skills and deep pride in their stoicism, developed a disciplined culture distinct from the earlier, quiet refinement of the imperial court. Under the growing influence of Zen Buddhism during the Muromachi period (1338-1573), the samurai culture produced many uniquely Japanese arts that continue today. Eventually, from among these warring Samurai clans arose the able Tokugawa Takechiyo, founder of the Edo shogunate (1603-1867 AD), which ended the incessant conflicts and brought reform and peace to the islands. Although Spanish and Portuguese traders and missionaries had been in Japan since the mid-1500s, it was the arrival of a squadron of U.S. warships commanded by Commodore Matthew C. Perry in Uraga Bay in July 1853 that finally opened the nation to Western influence - and brought pressure for political reforms and a national identity. The Meiji government that followed the overthrow of the shogunate set about the task of westernization and the creation of a modern state, and moved Japan onto the world stage. Ironically, Japan's new, influential role - marked by the ensuing Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), Japan's involvement in the First World War and in the Allied intervention in Siberia following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1918 - led indirectly to the attack on Pearl Harbor and the horrors that followed. The summer of 1945 brought disaster for the Japanese: the Americans took Okinawa in a bloody invasion, in August the Soviet Union declared war and swept over Manchuria, and atomic bombs largely destroyed the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, respectively. The Pacific War came to an end on August 14, with the formal surrender signed on September 2 in Tokyo Bay aboard the battleship USS Missouri. With postwar American aid, from 1952 to 1973 Japan experienced accelerated economic growth and social change. By the 1990s, Japan was again a first-class power, the senior partner in the emerging Asian economic bloc.