Side by side

China and Japan compared

Two sourced records set beside each other — the figures each nation publishes, and the events each chronicle records of the other. Compared, never graded.

🇨🇳China

221 BCEQin Shi Huang completes the unification of China

Dossier →Chronicle →

🇯🇵Japan

660 BCE (traditional)The traditional accession of Emperor Jimmu

Dossier →Chronicle →

Shared indicators
41
Domains
9
Crossed events
5
Data through
2026-08-10

The figures, side by side

Each figure is the same observation, with the same source, as on the two dossiers. Every value shows the year it was observed — vintages differ by indicator and nation. A “—” is an absence in the source data, never a zero. Metric names link to the world ranking; values open the figure on its own dossier.

Entangled histories

5 events in which either nation’s sourced chronicle names the other — including under earlier names of the same state. Each is the same record, with the same sources, as on its own chronicle; nothing here was written for this page.

  1. 604 CE

    Prince Shotoku's Seventeen-Article Constitution

    As regent, Prince Shotoku promulgates a set of Confucian and Buddhist moral precepts for government and intensifies the adoption of Chinese institutions.

    Politics & Power · from the Japan chronicle · Yamato and Asuka: The Birth of the State · Shotoku, Taishi, Asuka period

  2. 645 CE

    The Taika Reform

    A court coup destroys Soga dominance and inaugurates reforms reorganizing land and administration along centralized Chinese lines, the basis of the ritsuryo state.

    Politics & Power · from the Japan chronicle · Yamato and Asuka: The Birth of the State · Asuka period, Japan

  3. 710 CE

    Capital established at Nara

    The court founds Japan's first permanent capital, Heijo-kyo (Nara), modeled on the Tang Chinese capital, beginning the Nara period.

    Politics & Power · from the Japan chronicle · Nara and Heian: The Classical Age · Nara period, Japan

  4. 1937 CE

    Second Sino-Japanese War and the Nanjing Massacre

    Japan's full-scale invasion from July 1937 brings catastrophic violence, including the December 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which Japanese forces murdered many tens of thousands of civilians and prisoners and committed mass rape.

    War & Rupture · from the China chronicle · The Fall of the Empire: Republic, Warlords, and War · Second Sino-Japanese War, China

  5. 1946 CE

    Chinese Civil War resumes; Communist victory

    After Japan's surrender, full-scale civil war between Nationalists and Communists resumes, ending in 1949 with Communist victory and the retreat of Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government to Taiwan.

    War & Rupture · from the China chronicle · The Fall of the Empire: Republic, Warlords, and War · China