#Samurai warriors iso series

In the Meiji period, the Empire of Japan adopted a Western-modeled constitution and pursued a program of industrialization and modernization. In 1854, a United States fleet forced Japan to open trade to the West, which led to the end of the shogunate and the restoration of imperial power in 1868. After a century-long period of civil war, the country was reunified in 1603 under the Tokugawa shogunate, which enacted an isolationist foreign policy.

#Samurai warriors iso series

Beginning in the 12th century, political power was held by a series of military dictators ( shЕЌgun) and feudal lords ( daimyЕЌ), and enforced by a class of warrior nobility ( samurai). Between the 4th and 9th centuries, the kingdoms of Japan became unified under an emperor and the imperial court based in Heian-kyЕЌ. Japan has been inhabited since the Upper Paleolithic period (30,000 BC), though the first written mention of the archipelago appears in a Chinese chronicle (the Book of Han) finished in the 2nd century AD. The Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous metropolitan area in the world, with more than 37.4 million residents. Japan is divided into 47 administrative prefectures and eight traditional regions. About three-fourths of the country's terrain is mountainous, concentrating its population of 125.36 million on narrow coastal plains. Japan is the eleventh-most populous country in the world, as well as one of the most densely populated and urbanized. Tokyo is the nation's capital and largest city other major cities include Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Kobe, and Kyoto. Japan is a part of the Ring of Fire, and spans an archipelago of 6852 islands covering 377,975 square kilometers (145,937В sqВ mi) the five main islands are Hokkaido, Honshu (the 'mainland'), Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north toward the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south. Japan ( Japanese: ж—Ґжњ¬, Nippon or Nihon, and formally ж—Ґжњ¬е›Ѕ) is an island country in East Asia.