History of Japan

I was so impressed how similar was Japanese history to the European one. I think from the history of any country, Japan has the most similar one from the 5th cebtury.

Their culture is based on local culture heavily inspired by the Chinese influence - starting to develop from the 5th-6th century.

Europe: from the 5th century the (franc, goth, vandal, etc) tribes brought their own culture, but it was heavily influenced by the Roman culture (religion, laws, etc etc).

In the next phase, Japan (similarly to Europa) also progressed to feudalism (!) with many small warlords (samurais) and peasants who were not allowed to move, experienced massive (civil) wars, and tried to make wars on neighbouring countries (eg Korea).

However, the story becomes different from the 16th century. For Europe, the era of large discoveries, ongoing wars, etc provided a strong incentive to progress to the next phase of development, the capitalism. in Japan, there was no such incentive: the country was unified in the early 17th century, China was too weak to menace Japan, European were more interested in China and America, and Japan decided to isolate itself from the outside world (no discoveries). Hence Japan further developed peacefully its feudalism in the next century.

However, in the 19th century it turned out that Japan lags behind the rest of the world and will nto be able to protect itself, and with the lead of the Emperor (Meiji restoration, 1868) started a strong modernization program to catch up. Well, it was quite successful: in 1905 it defeated heavily Russia - first time in the modern times when a European power was defeated by a non-European one. 

Here is a famous warrior from the 14th century:

.