12 ATLASES
History of Japan in maps
Japan as it appears in 12 interactive history atlases, from 1840 to 2000: Japan. Each era below lists who ruled the land and when control changed, linked to the dated map that shows it.
WW2 is free — every chapter. No sign-up.
What was Japan before it was Japan? The sections below follow this land through every era covered by the Maps of History atlases: who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed. Each line links to the dated map. Modern borders serve as an approximation, as each atlas says on the map itself.
Japan (Kamakura shogunate) · Mongol Empire
The Kamakura shogunate beheaded Khubilai’s envoys and prepared for invasion. In 1281 the Hakata wall held the armada offshore until a typhoon destroyed it. The storm became known as kamikaze, the divine wind, and entered a national legend with a long, dark afterlife. Victory also bankrupted the regime: there was no conquered land with which to pay the samurai. The strait had achieved what no mainland wall could.
| Beyond the conquests — the opening position |
MONGOL EMPIRE: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Japan · Industrial Revolution
American warships forced Japan open in 1853–58. Japan went on to become the first non-Western country to industrialize: the government built railways and model factories, while private firms built cotton mills and shipyards. Young women reeling silk and spinning cotton paid for much of this development. Victories over China in 1895 and Russia in 1905 brought an empire in Taiwan, southern Manchuria and Korea.
| Opened by force or treaty — the opening position | |
| Opened by force or treaty | |
| Industrialising |
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Japan · Meiji Japan and post-Soviet Russia
In 1840 Japan was a patchwork of some 260 domains under a shogun. By 1871 a central government had replaced them, and it would establish one national army and tax; by 1910 Japan ruled Taiwan, Korea and southern Sakhalin. This is the state remade in the first half of the atlas. On the Eurasia map it appears as an American ally, its earlier transition complete. Military rule in the 1930s and defeat in 1945 show how a state strengthened from above could turn its power outward.
| The shogun’s lands and allies — the opening position | |
| Domains, vassals, protectorates | |
| Meiji Japan and its empire |
MEIJI JAPAN AND POST-SOVIET RUSSIA: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Japan · Russian Revolution
Japan had defeated Russia in 1905 and now sent the largest intervention force, keeping it in place longer than any other power: up to 70,000 troops remained in the Far East until October 1922. Japan had real ambitions to carve out a Siberian sphere. Its withdrawal marked the civil war’s final foreign departure, though its appetite for the Asian mainland had only been postponed.
| Foreign powers & intervention — the opening position |
RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Japan · WWI
Japan joined the Entente in August 1914 and took Tsingtao and Germany’s Pacific islands within weeks (Ch. 9). It pressed China with the Twenty-One Demands, then attended Versailles as a great power, only to see its racial-equality clause voted down. Japan kept Shandong and the islands; the Pacific war of 1941 would be fought across the archipelagos gained in this war.
| The Entente & Allies — the opening position | |
| The Entente & Allies |
Japan (Empire of Japan) · Chinese Revolution
Japan already held Taiwan and Korea when this atlas begins. It took Shandong in 1914 and Manchuria in 1931, the latter through a field conspiracy that Tokyo dared not punish. In 1937 an escalation that no one in Tokyo could stop brought Japanese forces to China’s coast. Japanese planners called Manchuria a lifeline and the war in China an incident. Yet the incident consumed a million-man garrison, licensed the revolutions of Japan’s enemies and ended with the home islands occupied. On the map, charcoal gives way to the hatching of defeat. Japan did more than any other power shown here to decide who would rule China, though that was hardly its intention.
| The Empire of Japan & its puppets — the opening position | |
| Japan defeated and under occupation (1945) |
CHINESE REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Japan · Stalin’s Soviet Union
Throughout the Stalin years Japan was the Soviet Union’s rival in the east. It held southern Sakhalin and the Kurils and created the puppet state of Manchukuo on the Soviet border in 1932. Japanese and Soviet troops fought at Lake Khasan in 1938 and Khalkhin Gol in 1939. A neutrality pact in April 1941 freed both countries for other wars. The Soviet Union attacked Manchuria in August 1945 and took Sakhalin and the Kurils.
| Rivals & the Western bloc — the opening position |
STALIN’S SOVIET UNION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Japan · Road to WW2
Japan was the first to move. Its army answered to no cabinet in a constitutional empire, and the government ratified the insubordination at Mukden in 1931. Escalation in China produced a war in 1937 that nobody had ordered. Japan's conquests then set an oil clock running toward Pearl Harbor. The gambles worked until the one that mattered: the six months Yamamoto promised ran out at Midway, six months and three days after this atlas ends.
| The aggressors (Japan, Germany, Italy) — the opening position |
ROAD TO WW2: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Japan · WW2
Japan’s island empire gambled that it could conquer resources faster than America could mobilize after the attack (Ch. 7). Its army committed vast atrocities in Asia; in turn, Japan’s cities were burned and atom-bombed. Surrender came only when the Emperor overrode a military deadlock (Ch. 14). Japan was then occupied and democratized, and its constitution has been pacifist since.
| Axis powers — the opening position | |
| Defeated Axis (occupied) |
Japan · Cold War
| NATO & core Western allies — the opening position |
COLD WAR: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Japan · Refugee crises
| Western bloc or democracy — the opening position |
REFUGEE CRISES: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Japan · Mao’s China
Japan was under United States occupation until 1952. Like Washington, it recognized Taiwan, although it traded with the mainland; many Chinese remembered Japan’s invasion of 1937–45. After Nixon’s visit, Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei flew to Beijing in September 1972. Japan established relations with the People’s Republic and broke them with Taiwan, while China waived its claim to war reparations.
| Beijing’s adversaries — the opening position | |
| Neutral, non-aligned or colonial |
MAO’S CHINA: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Related
THE FREE PRINTABLE STUDY GUIDE
Get a printable atlas study guide of your choice free. I’ll send you a few short letters, then one when a new atlas opens. That’s all. — Paul
NO TRACKING · YOUR ADDRESS IS USED FOR THE DISPATCH AND NOTHING ELSE · UNSUBSCRIBE ANYTIME