The horizon line dissolves
between sea and sky.

By the turn of the century the question of who would shape the Pacific had narrowed to two answers. The Empire of Japan, having completed a generation of Meiji industrialization, prepared to give the second.

In 1904, after the severance of diplomatic relations with Imperial Russia, the Combined Fleet sailed. The Battle of Tsushima, fought across two days in May 1905, ended with the near-total destruction of the Baltic Fleet and a peace mediated at Portsmouth in a language neither power had spoken before.

「

海ゆかば水漬く屍、山ゆかば草むす屍、大君の辺にこそ死なめ

If I go away to the sea, I shall be a corpse washed upon the water; if duty calls me to the mountain, a corpse in the grass.

— Umi Yukaba, Manyōshū 18:4094, set to music by Kiyoshi Nobutoki 」

The decade opened with a catastrophe of geology. 1 September 1923, 11:58 a.m. — a magnitude 7.9 rupture beneath Sagami Bay flattened half of Tokyo and most of Yokohama. More than 100,000 were lost.

Reconstruction proceeded under the banner of Taishō democracy; universal manhood suffrage was enacted in 1925 alongside the Peace Preservation Law, which made membership in organizations advocating changes to the kokutai a criminal offense. The paired laws — expansion and restriction delivered together — would define the coming decade.

「

国体を変革し又は私有財産制度を否認することを目的として結社を組織したる者は十年以下の懲役又は禁錮に処す

Any person who organizes an association for the purpose of altering the national polity or repudiating the private property system shall be sentenced to penal servitude or confinement for up to ten years.

— Peace Preservation Law, Article 1, promulgated 22 April 1925 」

At 03:19 Tokyo time on 8 December 1941 the First Air Fleet began the attack on Pearl Harbor. Simultaneously, landings at Kota Bharu and the invasion of the Philippines commenced. By May 1942 the Empire had reached its furthest extent: from the Aleutians to the Solomons, from Burma to Wake.

The tide turned at Midway in June 1942 — four carriers lost in a single morning. Guadalcanal, Saipan, Leyte, Iwo Jima, Okinawa. On 6 and 9 August 1945 atomic weapons were used against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On 15 August the Shōwa emperor's voice was broadcast on the radio, the first time any emperor had addressed the public directly.

「

堪ヘ難キヲ堪ヘ忍ビ難キヲ忍ビ以テ萬世ノ爲ニ太平ヲ開カムト欲ス

We shall bear the unbearable and endure the unendurable, that we may open the way to a great peace for all generations to come.

— Imperial Rescript on the Termination of the War, broadcast 15 August 1945, noon JST 」