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1949 in Japan

overview of Japan-related events during the year of 1949

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 30, 2026
Entity authorityQ4566666 ↗
Source-derived summary

Events in the year 1949 in Japan.

Incumbents

Supreme Commander Allied Powers: Douglas MacArthur

Emperor: Hirohito

Prime Minister: Shigeru Yoshida (L–Kōchi, 3rd term from February 16)

Chief Cabinet Secretary: Eisaku Satō (not Diet member→L–Yamaguchi) until February 16, Kaneshichi Masuda (L–Nagano)

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court: Tadahiko Mibuchi

President of the House of Representatives: vacant until February 11, Kijūrō Shidehara (L–Ōsaka)

President of the House of Councillors: Tsuneo Matsudaira (Ryokufūkai–Fukushima) until November 14, Naotake Satō (Ryokufūkai–Aomori) from November 15

Diet sessions: 5th (special, February 11 to May 31), 6th (extraordinary, October 25 to November (?)), 7th (regular, December 4 to 1950, May 2)

Governors

Aichi Prefecture: Hideo Aoyagi

Akita Prefecture: Kosaku Hasuike

Aomori Prefecture: Bunji Tsushima

Chiba Prefecture: Tamenosuke Kawaguchi

Ehime Prefecture: Juushin Aoki

Fukui Prefecture: Harukazu Obata

Fukuoka Prefecture: Katsuji Sugimoto

Fukushima Prefecture: Kan'ichirō Ishihara (until 30 November); vacant thereafter (starting 30 November)

Gifu Prefecture: Kamon Muto

Gunma Prefecture: Yoshio Iyoku

Hiroshima Prefecture: Tsunei Kusunose

Hokkaido Prefecture: Toshifumi Tanaka

Hyogo Prefecture: Yukio Kishida

Ibaraki Prefecture: Yoji Tomosue

Ishikawa Prefecture: Wakio Shibano

Iwate Prefecture: Kenkichi Kokubun

Kagawa Prefecture: Keikichi Masuhara

Kagoshima Prefecture: Kaku Shigenari

Kanagawa Prefecture: Iwataro Uchiyama

Kochi Prefecture: Wakaji Kawamura

Kumamoto Prefecture: Saburō Sakurai

Kyoto Prefecture: Atsushi Kimura

Mie Prefecture: Masaru Aoki

Miyagi Prefecture: Saburō Chiba (until 3 January); Kazuji Sasaki (starting 25 February)

Miyazaki Prefecture: Tadao Annaka

Nagano Prefecture: Torao Hayashi

Nagasaki Prefecture: Sōjirō Sugiyama

Nara Prefecture: Mansaku Nomura

Niigata Prefecture: Shohei Okada

Oita Prefecture: Tokuju Hosoda

Okayama Prefecture: Hirokichi Nishioka

Osaka Prefecture: Bunzō Akama

Saga Prefecture: Gen'ichi Okimori

Saitama Prefecture:

until 28 March: Mizo Nishimura

28 March-17 May: Yoshida Tadakazu

starting 17 May: Yuuichi Oosawa

Shiga Prefecture: Iwakichi Hattori

Shiname Prefecture: Fujiro Hara

Shizuoka Prefecture: Takeji Kobayashi

Tochigi Prefecture: Juukichi Kodaira

Tokushima Prefecture: Goro Abe

Tokyo Prefecture: Seiichirō Yasui

Tottori Prefecture: Aiji Nishio

Toyama Prefecture: Kunitake Takatsuji

Wakayama Prefecture: Shinji Ono

Yamagata Prefecture: Michio Murayama

Yamaguchi Prefecture: Tatsuo Tanaka

Yamanashi Prefecture: Katsuyasu Yoshie

Events

January 23 - 1949 Japanese general election

January 26 – A fire breaks out at Hōryū-ji temple in Ikaruga, Nara Prefecture, destroying several murals.

March Unknown date – Mens Shop Ogori, as predecessor of Uniqlo was founded in Ube, Yamaguchi Prefecture.

May 16: Opening of Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya Stock Exchanges.

May 25: Ministry of International Trade and Industry formed.

June 1: Japanese National Railways become independent of the Ministry of Transportation.

June 22: A Typhoon Della, torrential massibie rain and landslide hit, many ship and fishing boat plunged around Uwa Sea, Ehime Prefecture, 468 person were human fatalities, including a passenger ferry Aoba Maru, and 367 persons were hurt, according to Japanese government official confirmed report.

July 5 - Shimoyama incident

July 15 - Mitaka incident

August 17 - Matsukawa derailment

September 15: First limited express trains begin operation on JNR lines.

October: Hideki Yukawa becomes the first Japanese winner of a Nobel Prize.

December 1

Izumi Real Estate, later, Sumitomo Realty & Development was founded.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “1949 in Japan” as overview of Japan-related events during the year of 1949. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Japan, overview and Japan-related.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1949, 1950—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Japan, overview and Japan-related providing the first useful test.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4566666. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1949 and 1950.

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This entry incorporates text from “1949 in Japan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.