ABSTRACT
Modern Japan was born in the mid nineteenth century after a nearly bloodless revolution that toppled a 250-year-old feudal regime. It then fought and won a war with China and another with Russia, respectively, in the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century and participated in the First World War as an ally of the victorious European powers. In the Second World War, however, the nation met its first and crushing defeat and was occupied by the victorious, American-dominated Allied Powers. In its effort to democratize and demilitarize Japan, the occupation authorities undertook sweeping reforms of its political, economic, social and cultural institutions and practices.
