Japanese Empire, 1868–1945

The Japanese Empire emerged from the Meiji Restoration of 1868, when political centralisation, military reform and industrialisation transformed the Tokugawa order. Japan adopted and adapted foreign institutions while presenting the emperor as the centre of the modern state.

Victories over China and Russia enabled expansion into Taiwan, Korea, southern Sakhalin and later parts of China and the Pacific. Colonial rule, economic integration and military occupation were accompanied by coercion, cultural assimilation and resistance.

The empire expanded into a wider Asian and Pacific war from 1931 and was dismantled after Japan’s defeat in 1945. Its legacies remain important to regional politics, memory and debates over war responsibility.