Japan

Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival (far right) marches to the Japanese camp to surrender Singapore. (Photo by The Asahi Shimbun Premium via Getty Images)

VJ Day: turning the tide in the east

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Scientists Frederic Joliot-Curie and his wife, Irene, at work in their Paris laboratory in December 1932. The couple were among a wide-ranging group of scientists whose work paved the way for the atomic bomb. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

Hiroshima: the race to the atomic bomb . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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With the Olympics underway in Tokyo, Chris Harding looks back at 1964 – the last time Japan hosted the competition. (Image by Getty Images)

How the 1964 Tokyo Olympics redefined Japan . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Medal winners on a podium

Q&A Who won the first Olympic medal? And what was the prize before that?

Tokyo Olympics 1964: Yoshinori Sakai prepares to light the Olympic cauldron during the opening ceremony. Born on the day that the first atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima, he was a symbol of Japan’s postwar reconstruction and peace

Tokyo Olympics 1964: the Games that defined Japan

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Professor Michael Wert responds to listener questions and online search queries about the samurai of feudal Japan. (Image by Getty Images)

Samurai: everything you wanted to know . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

US marines advance up Iwo Jima's beaches

Second World War

The battle for Iwo Jima: why did it happen and why was it so hard fought?

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Chris Harding gives a lecture on Japan’s attempts to carve out a place for itself in a world dominated by western power and culture

Japan and the west . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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Chris Harding answers questions on the history of Japan

The history of Japan: everything you wanted to know . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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A group of American soldiers captured by the Japanese during the Battle of Java, 1942 (Photo by Getty Images)

Prisoners of the Japanese . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

WW2 surrender signed, 2 September 1945

Second World War

How and when did WW2 end?

Hiroshima.

Second World War

The end of WW2: 5 articles you can read right now

This photo dated 1948 shows the devastated city of Hiroshima some three years after the US dropped an atomic bomb on the city on 6 August 1945, at the end of World War 2. Around 140,000 people, or more than half of Hiroshima's population at the time, died in the first atomic bombing – with another 70,000 people perishing in the bomb dropped over Nagasaki 9 August 1945. (Photo credit should read AFP/AFP/Getty Images)

In pictures: the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

A mushroom cloud produced by the explosion of a hydrogen bomb during Operation Ivy, an American nuclear test that took place in 1952. (SSPL/Getty Images)

How have nuclear weapons shaped global politics? 10 key moments in the post-war atomic world

Postcards from the past competition

Postcards from the past: Aged between 6–13? Enter our exciting lockdown competition