Jōmon period
The Jōmon period is the time in Japanese prehistory, traditionally dated between c. 14,000–300 BCE refined to about 1000 BCE, during which Japan was inhabited by a hunter-gatherer culture, which reached a considerable degree of sedentism and cultural complexity. The name "cord-marked" was first applied by the American scholar Edward S. Morse, who discovered sherds of pottery in 1877 and subsequently translated it into Japanese as jōmon; the pottery style characteristic of the first phases of Jōmon culture was decorated by impressing cords into the surface of wet clay and is accepted to be among the oldest in East Asia and the world. The Jōmon period was rich in tools and jewellery made from bone, stone and antler, it is compared to pre-Columbian cultures of the North American Pacific Northwest and to the Valdivia culture in Ecuador because in these settings cultural complexity developed within a hunting-gathering context with limited use of horticulture. The long 14,000 years, Jōmon period is conventionally divided into a number of phases: Incipient, Early, Middle and Final, with the phases getting progressively shorter.
The fact that this entire period is given the same name by archaeologists should not be taken to mean that there was not considerable regional and temporal diversity. Dating of the Jōmon sub-phases is based upon ceramic typology, to a lesser extent radiocarbon dating. Traces of Paleolithic culture stone tools, occur in Japan from around 30,000 BCE onwards; the earliest "Incipient Jōmon" phase began while Japan was still linked to continental Asia as a narrow peninsula. As the glaciers melted following the end of the last glacial period, sea levels rose, separating the Japanese archipelago from the Asian mainland. In addition, a continuous chain of islands encompasses Luzon, Taiwan and Kyushu, allowing for continuous contact between the Jōmon and maritime Southeast Asia. Within the archipelago, the vegetation was transformed by the end of the Ice Age. In southwestern Honshu and Kyushu, broadleaf evergreen trees dominated the forests, whereas broadleaf deciduous trees and conifers were common in northeastern Honshu and southern Hokkaido.
Many native tree species, such as beeches, buckeyes and oaks produced edible nuts and acorns. These provided abundant sources of food for animals. In the northeast, the plentiful marine life carried south by the Oyashio Current salmon, was another major food source. Settlements along both the Sea of Japan and the Pacific Ocean subsisted on immense amounts of shellfish, leaving distinctive middens that are now prized sources of information for archaeologists. Other food sources meriting special mention include Sika deer, wild boar, wild plants such as yam-like tubers, freshwater fish. Supported by the productive deciduous forests and an abundance of seafood, the population was concentrated in central and northern Honshu, but Jōmon sites range from Hokkaido to the Ryukyu Islands; the earliest pottery in Japan was made before the start of the Incipient Jōmon period. Small fragments, dated to 14,500 BCE, were found at the Odai Yamamoto I site in 1998. Pottery of the same age was subsequently found at other sites such as Kamikuroiwa and Fukui Cave.
Archaeologist Junko Habu claims "he majority of Japanese scholars believed, still believe, that pottery production was first invented in mainland Asia and subsequently introduced into the Japanese archipelago." This seems to be confirmed by recent archaeology. As of now, the earliest pottery vessels in the world date back to 20,000 BP and were discovered in Xianren Cave in Jiangxi, China; the pottery may have been used as cookware. Other early pottery vessels include those excavated from the Yuchanyan Cave in southern China, dated from 16,000 BCE, at present it appears that pottery emerged at the same time in Japan, in the Amur River basin of the Russian Far East; the first Jōmon pottery is characterized by the cord-marking that gives the period its name and has now been found in large numbers of sites. The pottery of the period has been classified by archaeologists into some 70 styles, with many more local varieties of the styles; the antiquity of Jōmon pottery was first identified after World War II, through radiocarbon dating methods.
The earliest vessels were smallish round-bottomed bowls 10–50 cm high that are assumed to have been used for boiling food and storing it beforehand. They belonged to hunter-gatherers and the size of the vessels may have been limited by a need for portability; as bowls increase in size, this is taken to be a sign of an settled pattern of living. These types continued to develop, with elaborate patterns of decoration, undulating rims, flat bottoms so that they could stand on a surface; the manufacture of pottery implies some form of sedentary life because pottery is heavy and fragile and thus unusable for hunter-gatherers. However, this doe
World War II
World War II known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries; the major participants threw their entire economic and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China, it included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, the only use of nuclear weapons in war. Japan, which aimed to dominate Asia and the Pacific, was at war with China by 1937, though neither side had declared war on the other. World War II is said to have begun on 1 September 1939, with the invasion of Poland by Germany and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by France and the United Kingdom.
From late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Finland and the Baltic states. Following the onset of campaigns in North Africa and East Africa, the fall of France in mid 1940, the war continued between the European Axis powers and the British Empire. War in the Balkans, the aerial Battle of Britain, the Blitz, the long Battle of the Atlantic followed. On 22 June 1941, the European Axis powers launched an invasion of the Soviet Union, opening the largest land theatre of war in history; this Eastern Front trapped most crucially the German Wehrmacht, into a war of attrition. In December 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on the United States as well as European colonies in the Pacific. Following an immediate U. S. declaration of war against Japan, supported by one from Great Britain, the European Axis powers declared war on the U.
S. in solidarity with their Japanese ally. Rapid Japanese conquests over much of the Western Pacific ensued, perceived by many in Asia as liberation from Western dominance and resulting in the support of several armies from defeated territories; the Axis advance in the Pacific halted in 1942. Key setbacks in 1943, which included a series of German defeats on the Eastern Front, the Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy, Allied victories in the Pacific, cost the Axis its initiative and forced it into strategic retreat on all fronts. In 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained its territorial losses and turned toward Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in Central China, South China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy and captured key Western Pacific islands; the war in Europe concluded with an invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, culminating in the capture of Berlin by Soviet troops, the suicide of Adolf Hitler and the German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945.
Following the Potsdam Declaration by the Allies on 26 July 1945 and the refusal of Japan to surrender under its terms, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August respectively. With an invasion of the Japanese archipelago imminent, the possibility of additional atomic bombings, the Soviet entry into the war against Japan and its invasion of Manchuria, Japan announced its intention to surrender on 15 August 1945, cementing total victory in Asia for the Allies. Tribunals were set up by fiat by the Allies and war crimes trials were conducted in the wake of the war both against the Germans and the Japanese. World War II changed the political social structure of the globe; the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The Soviet Union and United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the nearly half-century long Cold War. In the wake of European devastation, the influence of its great powers waned, triggering the decolonisation of Africa and Asia.
Most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic expansion. Political integration in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities and create a common identity; the start of the war in Europe is held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred and the two wars merged in 1941; this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935; the British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the fo
Population
In biology, a population is all the organisms of the same group or species, which live in a particular geographical area, have the capability of interbreeding. The area of a sexual population is the area where inter-breeding is possible between any pair within the area, where the probability of interbreeding is greater than the probability of cross-breeding with individuals from other areas. In sociology, population refers to a collection of humans. Demography is a social science. Population in simpler terms is the number of people in a city or town, country or world. In population genetics a sex population is a set of organisms in which any pair of members can breed together; this means that they can exchange gametes to produce normally-fertile offspring, such a breeding group is known therefore as a Gamo deme. This implies that all members belong to the same species. If the Gamo deme is large, all gene alleles are uniformly distributed by the gametes within it, the Gamo deme is said to be panmictic.
Under this state, allele frequencies can be converted to genotype frequencies by expanding an appropriate quadratic equation, as shown by Sir Ronald Fisher in his establishment of quantitative genetics. This occurs in Nature: localization of gamete exchange – through dispersal limitations, preferential mating, cataclysm, or other cause – may lead to small actual Gamo demes which exchange gametes reasonably uniformly within themselves but are separated from their neighboring Gamo demes. However, there may be low frequencies of exchange with these neighbors; this may be viewed as the breaking up of a large sexual population into smaller overlapping sexual populations. This failure of panmixia leads to two important changes in overall population structure: the component Gamo demos vary in their allele frequencies when compared with each other and with the theoretical panmictic original; the overall rise in homozygosity is quantified by the inbreeding coefficient. Note that all homozygotes are increased in frequency – both the deleterious and the desirable.
The mean phenotype of the Gamo demes collection is lower than that of the panmictic original –, known as inbreeding depression. It is most important to note, that some dispersion lines will be superior to the panmictic original, while some will be about the same, some will be inferior; the probabilities of each can be estimated from those binomial equations. In plant and animal breeding, procedures have been developed which deliberately utilize the effects of dispersion, it can be shown that dispersion-assisted selection leads to the greatest genetic advance, is much more powerful than selection acting without attendant dispersion. This is so for both autogamous Gamo demes. In ecology, the population of a certain species in a certain area can be estimated using the Lincoln Index. According to the United States Census Bureau the world's population was about 7.55 billion in 2019 and that the 7 billion number was surpassed on 12 March 2012. According to a separate estimate by the United Nations, Earth’s population exceeded seven billion in October 2011, a milestone that offers unprecedented challenges and opportunities to all of humanity, according to UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund.
According to papers published by the United States Census Bureau, the world population hit 6.5 billion on 24 February 2006. The United Nations Population Fund designated 12 October 1999 as the approximate day on which world population reached 6 billion; this was about 12 years after world population reached 5 billion in 1987, 6 years after world population reached 5.5 billion in 1993. The population of countries such as Nigeria, is not known to the nearest million, so there is a considerable margin of error in such estimates. Researcher Carl Haub calculated that a total of over 100 billion people have been born in the last 2000 years. Population growth increased as the Industrial Revolution gathered pace from 1700 onwards; the last 50 years have seen a yet more rapid increase in the rate of population growth due to medical advances and substantial increases in agricultural productivity beginning in the 1960s, made by the Green Revolution. In 2017 the United Nations Population Division projected that the world's population will reach about 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100.
In the future, the world's population is expected to peak, after which it will decline due to economic reasons, health concerns, land exhaustion and environmental hazards. According to one report, it is likely that the world's population will stop growing before the end of the 21st century. Further, there is some likelihood that population will decline before 2100. Population has declined in the last decade or two in Eastern Europe, the Baltics and in the Commonwealth of Independent States; the population pattern of less-developed regions of the world in recent years has been marked by increasing birth rates. These followed an earlier sharp reduction in death rates; this transition from high birth and death rates to low birth
Treaty of Amity and Commerce (United States–Japan)
The Treaty of Amity and Commerce called the Harris Treaty, between the United States and Japan was signed on the deck of the USS Powhatan in Edo Bay on July 29, 1858. It opened the ports of Kanagawa and four other Japanese cities to trade and granted extraterritoriality to foreigners, among a number of trading stipulations; the treaty followed the 1854 Convention of Kanagawa, which granted coaling rights for US ships and allowed for a US Consul in Shimoda. Although Commodore Matthew Perry secured fuel for US ships and protection for US sailors, he left the important matter of trading rights to Townsend Harris, another US envoy who negotiated with the Tokugawa shogunate, it took two years to break down Japanese resistance, but with the threat of looming British demands for similar privileges, the Tokugawa government capitulated. Among the most important points were: exchange of diplomatic agent in addition to the existing ports of Shimoda and Hakodate, the ports of Kanagawa and Nagasaki to be open to foreign trade effective 4 July 1859 and thereafter Niigata, Hyōgo opened on 1 January 1860 and 1 January 1863 in all the treaty ports listed, United States citizens may permanently reside, have the right to lease ground and purchase the buildings thereon, may erect dwellings and warehouses a system of extraterritoriality that provided for the subjugation of foreign residents to the laws of their own consular courts instead of the Japanese law system fixed low import-export duties, subject to international control right of freedom of religious expression and church construction to serve the needs of United States nationals within the confines of the designated foreign settlements at the treaty portsThe agreement served as a model for similar treaties signed by Japan with other foreign countries in the ensuing weeks.
These Unequal Treaties curtailed Japanese sovereignty for the first time in its history. The recovery of national status and strength became an overarching priority for the Japanese, with the treaty's domestic consequences being the end of Bakufu control and the establishment of a new imperial government. Perry's expedition to Japan is theoretically linked to the notion of manifest destiny, in which Americans had a "God-given" right to spread their political institutions and commerce across North America; the role of Japan in particular was that of a base of commerce between the United States. According to US Secretary of State Daniel Webster, God had placed coal for steam ships and other trading vessels "in the depths of the Japanese islands for the benefit of the human family." The idea of "Manifest Destiny" as an imperialistic measure outside of North America was not introduced as a significant idea until the Republican bid for office in 1892, thereby suggesting, in practicality, a mere economic interest in Japan, as it held coal reserves in key locations for Pacific trade.
The Convention of Kanagawa mediated by Commodore Perry was a primary step to a rather forced extension of American influence in Japan. However, most problems that the Tokugawa Shogunate faced came from a division within the country between those who favored opening to the West and advocates of joi who favored a preservation of Japanese culture and influence until Japan could face the military threat posed by the West. Most Japanese were familiar with the subjugation of Chinese trade by the British after the Opium War of 1840, but they were divided on how and when they would open their ports. Both camps did agree that trade should be handled by Japanese going overseas instead of foreigners coming into Japan and violating the country's seclusion laws. Many of those Tokugawan officials who agreed to the Treaty of Kanagawa did so in an effort to avoid war with the United States or Britain; the result was a deepening domestic crisis. However, Townsend Harris' terms were much more demanding than Perry's.
Harris claimed that the laws of Japan were "very peculiar" and it would be unfair for foreigners to live under such rule. Article III of the treaty gave Americans the right to trade and reside in Yedo and Osaka without influence from the Japanese government; the entrance of foreigners to the port of Edo, the shogunal capital, the placement of an official from a foreign government in proximity to the Emperor was threatening to those who supported opening to the West publicly. These demands in particular demonstrated the United States' planned role for Japan, it was a link in a chain of commerce that would connect North America to China. Harris' emphasis of the inevitable defeat of the resisting Japanese by the British and the French was enough to convince many of the kaikoku members of the Tokugawa Shogunate to agree to the terms of the United States, no matter how unfavorable they were; the memory of China's overwhelming defeat was too close to be ignored. After reluctantly accepting the Harris Treaty, Japan signed similar treaties, called the Ansei Treaties, with Russia, Great Britain, the Netherlands.
This process was hast
Edo period
The Edo period or Tokugawa period is the period between 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when Japanese society was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional daimyō. The period was characterized by economic growth, strict social order, isolationist foreign policies, a stable population, "no more wars", popular enjoyment of arts and culture; the shogunate was established in Edo on March 24, 1603, by Tokugawa Ieyasu. The period came to an end with the Meiji Restoration on May 1868, after the fall of Edo. A revolution took place from the time of the Kamakura shogunate, which existed with the Tennō's court, to the Tokugawa, when the samurai became the unchallenged rulers in what historian Edwin O. Reischauer called a "centralized feudal" form of shogunate. Instrumental in the rise of the new-existing bakufu was Tokugawa Ieyasu, the main beneficiary of the achievements of Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Powerful, Ieyasu profited by his transfer to the rich Kantō area.
He maintained two million koku of land, a new headquarters at Edo, a strategically situated castle town, had an additional two million koku of land and thirty-eight vassals under his control. After Hideyoshi's death, Ieyasu moved to seize control from the Toyotomi clan. Ieyasu's victory over the western daimyō at the Battle of Sekigahara gave him control of all Japan, he abolished numerous enemy daimyō houses, reduced others, such as that of the Toyotomi, redistributed the spoils of war to his family and allies. Ieyasu still failed to achieve complete control of the western daimyō, but his assumption of the title of shōgun helped consolidate the alliance system. After further strengthening his power base, Ieyasu installed his son Hidetada as shōgun and himself as retired shōgun in 1605; the Toyotomi were still a significant threat, Ieyasu devoted the next decade to their eradication. In 1615, the Tokugawa army destroyed the Toyotomi stronghold at Osaka; the Tokugawa period brought 250 years of stability to Japan.
The political system evolved into what historians call bakuhan, a combination of the terms bakufu and han to describe the government and society of the period. In the bakuhan, the shōgun had national authority and the daimyō had regional authority; this represented a new unity in the feudal structure, which featured an large bureaucracy to administer the mixture of centralized and decentralized authorities. The Tokugawa became more powerful during their first century of rule: land redistribution gave them nearly seven million koku, control of the most important cities, a land assessment system reaping great revenues; the feudal hierarchy was completed by the various classes of daimyō. Closest to the Tokugawa house were the shinpan, or "related houses", they were twenty-three daimyō on the borders of Tokugawa lands. The shinpan held honorary titles and advisory posts in the bakufu; the second class of the hierarchy were the fudai, or "house daimyō", rewarded with lands close to the Tokugawa holdings for their faithful service.
By the 18th century, 145 fudai controlled the greatest assessed at 250,000 koku. Members of the fudai class staffed most of the major bakufu offices. Ninety-seven han formed the tozama, former opponents or new allies; the tozama were located on the peripheries of the archipelago and collectively controlled nearly ten million koku of productive land. Because the tozama were least trusted of the daimyō, they were the most cautiously managed and generously treated, although they were excluded from central government positions; the Tokugawa shogunate not only consolidated their control over a reunified Japan, they had unprecedented power over the emperor, the court, all daimyō and the religious orders. The emperor was held up as the ultimate source of political sanction for the shōgun, who ostensibly was the vassal of the imperial family; the Tokugawa helped the imperial family recapture its old glory by rebuilding its palaces and granting it new lands. To ensure a close tie between the imperial clan and the Tokugawa family, Ieyasu's granddaughter was made an imperial consort in 1619.
A code of laws was established to regulate the daimyō houses. The code encompassed private conduct, dress, types of weapons and numbers of troops allowed. Although the daimyō were not taxed per se, they were levied for contributions for military and logistical support and for such public works projects as castles, roads and palaces; the various regulations and levies not only strengthened the Tokugawa but depleted the wealth of the daimyō, thus weakening their threat to the central administration. The han, once military-centered domains, became mere local administrative units; the daimyō did have full administrative control over their territory and their complex systems of retainers and commoners. Loyalty was exacted from religious foundations greatly weakened by Nobunaga and Hideyoshi, through a variety of control mechanisms. Like Hideyoshi, Ieyasu encouraged foreign trade but was suspicious of outsiders, he wanted to make Edo a major port, but once he learned that the Europeans favored ports in Kyūshū and that China had rejected his plans for official trade, he moved to control existing trade
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