Why has Japan never changed dynasties? In fact, there is literally something wrong with this problem!
The history of the Japanese emperor is not actually more than 2,000 years
Since the beginning of Japan's documented history, it is true that there has been no change of dynasty in Name. But the first thing to be clear is that Japan's recorded history is only about 1500 years, and the main body of the Japanese Yamato Kingdom's real unification of Japan occurred in the sixth century AD, before the Japanese archipelago was basically ruled by different tribes, and it was not at all the rule of the emperor.
It was only after the Yamato Kingdom unified the main body of Japan in the sixth century that Japan entered a period of direct rule by the emperor. So why do the current history books of Japan say that the reign of the first emperor (Emperor Shenmu) began in 660 BC? Because after Japan learned Chinese characters from China in the sixth century AD, the Japanese began to try to organize their historical creation legends into a written history. At the beginning of the eighth century, japan's first two historical books, the Kojiki and nihon Shoki, were published, in which myths and legends were written as history, and later Japanese scholars speculated based on the contents, saying that the first emperor of Japan appeared around 660 BC.
The legendary first emperor of Japan, Emperor Kammu
But in fact, there is no credibility in this statement, because these two "history books" say that the first emperor of Japan was a descendant of the god Amaterasu, and from his parents' generation, almost all of his ancestors were gods. So basically the story about Emperor Shenwu is still part of the myth and legend, similar to the Chinese legend of Fuxi Nuwa and the like. As mentioned above, the earliest written history of Japan began more than 1,200 years after Emperor Shenmu, so there is no way to verify it now, and I am afraid that it will never become a history of letters in the future.
After the unification of Japan, it was not always ruled by the emperor
The second point is that the emperor's direct rule over Japan is actually very short, and this short period is actually so short that it has not been a Chinese dynasty. The unification of the Japanese subject actually began with the Daiwa Reformation in 646 AD, when Emperor Takatoku of Japan issued the Edict of Reform, which ended Japan's tribal politics and began to establish a feudal state. So strictly speaking, this Emperor Takatoku is the real first emperor of Japan, but in today's Japanese history books, he has been ranked as the 36th emperor.
The main force of the Daehwa Revolution, later Emperor Tenchi of Japan
Less than 150 years after the Daehwa Reform, the so-called regency politics appeared in Japan, that is, foreign relatives interfering in politics. Beginning in 794 AD, the emperor's real power fell into the hands of different foreign nobles, and it was quickly institutionalized, which lasted for nearly four hundred years. During this period, in fact, every time a foreign nobleman was changed, it was equivalent to changing the dynasty once. In 1192 AD, the famous shogunate period in Japan began. The Japanese shogunate lasted for a total of 682 years, during which there were three important changes, namely the Kamakura shogunate, the Muromachi shogunate, and the Tokugawa shogunate, which was almost the same as the frequency of dynastic changes in China.
During the shogunate period, the mutual attacks of various factions of shoguns were the norm in Japanese history
Then came the familiar Meiji Restoration, in which the emperor won decades of real power in the name of a constitutional monarchy, but was stripped away after World War II. So throughout The history of Japan, the time of the real rule by the emperor is actually only more than two hundred years, other times the emperor is just a symbol, and the role of China's Confucius government in many times is similar, who is in power to support whom, who is powerful for whom to stand, the actual ruling power is not related to him, so the emperor has always existed does not mean that Japan has not experienced substantive dynastic changes, in fact, Japan's dynastic changes are as frequent as China, if you take into account Japan's narrow territory, In fact, the frequency of dynastic changes is many times higher than that of China. (The picture is from the Internet, and the copyright of the picture belongs to its original author)