese culture. Yamaga Soyuki said that Japan should be China, because China had frequent wars, while Japan had successive orthodoxies. There are also Chinese scholars who criticize the hypocrisy of the Chinese in the Qing Dynasty, but the Japanese have the same living thoughts and feelings as the ancient Chinese. The Japanese who declared war believed that the Chinese world was hypocritical, cunning, and politically ungrateful, while Japan's "spring day was bright and clear." They denounced those Japanese who "dazzled themselves in China theory" as "corrupt Confucianism and quackery". In short, they believed that Chinese culture had lost its vitality compared with ancient times and was on the verge of death. Japanese intellectual circles are eager to learn from advanced Western trends of thought.
Faced with the aggression of Western powers, the Japanese felt that they were facing a national crisis, and the shogunate became an obstacle to Japan's progress. The samurai Oshio Heihachiro launched an uprising and fired the first shot of the downfall. Oshio Heihachiro is a police officer who is extremely dissatisfied with the darkness of the shogunate's rule. One year during the Chinese New Year, he wore new clothes for the New Year's Eve dinner. Thinking of the many poor people, he had no intention of swallowing it, so he composed a poem:
Wearing new clothes to celebrate the New Year, the cake is rich in flavor and easy to swallow. Suddenly I thought about the many dishes in the city, and I felt ashamed of myself for having so much food and clothing.
Oshio Heihachiro's uprising was suppressed by the shogunate. He was defeated and died, and the corrupt rule of the shogunate was on the eve of its demise.