The ENTIRE History of Japan in 14 Minutes

In July 1853, four American warships sailed into the bay outside Edo, the city we now call Tokyo. For more than two hundred years, Japan had kept almost the entire world out. Now it had two choices: fight, or learn. It chose to learn, and just fifty years later it defeated the Russian Empire. But Japan’s story is stranger than its rise. Its first people made some of the oldest pottery on Earth. Its royal court judged lovers by their handwriting. Two Mongol invasions were wrecked by storms. A ruler took every farmer’s sword and said the metal was for a giant Buddha. A foreign doctor was ordered to sing for the shogun. And one soldier kept fighting the Second World War until 1974. This documentary covers the entire history of Japan: the Jomon hunters and Yayoi rice farmers, the giant keyhole tombs, the Nara and Heian courts and The Tale of Genji, the rise of the samurai and the shoguns, the Mongol invasions, the age of warring states, Tokugawa Japan and its closed door, Commodore Perry and the black ships, the Meiji Restoration, the empire and the Second World War, the economic miracle, the Lost Decades and the challenge Japan faces today. See how one island nation kept doing the same thing: shut the door, study the world, and make it Japanese. This documentary is based on historical sources, archaeological discoveries and recent research, including ancient DNA studies. Every number in the video is sourced below. #Japan #JapaneseHistory #History #Documentary #HistoryOfJapan #Samurai #Shogun #EdoPeriod #MeijiRestoration #Sengoku #Tokugawa #Jomon #Heian #MongolInvasion #Kamikaze #BlackShips #CommodorePerry #WW2 #JapaneseEconomicMiracle #Tokyo #AsianHistory #WorldHistory #HistoryDocumentary #AnimatedHistory #CenturyByCentury