Home › Eras

Taishō & early Shōwa

1912 – 1945. Jazz-age cities, militarism and the war.

1912 – 1926

Taishō: Jazz, Department Stores and a Terrible Earthquake

A short, glamorous era of new freedoms in the cities, cut by the Great Kantō Earthquake.

1931 – 1945

The Road to War, 1931–1945

How Japan moved from the Manchurian Incident to the Pacific War, and what that meant for Japan and for its neighbours.

August 1945

Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Remembering 1945

What happened on 6 and 9 August 1945, how the war ended, and how to visit the memorial sites.