Naval history of Japan

The naval history of Japan can be said to begin in early interactions with states on the Asian continent in the early centuries of the 1st millennium, reaching a pre-modern peak of activity during the 16th century, a time of cultural exchange with European powers and extensive trade with the Asian mainland. After over two centuries of relative seclusion under the Tokugawa shogunate, Japan's naval technologies were seen to be no match for Western navies when the country was forced by American intervention in 1854 to abandon its maritime restrictions. This and other events led to the Meiji Restoration, a period of frantic modernization and industrialization accompanied by the re-ascendence of the Emperor, making the Imperial Japanese Navy the third largest navy in the world by 1920, and arguably the most modern at the brink of World War II.

The Imperial Japanese Navy's history of successes, sometimes against much more powerful foes as in the 1894-1895 Sino-Japanese War and the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War, ended with the navy's almost complete annihilation in 1945 against the United States Navy, and official dissolution at the end of the conflict. Japan's current navy falls under the umbrella of the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) as the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF). It still one of the top navies in the world in term of budget, although it is denied any offensive role by the nation's Constitution and public opinion.

Japan seems to have been connected to the Asian landmass during the last Ice Age until around 20,000 BCE, both because of glaciation of sea water and the concomitant lowering of sea level by about 80 to 100 meters. This allowed for the transmission of fauna and flora, including the establishment of the Jōmon culture. After that period however, Japan became an isolated island territory, depending entirely on sporadic naval activity for its interactions with the mainland. The shortest seapath to the mainland (besides the inhospitable northern path from Hokkaidō to Sakhalin) then involved two stretches of open water about 50 kilometers wide, between Korean peninsula and the island of Tsushima, and then from Tsushima to the major island of Kyūshū.

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