Kindai

Kindai 近代 is today the most common and standard term in Japanese for the period of history from roughly 1868 to 1945. Previously a more general term for "modernity" or "the modern," by the early 1960s it had come to refer more specifically to a defined historical period.

The term began to be widely used around the 1890s as a Japanese translation for the English word "modern," or its equivalents in other languages. While scholars wrote of, for example, "modern Japan" (kindai Nihon) and modern industry (kindai sangyô), for much of the early 20th century many used saikinsei (lit. "most recent times", or "most modern times") as the term for the historical period. This term can be traced to the 1903 volume Nihon kinseishi ("Japan Modern History") by Uchida Ginzô.

References

• David Howell, "Introduction: Genealogies of Japanese Early Modernity," in Howell (ed.), The New Cambridge History of Japan, vol 2, Cambridge University Press (2024), p7.