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This is a concise history - social, political and cultural - of Japan, one of the few nations never conquered (until the twentieth century) by a foreign power and the home of the longest-reigning imperial dynasty, regarded as a minor Asian nation until the late nineteenth century but which became a major power in the twentieth century. Japanese history has three broad phases: a Chinese phase up to the tenth century, when Chinese styles and ideas were dominant in government, art and manners; followed by a long 'Japanese' feudal period, which lasted until the nineteenth century; and then, from the 1860s, a period when Western ideas increasingly penetrated Japanese society. Yet despite the ever-growing influence of Western ideas, Japan remains, at the end of the twentieth century, a country with very distinctive traditions and culture.