Shōwa period

Shōwa period, in Japanese history, the period (1926–89) corresponding to the reign of the emperor Hirohito. The two Chinese characters (kanji) in the name Shōwa translate as “Bright Peace” in Japanese. However, a more nuanced interpretation is “Enlightened Harmony”—with the added significance that the second character (wa) is commonly used in words that describe Japan or things Japanese.

The Shōwa period was preceded by the Taishō period (1912–26) and was followed by the Heisei period (1989– ). The first part of the Shōwa, from Hirohito’s enthronement in 1926 to the end of World War II in 1945, is known as the early Shōwa period. It is noted principally for the rise of militarism in Japan, Japanese aggression in China and elsewhere in East and Southeast Asia, and the country’s wartime defeat. The postwar Shōwa decades were marked by Japan’s spectacular recovery and its rise as a global economic powerhouse second only to the United States, its former enemy and subsequent closest ally.

Unlike the Meiji Restoration (1868–1912)—corresponding to the rule of the Meiji emperor and synonymous among historians with Japan’s emergence as a modern country—none of the three succeeding ruling periods is widely used to designate the 20th-century history of Japan. The term Shōwa literature, however, does denote a distinct phase in Japanese literature from about 1924 until the outbreak of World War II in 1939, and the Great Depression of the 1930s, which was particularly severe in Japan, is referred to as the Shōwa Depression there.