Why Is Japan Not Called An Empire?

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[NameExplain]

I know you all want to write History of Japan quotes so leave them here to help build engagement on this video.

[Jayvee]

the Emperor of Japan functions nowadays as a Temporal Head of Faith. More like a Caliph than a Pope

[danycashking]

To maybe fix your company analogy to better function: a kingdom is like a single corporation and it's king/queen is like the CEO, whereas an empire is like a corporate group like a large multinational, e.g. Samsung, and the Emperor is the CEO.

[GazilionPT]

Note that not only is it possible to have an Emperor with no Empire, it is (or at least it was) also possible to have an Empire without and Emperor.
For centuries, Portugal and France had empires, and they were at least in some periods, specifically referred to as "Empires", but both Portugal and France were not headed by emperors (in the case of France, excluding the Napoleonic periods), but by kings (or queens). And even when they became republics, they kept calling their extensive overseas territories as "Empires" (until it went out of fashion after WWII, and they started calling them "overseas provinces", "overseas departments", "overseas territories", "overseas collectivities"...).

[princeofchetarria]

I find it interesting that the official name of Ireland is just ‘Ireland’ and not ‘the republic of Ireland’, which is widely used informally to avoid confusion between the country of Ireland and the the Island of Ireland, which included Northern Ireland (part of the United Kingdom)

[Mainyehc]

I think a better analogy with the business world be to compare a kingdom to a company and an empire with a holding/conglomerate.

[SeanNH]

It's because the emperor got a new groove, of course.

[JaredtheRabbit]

“Open the country. Stop having it be closed.”
And thus, Japan opened itself to the world.

[Daangalf]

This is interesting what you said here about the "Empire" part of the name, as Poland for example, sometime still calls Japan "CESARSTWO JAPONII" OR "CESARSTWO JAPOŃSKIE" - CESARSTWO meaning EMPIRE in Polish ;)

[さゆぬ-xi]

I appreciate that you didn’t just say “because WW2 lol”, and did take the effort to summarize the history preceding it. 🙂

[Josh_Fredman]

I was interested in this same question a number of years ago, and what I came up with is that an "empire" is a situation where one country (or sometimes city-state) directly politically controls not only itself but other countries (and/or city-states) as well, usually with the subordinate countries retaining some semblance of their own governmental structure—and always retaining something of their own national identity and cultural distinctiveness. From their point of view, you could think of an empire as "rule by outsiders."

From the point of view of the ruling country, you can think of an empire as "goodies, goodies, goodies!" Empires typically exist either as plunder engines or colonization engines (or both), depending on the population size, wealth, cultural disposition, and level of development of the countries being annexed into the empire. Historically, the function of an empire is to enrich the political enter (the ruling country) and/or expand the nation of that country (i.e., its ethnicity and culture) to broader territories. For this reasons, empires have historically tended to be even more genocidal and racist than your typical country.

But it's not all bad. Empires, at least in their maintenance phases (not so much their growth and collapse phases) also provide stability and prosperity on an international scale, and periods of history with large, pronounced empires have tended to coincide with periods of cultural and economic development, higher standards of living, and population growth. In fact, many of the most celebrated nations in history were empires—even if they didn't call themselves "empires"—with most of the rest being "hegemonies" (again whether or not so-called hegemonies formally), which are like empires except that instead of direct political administration of the satellite countries as a single, large polity there is a softer, economic-based control and the semblance of political sovereignty.

The concept of empire stacks with, and is not exclusive to, the designations of polities. So you can have a republic that's also an empire, a monarchy that's also an empire, etc. "Empire" is inherently a supernational designation. You won't find many countries in history that called themselves only an empire, with no separate designation for the ruling country (or, sometimes, the ruling city-state). And, like I mentioned, an empire doesn't have to call itself an empire to actually be an empire. Many Scots and Northern Irish and even some Welsh consider the United Kingdom itself (and not the British Empire) to be a case of rule-by-outsiders, i.e., an empire in all but name. Modern-day Russia is definitely an empire with respect to its many conquered "republics" (and is also a hegemony with respect to its non-annexed control of satellite states like Belarus). The USSR which preceded modern-day Russia was also an empire, despite rhetorically loathing the concept of imperialism and using "imperialist" as a slur against Western nations. China is an empire, with its core Han provinces directly ruling over more distance and/or politically fraught regions—having recently escalated its hegemony over Hong Kong, for instance, into a state of outright annexation into its empire. The United States is a fascinating case that really blurs the line between empire and hegemony, because while the US doesn't politically administer many countries outside its own borders, it goes far beyond a typical hegemony in its global economic and military dominance.

Japan really was a major empire after the Meiji Restoration, controlling Korea, large swaths of China, and other territories all the way through to World War II. And it was an empire prior to that, on a smaller scale, on its own islands, with respect to the various tribal peoples who lived there, whenever a strong national center predominated, historically in Edo. In this way, you can see that, sometimes, the end of an empire is not collapse and dissolution but rather a true cultural unification of the various countries into a single one. The government transforms into something less one-directional (i.e., for the benefit of the center), with the different peoples developing a sense of national identity, and the political center returning some resources out to the provinces, or even giving them more resources than they feed in. This has happened in virtually all countries that became large: Modern-day England itself, for instance, once consisted of many different nations who regarded themselves as separate polities, until eventually a "high king" united them all under the banner of England. That was an act of empire, and for a time "England" was not yet truly a single nation.

[aixtom]

A little quirk of history is that most Japanese Land-Grabs after 1940 in South-East Asia were because they wanted to secure access to oil fields in the area. I wonder what would have happened if they knew they already had vast oil resources in Manchuria, for example in the Daqing Oil Field, but that was only discovered in 1959.

[Edmonton-ofec]

Technically speaking, Canada’s official name is still the Dominion of Canada. Many of you may scoff at this, because it’s not used in laws, titulature, etc. but no law was ever changed that official designated the nation as simply “Canada”, meaning our full, never used anymore, according to the letter of the law name is the Dominion of Canada

[GaryFerrao]

TLDR: just call the japanese head of state as "tenn-nou", as they use themselves. and "nippon"for "japan".

"emperor" being more powerful than a "king" wasn't always the case. the latter roman rulers called themselves "emperors" as they were that: "imperator" i.e. commander, of an army. the romans disliked kings because of their republic history.

king implies that the person has "divine right" to rule. but commander (emperor) was simply a military title. when the two got switched up, who knows? i think it was europe's obsession of being a roman imperator.

[Minalkra]

Re: The business analogy - you missed a trick there. A small company's CEO is in charge of ... that small company. They might have a few other CE's in the mix, by and large the company is mostly self-contained as a singular entity. An Emperor is more like the CEO of a conglomerate. The conglomerate has individual divisions, subdivisions, and even entire other companies under the conglomerates control/ownership.

[HerrKendys_Kulturkanal]

Togukawa was an important figure, but Oda Nobunaga and Hideyoshi can´t be neclegted, because they were really the ones behind unifying Japan

[jojo_da_poe]

By the way, I may be wrong, but I do believe that, because they haven't changed it since they were a dominion, Canada does have other words in their official name, being officially named the "Dominion of Canada".

[traoresfanisback]

Video Idea: Why did some Empires not call their rulers Emperors/Empresses?

[さぶろう年前]

I am Japanese. I've been wondering about it for a long time too.
After the war ended, it became necessary to revise the Constitution of the Empire of Japan.
At that time, I think that "Empire" was omitted because "Japan" was written in the revision draft made by GHQ.

[MarcusCato]

The word emperor in Japanese is 'Tenno' composed of the Kanji for Heaven/Celestial and sovereign/God. So Tenno means 'Heavenly sovereign'.

The term Tenno is translated into English as Emperor but the western conception (inspired by the ancient Roman concept of emperor or 'imperator', imperium and empire) and is different from the east Asian concept.

The term Tenno is inspired by the Chinese term Huangdi (or Kotei in Japanese) which means August/ Divine sovereign.

The terms Tenno and Kotei (Huangdi) are better translated as Thearch (God-Ruler) than emperor. So on a technicality, Japan and China (formerly) are theocracies. The Japanese emperor is believed to have descended from the sun Goddess Amateratsu through her grandson Jinmu. The Chinese emperor was believed to have been appointed by heaven to rule the earth and was called the Son of heaven (Tianzhi in Chinese or Tenshi in Japanese). The Chinese emperors need not claim any grand descent from a god or illustrious ancestor to be considered a legitimate ruler. The Chinese they believed that anyone who ruled well and with benevolence had the blessing of heaven thus a person of humble birth may ascend to the position of emperor if a previous emperor or dynasty became unworthy to rule (either through despotism, negligence or incompetence).

The concept of empire the east Asians have differs from the western conception In the west empires are formed by dominating foreign territories by military conquest, alliance/protectorate treaties, imposing laws, public levies and establishing governing infrastructures to integrate new territories into the general governing sphere of the conquering country.

In the sinosphere the concept of Tianxia or Tenka (Under heaven) is the east Asian equivalent of the western concept of imperialism and empire. But it relies less on conquest (whether militarily or politically) rather it relies on a form of theoretical hegemony of all countries and peoples. The east Asian concept of Tianxia is that of ecumenical (world-spanning) empire that is already established and all countries and people are already a part of it owing fealty to the Tenno/Huangdi.
For example, in imperial China the view would be that all countries even those as far away as Britain or France where part of the Chinese empire despite China having no political involvement in those respective countries governance but because they exist 'under heaven' Tianxia they, by default, are ruled by China and hence the emperor Huangdi. This is because the Chinese believed heaven rules the earth and the emperor was an earthly agent (son of) heaven thus the emperor ruled over all the world.
In the Chinese view, they viewed the world as owing fealty to the emperor. They viewed is the emperor at the centre, surrounding him is his capital city (specifically the imperial court/the imperial government), surrounding that the immediate country the emperor ruled (China), surrounding China are tributary states (established countries and nations with organized governments) and on the outside of this the uncivilised barbarians (specifically nomads with no established country or organized forms of government).
Over all the emperor was said to rule just as heaven looms over the earth and directs it (eg the movements of the heavenly bodies manifested in the solstices and equinoxes which determines the seasons and chronology of earth).
The Byzantine empire is only (now extinct) western country /culture that had a concept similar to Tianxia/Tenka, that is a theoretically ecumenical and hegemonic 'empire'. A belief that the world is ruled by the Christian God and the Byzantine emperor has been delegated to rule the earth on God's behalf and that all countries and nations are (theoretically) part of the Byzantine empire, ruled by the Byzantine emperor and hence ruled by God.

So in all, the english translation of sino-asian word for 'emperor' is inaccurate and the sino-asian concept of empire doesn't translate well into English either.
The better and more accurate terms for Tenno would be Thearch/Theocrat instead of 'emperor' and theocracy/ august country instead of 'empire'.