Japan’s Development & History

Those legends that give the history of Japan indicates that, Japan was founded in 600 BC by the emperor called Jimmu. Jimmu is said to be a direct descendant of sun goddess, and also the present ruling ancestor of the imperial family.Japan adopted the Chinese writing system, together with the Buddhism religion. This actually brought in an influence to the Japanese culture. The Japanese indigenous culture is based on the emperor concept, and has Buddhism as the focal point. The culture in the Japan entered in successive waves in the continent.Different concepts in Japan that has resulted back into past, entails all the human activities manifestation from the moment the man first populated the archipelago of Japan.Research has shown that during the Pleistocene period Japan was inhabited. Those who inhibited Japan during those times left behind cultural remains such as chipped stones. The chipped implements of this time are categorized into four groups. The first category consists of th e shale core implements.The shale core implement in some case are defined as hand axes. The second category is the obsidian and flake shale implements. These somehow consist of the upper European Paleolithic industrial flakes. The third categopry comprises of the spearhead. This in most cases is identified with the Solutrean of the Europe. The last group is made by the blade implements. These implements have got their microlithic proportion specimens increasing progressively.The culture of Japan took shape in the period of Yayoi. The present anthropologists argue out that, Japanese are direct descendants of the Jomon people. The Jomon culture in Japan is subdivided into five periods. These periods include the: earliest, early, middle, late and latest phase. The phase of the earliest Jomon was dominated by base pointed connoid potteries.The second phase of Jomon was characterized by the cylindrical potteries of a fibrous temper. The third phase, that is, the middle phase was characte rized by the emergence of the cultural subareas: central, northeastern, and southeastern.The middle phase of culture in Japan came up with multitudes of problems. In the late phase, three distinct subareas are blanketed by pottery that was cord marked that is black or grey, thin walled and well fired. Â  At present most of the cultural practices in Japan are similar to those of china (Shenfield, 1998, pp 55).The relationship that exists between languages is expressed by correspondence in: vocabulary, grammatical structure, as corroborated by the law of phonetic. In Japan, with respect to grammar, it is quite different to Austroasian, Chinese, and Austronesian.However, Japan has some structural similarity in its language with the Altaic group. Japanese and Korean share many grammar points as well as an ancient vowel harmony use. They also share at least two hundred cognates of vocabulary.The linguistics data of Japanese can be traced back to the 3rd century A.D. but came to be more after the 9th century. When compared with the neighboring language the Japanese language is in a better state. To compare them with the ancient Japanese is hard. The reason for this seems to justify the somatic variation along a running cline from southeastern to north eastern (Shenfield, 1998, pp. 57).In the process of its development, in 1542 Japan started to experience contact with the western countries such as Netherlands, England, Spain, and Portugal. The main aim for these countries coming to Japan was to trade with Japan.Later in 17th century Japan realized that the traders and the missionaries from the west countries were being used as military conquest forerunners by the European powers. This led to shogunates to place very tight restrictions on the foreigners. Finally, this forced those foreigners who stayed in Japan to leave.This barred the relation between the Japan and the outside countries except the china and Dutch merchants. The restriction lasted for 200 years, when Matthew Perry of the United States navy came for negotiation so that Japan could be opened for the west.The renewed contact with the west after several years profoundly changed the Japanese society. There was restoration of the emperor into power as the shogunate resigned. The 1868 Meiji restoration brought in so many reforms in Japan.There was abolishment of feudal system, adoption of several western institutions which included the government constitution together with the parliamentary lines, and the western education and legal systems (Mulgan, 2000, pp. 70).