Japan Starts Conquering Dependencies

Abstract

During many centuries of her existence, as a nation and as a state, Japan manifested a great interest in subjugating her adjacent territories. With the Meiji Restoration in 1868 there commenced a new chapter in the history of Japan. In a few crowded years she was transformed from a weak medieval empire into a modern powerful state. The rapid industrialisation by means of state subsidies, the improvement in agriculture, the abolition of feudalism, and the adoption of a parliamentary but autocratic constitution on the Prussian model brought about an unprecedented revolution in the economic, social and political structure of the country. The military machine — an army after the German style and a navy after the British — was quickly perfected. Once the foundations of the state had been successfully laid on the Western technical prerequisites of power, Japan proceeded to embark on a policy of expansion. The constant pressure of international power politics after the middle of the nineteenth century also compelled her “to expand in search of the foreign markets so desperately needed to realise the profits which could not be obtained from the narrow market, and in search of cheap essential raw materials which were denied her through the accident of geography.”¹