The Animated History of Japan

this episode is supported by Skillshare use the link below to learn for free for two months this limited-edition enamel pin is available now get yours at standard TV slash Sweeney or sign up at the $10 tier on patreon to get one for free I'm not sure how bill words cut through all this information so quickly because there is a lot to cover here Bella Japan is shrouded in mystery pottery and tools left over by a mysterious prehistoric culture known as the German who are mostly hunter-gatherers and occasional farmers but soon there were newcomers the Yayoi from Korea who fought with strange shiny weapons and planted tons of rice these people would form more and more small villages slowly displacing the German and creating a fishing community culture which obviously extends into Japanese cuisine today traditional Japanese beliefs focusing on spirit deities and complex rituals also began to coalesce and formed a you slit a group of beliefs we now call Shintoism these yo-yo soon formed a loose pseudo monarchy called the Yamato period which gets its name from the Yamato clan the richest and most powerful of the Japanese clans and the period is usually divided into two eras the Kofun era named after these giant awesome keyhole shape burial complexes had heavy cultural contact with the Korean Peninsula through which they adopted the Chinese writing system the idea of an emperor to unite the Japanese islands really took off during the Asuka era which coincided with the spread of Buddhism in all that Chinese writing and the Japanese were soon to experience a sense of shared identity evidence of this can be found in this adorable letter from the Japanese Emperor to the Chinese emperor in which he addresses himself as the emperor of the land where the Sun rises and the Chinese as the emperor of the land with his Sun sets and then he said hello [Music] with pleasantries out of the way the Japanese began sending diplomats and envoys to China to learn about its customs and culture to bring back to Japan and boy did it absorb a lot of Chinese culture not just writing vocabulary and architecture but also less tangible things like customs philosophy religious piety and an imperial court like system the Emotiv clan even experimented with land collectivization with the aim of curbing the power of rival clans to the imperial throne just be careful with that the emperor moved his royal court twice from Asuka to nara and then from nara - hey and kyo naming an era after each period but it was basically the same time period I don't know what all the fuss is about the one we will focus on is the Heian era it's hard to overstate just how important Han period is to the history of Japan the periods are rising an aristocracy interfering in Japanese politics bordering on an oligarchy noble families or clans held great control over the imperial government such as the Tai Chi Kanna Minamoto tiara and the Fujiwara clan even held a significant Regency over the emperor with the title of dijo mostly by extensive marriage types of the royal family as you can imagine these clans fought constantly with each other such as in the hojin rebellion where two branches of the Fujiwara clan supported two different Emperor's which was so devastating it led to the rebellion between the tiara and the Minamoto clan made more confusing when you remember that some of these Emperor's were often cloistered or retired it just goes to show how much power and influence retired emperors still held in Japan and how that power could be leveraged in a civil war both clans could claim the moral high ground claiming that they were fighting for the Emperor do you see how complicated this gets let's take a break and look at how things are going outside the capital in the north the Japanese are fighting with the ameesha a frontier German Yayoi mixed population whose guerrilla warfare and the horse archery was a real pain in the ass for the Japanese the only way they were able to defeat them was by copying near Mishi horse archers and tactics leading to the first heavily trained military class in Japan's history Japanese soldiers before this had mostly been Chinese style cloned peasants who barely knew what a spear was but after the Emme she was they were Samurai highly-specialized warriors in the martial arts an honor based warrior class called Russia their leader became the Shogun roughly equivalent to a general in English and anyone who knows anything about these guys knows that they become super important later so what did these samurai do when they found themselves out of a job well some became bandits but many of them were hired swords Nobles use samurai as personal guards and to collect taxes and farmers hired samurai to protect them from their nobles who were there to collect taxes rinse and repeat powerful clans emerged and soon the samurai became more and more United basically pulling the strings and dominating many parts of Japanese society forming agreements overseeing trade conducting raids and administering taxation remember those conflicts in the capital the samurai fought those Wars and when the dust settled afterward it was clear that they held the power not some dude in a chair somewhere the samurai class were reaching their peak of influence around the time of yet another clan war but this one would prove to be very different because it ended up toppling the entire political system the Minamoto clan defeated their longtime rivals the tiara and with a newfound power the Emperor granted Minamoto no Yoritomo the title of Shogun but make no mistake he ruled Japan now in the first Shogunate or a fuku in Kamakura the emperor was now merely a figurehead so what made the Shogun rule different well rule was delegated to regional stewards called Jeeto and governors called suga who ruled in the place of the Shogun in addition a regent was appointed over them called as she Ken usually a member of the powerful Hojo clan who had come to prominence by a lying with the Minamoto so much prominence in fact they even became rulers of Japan and the Shogun became the figurehead so if you're keeping track the Emperor was a figurehead for the Shogun and the Shogun was a figurehead for the chicken this was feudal Japan social mobility ceased here we either born powerful or you stayed powerless so under this new system were things peachy short answer no in 1221 the cloistered emperor kotoba rose up in rebellion against the Hojo clan in the juku war which did little more than get himself banished and show that the Hojo clan were no pushovers the Hojo she can presided over Japan's new faith Zen Buddhism to help them unite their domains but they also had the very unfortunate duty to have to deal with Japan's first ever foreign invasion drumroll please if the Mongols because of course it is as you'd expect Kublai Khan wasn't too thrilled having an empire to his east and immediately although politely asked Japan to submit to them in a tributary status over and over and over again but to no reply the Khan then did what Mongol does best invade in 1276 the Mongols landed in Japan and waited on their ships overnight to attack the next morning however being on a ship is kind of the last place you want to be if say I don't know a typhoon was to hit and that's exactly what happened huh neat again the Mongols invaded six years later this time with more ships and a larger army but the Japanese managed to hold them off using extensive preparation fortifications and a brand new weapon they invented called the katana which was extremely effective against armor even so they were taking heavy casualties if only another typhoon would come and rescue the Japanese from these foreign barbarians like it did the first time and that's exactly what happened Japanese philosophers and religious leaders were so perplexed that a typhoon had saved them again that they even named this strange phenomenon the Divine Wind or kamikaze and thinking it must have been sent by Japanese spiritual deities and newfound resurgence in Shintoism emerged famously sighting if I had a nickel for every time a typhoon destroyed the Mongol fleet I'd have two nickels which is not a lot but it's still weird that it happened twice the Mongol invasions although failures really rocked Japan's political system to its core which allowed an emperor to briefly regain control before his former ally a Chicago takauji turned on him and seized the Shogunate for himself because that's how mafia works it's time to play a game of unintended consequences remember those sugar governors from the previous Shogunate while the Shogun's and the Emperor's were off busy fighting one another the sugar basically ruled themselves they were no longer shougo but died mere warlords so if you keeping track the Emperor is a figurehead for the Shogun who is a figurehead for the daimyo who really have the control of Japan the only thing that could make this situation any worse would be another civil war which is exactly what happened the hosokawa and the Amon are both supported two different claimants to the Shogunate and this ignited a powder keg all across Japan daimyo started fighting one another for control fracturing Japan even further and the whole social hierarchy crumbled creating a power vacuum small clans subjugated logic clans rivals turned allies and allies betrayed and invaded you name it they did it the era was so profoundly violent that it even became known as the Sengoku Jidai the warring States period it was near constant warfare made more devastating by the implementation of these weird Portuguese hand cannons called Tanegashima but today we just call them guns it was also a period of extensive espionage with the dime you're spying on one another assassinating each other and betraying one another constantly these spies are what we now called ninja and was so instrumental to the period that they became romanticized by European authors who were absolutely fascinated by Japan while watching from a safe distance away of course one clan under Oda Nobunaga looked at a fractured map of Japan famously stating well this won't do and decided it was time for Japan to unify okay so that's a little creative license but the result was the same Yoda very narrowly won a battle against the image our clan and cemented the Tokugawa as allies in the process and an alliance in this day and age was bad news for the other Damir who distrusted each other far too much for any alliances of their own in the blink of an eye the oda conquered the Saito Miyoshi steamrolled over the eyes I a Sakura and the Ocoee key before repelling an invasion from the Takeda it seemed that the only way to stop over Naga was to assassinate him but even this backfired when he steward Toyotomi Hideyoshi just continued the conquest to know his name when his army got bored he just decided to let them invade Korea which really wasn't a good idea because one they lost and two they decimated their army in the process so when he leo she died his former ally Tokugawa Ieyasu seized Japan and was crowned Shogun which was easy to do since Ieyasu hadn't lost any troops in Korea and thus was the only one in Japan with any real army with one last battle against Toyotomi Hideyoshi son at Shakya Hara the Tokugawa Shogunate was born the Tokugawa then did something so drastic it gives new meaning to the term overreaction the disastrous defeat in Korea left such a bad taste in their mouths that the Shogun closed Japan no foreigners could enter and no Japanese could leave except for the Dutch there okay I guess round two of unintended consequences remember in the China episode had a Ming and later Qing dynasty's had become isolationist after they finally overthrew the Mongols well Japan the other power in the region had just closed their gates as well and thus the tumor powerful empires in Asia did basically nothing around the time the Europeans were bumping around Asia colonizing things there was literally no great Asian nation to balance out the trade influence and conquest the Europeans were doing in the sixteen to 1800s meaning that Japan and China became extremely marginalized sitting on the sidelines turning away traders and decreasing their foreign interactions we already know how this story ends in China with the Europeans basically crushing the Chinese and seizing trade monopolies so how are things going in Japan at the time well the Edo period is seen as pretty peaceful and prosperous albeit because of the extremely strict caste system introduced by the Tokugawa social mobility and uprisings just weren't feasible and the only ones with any weapons in the country with a samurai who were paid handsomely by the Shogun to prevent misbehavior and they basically became glorified bureaucrats but as time wore on the isolationism started to show some flaws firstly the opium was shocked Japan when they saw it the dominant Asian power China dominated and humiliated by the British and secondly a widespread famine a skyrocket in the price of rice coincided with this famine creating a brand new wealthy farming class after all the farmer really is king when the people are hungry this completely upset the entire social order and this new class had just gotten a taste for social mobility and hey it didn't turn out so bad what was the government worried about but everything should still be just fine as long as Japan keeps its doors closed nah the US Navy arrived in Japan in 1853 to end Japan's closed country policy commanded by Commodore Matthew Perry no sorry not that Matthew Perry crash-course already made that jerk the Americans were motivated to open Japan to open up a trade sphere in Asia to protect their shipping and whaling industry in the area with just a sprinkle of manifest destiny thrown in there as well so using gunboat diplomacy the Americans opened up trade with Japan in other words open up or we'll shoot you the inevitable opening of the country happened and this infuriated the Damir how could the Shogun allow the Americans to humiliate them so badly with such an unequal treaty as happened in China the same year the trade treaty was signed Japan was rocked by two devastating earthquakes and tsunamis which just felt like a bad omen so what did the Japanese ruling class do modernize remember that small Dutch trading port we talked about earlier for centuries now Japan had had this seedy underbelly of studying Dutch literature smuggling books in and out and creating an underworld network of studious and enlightened figures so these enlightened and progressive Nobles were shaping up to fill a power vacuum when Japan was on the brink of revolution who would deliver that revolution calm down I'll tell you it was these guys they planned to overthrow the Shogun and restore the emperor to power in the Beauchene war that followed between the two sides the rebels proclaimed the appointment of Meiji or enlightened rule to bring Japan into the modern era the deposition of the Shogun and the restoring of the imperial court had once again rocked Japan to its core out with the old and in with the new new economy new trade new western-style government manufacturing science and medicine even Edo was renamed to Tokyo factories and trains popping up everywhere Japan was entering an industrial revolution a century after the Great Powers and at breakneck speeds largely thanks in part to those Dutch bookworms here we see a major difference in how the Japanese and the Chinese isolationists had responded to outside pressure while the Ching dynasty had fractured and collapsed into the warlord era Japan had unified embracing 19th century nationalism to vote to one's country modernization and industrialization with it of course came the dark side of such ultra-nationalism as well like a pretty serious superiority complex which the government was all too happy to stoke at the time this was seen as the only way for Japan to maintain its independence especially during the 20th century arms race but it slowly morphed into a prosperity fallacy we must be doing so well because we're better than other people this would come back later Japan's massive military started looking outward projecting Japan's might was the only way to ensure her own security no one wants to end up like China humiliated and crumbling in civil war their massive military annex the riyuku islands and then astonished the world by going to war with China and winning the first sino-japanese war taking control of Taiwan and occupying the dagger pointed at the heart of Japan also known as Korea and then just four years later the Japanese help put down the Boxer Rebellion the world barely had time to pick up their jaws from the ground when Japan defeated Russia in a war for dominance over Manchuria this brand-new Japanese army had just won three wars against two major powers in the space of a decade you'd kind of forgive the Japanese leadership for thinking this ultra-nationalism stuff was working the victories in the Far East had set Japan up as a regional power and it wasn't long before they formed an alliance with the British who shared Japan's hostility with Russia at the time but when the first world war broke out the Japanese found themselves in the same side as Britain not fighting the Russians but the Germans no not those Germans these ones right here Germany didn't really have much capacity to protect Tsingtao and so of course these areas became integrated into Japan as well but the victory became code to the building of German Japanese relations the German soldiers were so impressed with the Japanese army that they openly admired them and even showed them a sign of great respect as they paraded through the city while turning their backs on the British soldiers when they entered the most notable outcome of the First World War was Japan dethroning China as the Asian superpower they responded to the European threat adjusted accordingly and now they had the military victories to back it all up their alliance with the British and the West in general slowly began to sour as the other allies in the untanned failed to show them the proper respect they thought they deserved it's not surprising then that interwar Japan is where things get a little messy the military continued to protect its influence in Manchuria eventually invading the area in 1931 after fabricating a Chinese attack on one of their trains and when the international community in the form of the League of Nations condemned their actions the Japanese delegates responded by simply leaving the Japanese ambassador's thought it was pretty hypocritical of the Western powers to prevent Japan from forming an empire when they had a vast empires of their own especially when Japan had such huge economic ties to the region and were battling the Great Depression same as everyone else this underlying feeling of hypocrisy should sound familiar to what was happening in Germany and Italy at the same time and how these three nations dealt with coming comparatively late to the empire building game of course this is just one of the many underlying causes for what happened next but diplomatic isolation very much added to the superiority complex other nations are simply jealous of us so as the Chinese Civil War raged on the Japanese were finally ready to assert themselves against their historic rival and invaded China and yet another fabricated incident with their entire military might they barreled down on the Chinese mainland fighting both the Communists and the KMT in a united front however the war became something far more hostile as the Japanese began committing atrocities from The Rape of Nanking to the extremists treatment of prisoners of war so you're covering Japan huh good luck with your monetization tell me about it Japanese war culture was heavily on a base and so they treated surrendered armies with malicious contempt The Rape of Nanking was so brutal that it sours relations with China to this day m'appelle knowing bitter did an amazing video on this if you haven't already checked it out but if it weren't for the German Holocaust and the Red Army rape of Eastern Europe then this would be remembered as the most brutal atrocity of the Second World War yeah the comments on that one are interesting through territorial expansion and an ideology of superiority Japan soon found a friend in Nazi Germany and joined the Axis powers in 1940 officially intertwining the European and Asian Wars into the Second World War invading and taking control of British French and Dutch colonies while Germany and Italy were attacking the British French and Dutch at home the Japanese are now largely remembered for their attacks on Pearl Harbor but what is often left out is that the attack was part of a larger operation attacking both the Americans and the British holdings in the Pacific but which had the consequence of bringing the United States into the war in hindsight this is seen as a bit of a backfire since the Japanese were now fighting a gargantuan forefront war but this just goes to show how invincible the Japanese saw themselves even so the Japanese were brutal occupiers and fought to the death to defend their conquered territories with some of the bloodiest conflicts in Burma where a quarter million of the casualties were civilians or in Okinawa which had the highest American casualties in the Pacific however no one would fare as badly as the Chinese with the second-highest casualties of the entire war at the hands of the Japanese between eight and twelve million people mostly civilian even as Italy and Germany were occupied the Japanese just kept fighting even with the u.s. leveling cities like Tokyo it took two of humanity's most destructive weapons to get them to surrender the atomic bombs that's right two bombs the Americans even warned the Japanese that a second attack was coming calling it the most destructive explosive ever devised by man these brand-new nuclear weapons were so devastating that they leveled these cities and the radioactive fallout would cause deaths and health problems for many years to come and they left such a bad taste in the world's mouth that to this day they're the only nuclear weapons ever used in warfare what makes the Japanese war atrocity so noteworthy is that Japan didn't have some hostile domestic takeover preceding it there was no fascist or totalitarian regimes like there were a Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union Japan had simply become more and more aggressive internally since the days of the Meiji Restoration with little to nothing to stand in their way it was only when coming into conflict with the neighboring Americans and British Empire that Japan stopped expanding the post-war economic miracle and pacification of Japan is very much intertwined with the American involvement in Asia during the Korean War and the broader cold war as a whole and we will probably cover this in another video but what is particularly bizarre about post-war Japan is how education about the war in Japanese schools worryingly referenced the Second World War as a defensive patriotic war rather than one about their own military aggression we can argue at length as to the validity or relevance of this historical narrative until we're blue in the face especially since Japan is such a friendly popular and non hostile nation today but there's no denying it's not worthiness and education is really important it can shape the way we see our past and build our future understanding the motivations for the Japanese Empire as well as the complex geopolitical and GOC can help us frame our world and our lives more complexly it is important to keep learning and improving our minds even long after we leave school if you want to learn how to make an animated youtube channel as a completely unrelated example you could learn that on Skillshare with fellow youtuber Evan from poly matter or you could simply use those skills in an upcoming school project or a conference as a way of educating people on why history is important while you're at it maybe throwing an animated gif he learned how to make on Photoshop with a B lossing Skillshare supports this channel and if you sign up it supports the creation of more of these videos and you'll get to learn something new along the way like design business or creative writing many of them by YouTube creators like me an annual subscription is just ten dollars a month but if you use my link at skl that sh slash sui bah e6 you'll get access to more than 25,000 courses for free for two whole months learn a new skill today with skill share thank you everyone for watching let me know how you guys feel about the longer content because this one took quite a long time to make so if it's something that you guys think I should be doing more often then you can let me know in the comments below also if you'd like to support the show in another way you can do so at patreon and you can also get the added bonus of the free pins we worked really hard and creating the new merch store and it would be really great if you could check it out if you would like to support that way alright guys until next time [Music]

Channel: Suibhne

Views: 1,572,651

Rating: 4.845098 out of 5

Keywords: japan, history, suibhne, animated history of japan, japanese empire, shogun, samurai, ninja, shogunate, tokyo, shinto, sushi, diamyo, toyotomi hideoshi, oda nobunaga, tokugawa ieyasu, meiji

Id: 8Zwi3XXLci8

Length: 25min 10sec (1510 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 27 2019