Starting: Knowledge of Ceremonial Burial Ancient: +1 food from Sea Regions Medieval: +1 Samurai Knight attack Industrial: Cities not affected by Anarchy Modern: Defensive units receive Loyalty upgrade Unique Units: Knight becomes Samurai Knight, Pikeman becomes Ashigaru Pikemen, Bomber becomes Val Bomber, Fighter becomes Zero Fighter
Fun Facts
Surimono are Japanese woodblock prints adorned with an image and a short haiku poem that were often sent to loved ones on holidays.
"The Japanese Miracle" refers to the development of the Japanese economy after World War II. Nearly obliterated during the war, the Japanese economy over the next forty years became the second most powerful in the world, behind only the United States.
Notes from the Civilopedia: The Japanese:
It is not known when humans first settled on the Japanese archipelago, but the unification of Japan under the Yamato court, with the tenno ("Emperor of Heaven") at its center, occurred around the mid-4th century. It was during this Yamato period that Japan first began to experience significant contact with the mainland. Buddhism was introduced to Japan by Korean monks around 530 and was shortly adopted by the emperor's court. Rather than displacing Japan's native Shinto religion, Buddhism would eventually merge with it to form the synthesis that characterizes modern Shintoism.
The Heian Period (794-1185) was characterized by a slow decline of Chinese influence in favor of the development of native Japanese customs. In the late Heian period, the more powerful of the Samurai gathered in or near the capital, where they served both the military needs of the emperor and also as bodyguards for the great noble houses.
Although Japan was nominally united under the emperor and the shogun in Kyoto, by the end of the Muromachi period Japan had largely disintegrated into a hodgepodge of warring feudal states. Many of the most famous stories of the samurai date from this "Sengoku" Period. Eventually, Japan was reunited through the efforts of three men: Oda Nobunaga, his general Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Hideyoshi's successor Tokugawa Ieyasu. Tokugawa founded the Edo shogunate (1603-1867), which ended the incessant conflicts and brought reform and peace to the islands. The following two and a half centuries of peace brought prosperity to Japan, but the isolationist policy of the shoguns left the nation backwards technologically.
The arrival of a squadron of U.S. warships commanded by Commodore Matthew C. Perry in Uraga Bay in July 1853 finally opened Japan to Western influence. The opening up of Japan brought pressure for political reforms and a national identity that the outdated shogunate was unable to meet, leading to a revolution in the 1860s. Under the new Meiji government, Japan's stunning victories over China (1894-95) and Russia (1904-05) announced its presence as a world power, but the same nationalistic forces that led to Japan's resurgence also caused xenophobia and violent excesses against non-Japanese peoples. Japanese aggression in the 1930s and 1940s, including invasions of China, Vietnam, and Indonesia brought it into increasing conflict with the United States, another growing Pacific power. In late 1941, in one of history's great miscalculations Japan allied itself with Germany and Italy and launched a surprise attack against the US navy at Pearl Harbor.
After initial successes in World War II, the summer of 1945 brought disaster for the Japanese: the Americans took Okinawa in a bloody invasion, in August the Soviet Union declared war and swept over Manchuria, and atomic bombs largely destroyed the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, respectively. The Pacific War came to an end on August 14, with the formal surrender signed on September 2 in Tokyo Bay aboard the battleship USS Missouri. With postwar American aid, from 1952 to 1973 Japan experienced accelerated economic growth and social change. By the 1990s, Japan was again a first-class power, the senior partner in the emerging Asian economic bloc.
Unique Japanese worker units
Tokugawa render
Click image to enlarge
Notes from the Civilopedia: More about Tokugawa:
Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543 - 1616 AD) was the daimyo ("great person") of a province of Japan. Life as a Japanese feudal lord was not easy. The lords fought each other constantly, using deception, treachery, seduction, blackmail and poison in addition to bloody war to achieve dominance. At one point Tokugawa's wife and son were implicated in a plot to overthrow him; under intense pressure from his friends and allies, Ieyasu ordered their deaths - his son by ritual suicide, and his wife by execution. Despite this mishap, by all accounts Tokugawa was a master of this most dangerous game. A great general, a master tactician and an excellent liar, he did to others what they would do to him - except that he usually did it faster and better.
As Tokugawa rose in power and prominence, he became an important personage in the court of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a powerful general who had conquered most of Japan. Eventually he was given the great responsibility of looking after the general's son. However, upon Hideyoshi's death Tokugawa assembled an "eastern army" to take on Hideyoshi's successor. The two forces met in the battle of Sekigahara (1600). Aided by treachery of one of the enemy's generals, Tokugawa was victorious.
After his victory at Sekigahara, Tokugawa had himself declared "shogun" (which translates approximately as "generalissimo"). In Japan, the Emperor is the titular head of the country but with little real power. The real power resided in the shogun.
Tokugawa's rule was a time of peace and stability for Japan. He stopped much of the interminable fighting between the various feudal lords. Contrary to popular myth (as portrayed in the novel "Shogun"), Tokugawa actually welcomed foreign traders - Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch, English, Spanish and Siamese - in Japanese ports, and Japan's trade net expanded greatly during his rule. (The ban on foreign trade and travel was put in place by his descendants.)
Tokugawa was always preoccupied with ensuring that he would not suffer the same fate that had befallen so many of his predecessors, and he took draconian measures to protect himself. For example, he forbade all wheeled vehicles from using Japan's fine road network. This made gathering an army to rise against him more difficult, of course, but it also crippled Japan's internal commerce, as all goods had to be carried on the backs of animals or people, rather than in far more efficient carts.
In 1605 Ieyasu abdicated in favor of his son, Hidetada. His family would rule Japan until 1868.
