The Showa Era

The Showa Era, 1926 to 1989, spans the reign of Emperor Hirohito and is by a wide margin the longest and most consequential era in the traditional Japanese naming system, encompassing the rise of Japanese militarism and ultranationalism in the 1930s, the invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and full-scale war with China from 1937, entry into the Second World War alongside Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy following the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 that brought about Japan's surrender. The era's second half was defined by an equally dramatic reversal: under Allied, largely American, occupation from 1945 to 1952 Japan adopted a new pacifist constitution and democratic institutions, then achieved one of the most rapid sustained economic recoveries and growth periods in modern history, becoming the world's second-largest economy by the 1970s and 1980s. The era ends with Emperor Hirohito's death in January 1989.