History of Japan

The history of Japan seems to start around 500,000 BCE, date when the earliest stone tool implements have been found. Following the last ice-age, the rich ecosystem of the archipelago apparently fostered human development rather earlier than in other geographical areas, yielding the earliest polished stone tools, and to this date, the earliest known pottery in the world. The history of Japan is then punctuated by an alternance of long periods of isolation and periods of radical, often revolutionary, influences from the rest of the world.

Further Reading

Postwar Japan

• Allinson, Gary D. Japan's Postwar History, 2nd edition, Cornell University Press, 2004

(ISBN 0801489121)

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