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EARLY EXPANSION
The seclusion policy, or Sakoku, under the shoguns of the Edo period came to an end when the country was forced open to trade by the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854. Then came increased foreign trade and interaction; commercial treaties between the Tokugawa and western countries were signed. The humiliating terms of these Unequal Treaties caused anger which became a radical, xenophobic movement, the sonnō jōi ("Revere the Emperor, expel the barbarians").
In March 1863, the "Order to expel barbarians" went out. The Shogunate had no intention of enforcing the order, so it inspired attacks against them as well as foreigners in Japan. Soon the Satsuma-Chōshū alliance in 1866 combined to overthrow the Tokugawa. When the old Emperor died, the Satsuma-Chōshū forces seized the imperial palace in Kyoto, and had the fifteen-year-old Emperor Meiji declare his own restoration to full power. Other Shogunate were stripped of power and most of Japan accepted the emperor's rule.
The Charter Oath was made public at the enthronement of Emperor Meiji and outlined the main aims and the course of action to be followed, setting the legal stage for Japan's modernization, to boost morale and win financial support. Its five provisions consisted of:
Japan dispatched the Iwakura Mission in 1871. The mission traveled the world to renegotiate the unequal treaties, and to gather information on western social systems for modernization, which provided much data. But renegotiation was unsuccessful, with one exception: Japan made a border treaty with Russia in 1875, gaining all the Kuril islands in exchange for Sakhalin island.
Several prominent writers won public support for westernization. Fukuzawa Yukichi wrote: "Conditions in the West," "Leaving Asia", and "An Outline of a Theory of Civilization," detailing western society from his philosophic view. Military and economic power was well emphasized and became the means for national development and stability. Within forty years, Imperial Japan was the only non-western major force in east and southeast Asia.
IMPERIAL JAPAN
Imperial Japan was founded, de jure, after the 1889 signing of Constitution of the Empire of Japan. The constitution formalized much of the Empire's political structure and gave many responsibilities and powers to the Emperor.
Article 4. The Emperor is the head of the Empire, combining in Himself the rights of sovereignty, and exercises them, according to the provisions of the present Constitution.
Article 6. The Emperor gives sanction to laws, and orders them to be promulgated and executed.
Article 11. The Emperor has the supreme command of the Army and Navy.
The process of modernization was closely monitored and heavily subsidized by the Meiji government, enhancing the power of the great zaibatsu firms such as Mitsui and Mitsubishi. Hand in hand, the zaibatsu and government guided the nation, borrowing technology from the West. Japan gradually took control of much of Asia's market for manufactured goods, beginning with textiles. The economic structure became ‘mercantile’ in form, importing raw materials and exporting finished products.
Japan was the first Asian industrialized nation. The Meiji went with the concept of a market economy and adopted British and North American forms of free enterprise capitalism. Rapid growth and structural change have characterized Japan's two periods of economic growth. At first it grew moderately and relied on traditional agriculture to finance modern industrial infrastructure. By 1904, 65% of employment and 38% of the gross domestic product (GDP) were still agricultural, but then industry expanded till by 1929, manufacturing and mining amounted to 23% of GDP, and only 21% for all of agriculture. Transportation and communications also grew.
From 1894 on, Japan built an extensive empire that included Taiwan, Korea, Manchuria, and other parts of northern China. This sphere of influence was seen as a political and economic necessity, to prevent foreign states from strangling Japan by blocking its access to raw materials and crucial sea-lanes, using its large military force.
To this end the First Sino-Japanese War, 1894-5, was over control of Korea. A peasant rebellion led to a request by the Korean government for China to send in troops to stabilize the country. The Empire of Japan sent their and installed a puppet government. China objected and war ensued. The Japanese routed the Chinese on the Liaodong Peninsula, and destroyed the Chinese navy. The Treaty of Shimonoseki ceded Liaodong and Taiwan to Japan. But then Russia, with Germany and France, forced Japan to withdraw from Liaodong. Russia occupied it, rebuilt Port Arthur and based the Russian Pacific Fleet there. Across the Yellow Sea, Germany built Qingdao and based the German East Asia Squadron in this port.
During the 1900 Boxer Rebellion, Japan and many western countries sent soldiers to China to protect their citizens and Chinese Christians. After the uprising, Japan and the western countries forced China into the Boxer Protocol with China, permitting them to station troops on Chinese soil to protect their citizens. Russia continued to occupy all of Liaoning, which led directly to the 1904-5 Russo-Japanese War for control of Korea and Manchuria. It was the first modern war in which an Asian country defeated a European power, and raised Japan's stature in the world of global politics. The Japanese forces were significantly more aggressive than the Russian and gained a political advantage with the Treaty of Portsmouth, negotiated in the United States by the American president Theodore Roosevelt. Russia lost the southern part of Sakhalin Island, as well as mineral rights in Manchuria. This cleared the way for Japan to annex Korea outright in 1910.
Japan entered World War I in 1914 only to expand its sphere of influence in China and the Pacific. Japan declared war on Germany and with allied British forces soon moved to occupy German territories in China and the Pacific. It dispatched a fleet to the Mediterranean Sea to aid against German U-boat attacks. Japan tried to consolidate its position in China by presenting the Twenty-One Demands in 1915, but slow negotiations with the Chinese, widespread anti-Japanese sentiment in China, and international condemnation caused Japan to withdraw them.
In 1917, the Bolshevik government signed a peace treaty with Germany. After this the Russians fought amongst themselves in a multi-sided civil war. In 1918, President Wilson asked the Japanese for 7000 troops as part of an international coalition of 25,000 to support the Americans in Siberia. Japan agreed to 12,000 troops, but under Japanese command. They had several motives: intense fear of communism; a determination to recoup losses; and the desire to settle the "northern problem" through creation of a buffer state or outright territorial acquisition. More than 70,000 Japanese troops then occupied all ports and major towns in the Russian Maritime Provinces and eastern Siberia. Japan received 765 Polish orphans from Siberia.
In 1919, Japan proposed a clause on racial equality to be included in the League of Nations covenant at the Paris Peace Conference. The clause was rejected by several western countries. The rejection was an important factor in turning Japan away from global cooperation and towards nationalistic policies.
In 1920, 450 Japanese civilians and 350 Japanese soldiers, along with Russian White Army supporters, were massacred by Red Army partisan forces; the US and its partners withdrew from Vladivostok. However, the Japanese decided to stay, primarily due to fears of the spread of communism so close to Japan and Japanese-controlled Korea and Manchuria. Subjected to intense diplomatic pressure by the United States and Great Britain, and facing increasing domestic opposition due to the economic and human cost, they withdrew in 1922.
The main goals of Japan's expansionism were acquisition and protection of spheres of influence, maintenance of territorial integrity, acquisition of raw materials, and access to Asian markets. Western nations, notably Great Britain, France, and the US, have long exhibited great interest in the commercial opportunities in China and other parts of Asia. These opportunities attract western investment because of the availability of raw materials for both domestic production and re-export to Asia. Japan desires these in planning their development of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
Japan needed to import raw materials such as iron, rubber, and oil to maintain strong economic growth. Most of these resources came from the United States. The Japanese felt that acquiring resource-rich territories would establish economic self-sufficiency and independence, and they also hoped to jump-start the nation's economy in the midst of the 1930s depression. As a result Japan set its sights on East Asia.
With little resistance, Japan invaded and conquered Manchuria in 1931. Japan claimed that this invasion was a liberation of the Manchus from the Chinese, although most of the population were Han by then. Japan established a puppet regime called Manchukuo, and installed the former Emperor of China, Puyi, as head of state. Jehol, a Chinese territory bordering Manchuria, was taken in 1933. Puyi had to carry on a ‘pacification campaign’ against the Anti-Japanese Volunteer Armies. In 1936, Japan made Inner Mongolia into Mengjiang (Chinese: 蒙疆), which also predominantly Chinese as a result of recent Han immigration to the area. Japanese, Koreans, and Taiwanese were banned from immigration to North America and Australia. Manchukuo opened the immigration of Asians, and the Japanese population subsequently grew to 850,000.
Japan invaded China in 1937, creating a three-way war between Japan, Mao's communists, and Chiang Kai-shek's nationalists. On December 13 of that same year, the Nationalist capital of Nanking surrendered to Japanese troops. In the following Nanking Massacre, Japanese troops massacred a large number of the defending garrison. It is estimated that as many as 300,000 people, including civilians, may have been killed. Another puppet state was set up in China.
In 1938, the Japanese entered territory claimed by the USSR at Lake Khasan, stating that the Soviet Union misinterpreted the boundary stipulated in the Treaty of Peking, between Imperial Russia and Manchu China, and that the demarcation markers were moved. In 1941, the parties signed a Neutrality Pact, in which the Soviet Union pledged to respect the territorial integrity and inviolability of Manchukuo, while Japan agreed similarly for the Mongolian People's Republic.
The Panay incident and the Nanking Massacre in China turned American public opinion against Japan. With the occupation of French Indochina in the years of 1940–41, and with the continuing war in China, the United States placed embargoes on Japan of strategic materials such as scrap metal and oil, vitally needed for the war effort. The Japanese were faced with the option of either withdrawing from China and losing face or seizing and securing new sources of raw materials.
On September 27, 1940, Imperial Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Their objectives were to "establish and maintain a new order of things" in their respective world regions and spheres of influence, with Nazi Germany in Europe, Imperial Japan in Asia, and Fascist Italy in North Africa. The signatories become known as the Axis Powers. The pact called for mutual protection—if any one of the members was attacked by a country not already at war, excluding the Soviet Union—and for technological and economic cooperation.
For the sake of their own people and nation, Prime Minister Konoe formed the Taisei Yokusankai (Imperial Rule Assistance Association) on October 12, 1940 as their own ruling party, thus avoiding the Tripartite Pact influences of German Nazism and Italian Fascism.
Facing an embargo by the US as well as dwindling domestic reserves, the Japanese government decided to execute a plan developed by the military branch largely led by Osami Nagano and Isoroku Yamamoto to bomb the United States naval base in Hawaii, thereby bringing the United States to World War II on the side of the Allies. On September 4, 1941, the Japanese Cabinet met to consider the war plans prepared by Imperial General Headquarters, and decided:
Our Empire, for the purpose of self-defense and self-preservation, will complete preparations for war... [and is]... resolved to go to war with the United States, Great Britain and the Netherlands if necessary. Our Empire will concurrently take all possible diplomatic measures vis-a-vis the United States and Great Britain, and thereby endeavour to obtain our objectives... In the event that there is no prospect of our demands being met by the first ten days of October through the diplomatic negotiations mentioned above, we will immediately decide to commence hostilities against the United States, Britain and the Netherlands.
The Imperial Japanese Navy made its surprise attack on Pearl Harbour on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941.. The primary objective was to incapacitate the United States long enough for Japan to establish its long-planned Southeast Asian empire and defensible buffer zones. The U.S. public saw the attack as a treacherous act. The United States entered the European Theatre and Pacific Theater in full force. Four days later, Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany declared war on the United States, merging the separate conflicts.
Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese launched offensives against Allied forces in South East Asia, with simultaneous attacks on Hong Kong, British Malaya and the Philippines.
The South-East Asian Campaign was preceded by years of propaganda and espionage activities carried out in the region by the Japanese Empire. The Japanese espoused their vision of a Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, and an Asia for Asians to the people of South East Asia, who had lived under European rule for generations. As a result, many inhabitants in the region actually sided with the Japanese invaders - except ethnic Chinese, who knew of the Nanjing Massacre.
Hong Kong surrendered on 25 December. In Malaya the Japanese overwhelmed an Allied army and advanced down the Peninsula, forcing the Allies to retreat to Singapore, and later surrender.
General MacArthur had to abandon the Philippians – one of the worst defeats suffered by the Americans, leaving over 70,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war.
The Japanese military purged the Chinese population in Malaya and Singapore. Over the course of a month, they are recorded to have killed tens of thousands of ethnic Chinese perceived to be hostile to the new regime.
The Japanese then seized the key oil production zones of Borneo, Central Java, Malang, Cepu, Sumatra, and Dutch New Guinea of the late Dutch East Indies, defeating the Dutch. They were welcomed ecstatically as liberating heroes by the oppressed Indonesian natives pursuant to their indigenous legends. The Japanese then consolidated their lines of supply through capturing key islands of the Pacific, including Guadalcanal.
SUDDEN END
Japanese military strategists were keenly aware of the unfavourable discrepancy between the industrial potential of the Japanese Empire and that of the United States. Because of this they reasoned that Japanese success hinged on their ability to extend the strategic advantage gained at Pearl Harbour with additional rapid victories, which they pursued with single-minded focus.
The Japanese Command reasoned that only destruction of the United States' Pacific Fleet and conquest of its remote outposts would ensure that their Empire would not be overwhelmed by America's industrial might. In May 1942, failure to decisively defeat the Allies at the Battle of the Coral Sea, in spite of numerical superiority, equated to a strategic defeat for Imperial Japan.
During 1943 and 1944, Allied forces, backed by the industrial might and vast raw material resources of the United States, advanced steadily towards Japan. By 1944, the Allies had seized or bypassed and neutralized many of Japan's strategic bases through amphibious landings and bombardment. This, coupled with the losses inflicted by Allied submarines on Japanese shipping routes began to strangle Japan's economy and undermine its ability to supply its army.
After securing airfields in Saipan and Guam in the summer of 1944, the US Army Air Forces undertook an intense bombing campaign against Japanese cities in an effort to pulverize industry and shatter its morale. These efforts did not persuade the Japanese military to surrender. In mid August 1945, the US dropped two nuclear weapons on Japan. These atomic bombings were the first, and so far only, used against another nation, killing about 200,000 people in minutes, and many later as a result of nuclear radiation.
The Empire of Japan surrendered and ended World War II.
There was a high level of emigration to the Empire’s overseas territories during the colonial period. Unlike emigrants to the Americas, Japanese emigrants occupied a higher rather than lower social niche at once. After World War II, most of these overseas Japanese went or were sent back. The Allied powers repatriated over six million Japanese nationals from colonies and battlefields throughout Asia. Only a few remained overseas, often involuntarily, as in the case of orphans in China or prisoners of war captured by the Red Army and forced to work in Siberia.
Why the intense desire to rid these former colonies of Japanese? The Japanese military before and during World War II committed numerous atrocities against civilian and military personnel. Large scale massacres, rapes and looting against civilians were committed most notably the Sook Ching and Nanking Massacre, and the use of around 200,000 "comfort women", who were forced to serve as prostitutes for the Japanese military. The Imperial Japanese Army also engaged in the execution and harsh treatment of Allied military personnel and POWs and biological experiments were conducted by Unit 731 on civilians and prisoners of war; this included the use of biological and chemical weapons authorized by Emperor Shōwa himself. According to the 2002 International Symposium on the Crimes of Bacteriological Warfare, the number of people killed in Far East Asia by the Imperial Japanese Army germ warfare and human experiments is estimated to be around 580,000.
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