The collection of islands that we today, called Japan, have been inhabited by humans since around 30,000 BC.

The first century AD, Chinese work, Book of Han, referenced these islands and the people

living there. But there's not a lot of evidence of activity, and thus not a lot of specifics

about those inhabitants, noted by outside sources, beyond that,

until a few thousand years later, when the country went through a period of consolidation,

its various tribal groups and kingdoms, beginning to unify under a single emperor,

who became the first of an imperial dynasty that, according to official accounts,

continues to this day.

Though the information we have on this dynasty gets wobblier the further back we go,

there's solid historical evidence that the current emperor's family line goes back about

1,500 years, which covers all but the first 29 rulers.

But past that, it's a little fuzzy, and it could be true, but it could also be a convenient

fabrication to imply continuity. Whether 100% historically accurate or not, though, this lineage, which officially claims an unbroken chain of 126 emperors,

beginning with that original Emperor Jimu back in 660 BC, goes back a long way and spans the existence of the formal nation of Japan,

though not the cluster of factions that inhabited the archipelago beforehand.

Japan is generally considered to have had a golden age, culturally, from about 800 until around 1200 BC, the Hayon period,

which was defined in part by the apex of ostensible imperial court

control, though the real power was in the hands of the Fujiwara clan, which played puppeteer

from behind the scenes. There was also an influx of Taoist, Buddhist, and Chinese influence,

followed by a rebellion in China that led to a closure of borders

and trade with the country, leaving Japan in comparable isolation for a while, a situation that

resulted in a lot of independent development within the country, as opposed to the kind of

...