Japan

An illustration depicting the Heiji Insurrection of c1159 - one of the first samurai battles. (Photo by Alamy)

A brief history of samurai warfare

With its huge bell and five-storey pagoda, Sensoji Temple is one of Tokyo's most popular –and venerable – landmarks. (Photo by Mike Hewitt - FIFA/FIFA via Getty Images)

My favourite place: Tokyo, Japan

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The Last Kamikazes . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto and a mountain in the background

Explore Kyoto: Japan’s city of gardens and geishas . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

John Buckley and James Holland next to a fighter plane at the Imperial Museum, London

Second World War

The War in the West: James Holland in conversation

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Silence: the history behind Martin Scorsese’s new film

Matthew Perry Entertaining Japanese Commissioners on Ship

What happened when US Commodore Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay?

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British soldiers arrive to take part in the battle of France, 1940. (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

Books interview with Daniel Todman: “Everything that happened in 1940 isn’t somehow down to Winston Churchill” . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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Q&A Why did the Germans never convince the Japanese to start a serious invasion of the Soviet Union during the Second World War?

Ruins of Hiroshima shortly after the dropping of the atomic bomb. (US Air Force/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Timeline: the countdown to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima

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Second World War

Kamikaze pilots and Captain John Smith . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A Kamikaze pilot scores a direct hit on a US aircraft carrier in the Pacific Ocean, c1942. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

The reluctant kamikaze of the Second World War

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“Being in a prison camp was better than going to a British boarding school”: child hostage of Japanese in WW2 reflects on his experience

Residents of Chongqing on the streets of their bombed-ravaged city in the autumn of 1940. China's temporary wartime capital was subjected to 218 Japanese air raids between May 1938 and August 1941, costing nearly 12,000 lives. (Photo by Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

China’s forgotten Second World War

German soldiers with a horse-drawn cart during the retreat from Ukraine in 1943. The idea of Teutonic efficiency was a triumph of Nazi spin, says James Holland. (Keystone/Getty Images)

The great misconceptions of the Second World War