The era of Asian hegemony is attributed to the rise of Japan as an empire in Asia. In the late 1800s, a group of revolutionary samurai from Choshu, Satsuma, and Tosa from south-western Japan toppled the Shogunate. This followed the creation of a new Westernized form of government in Japan. With this, Japan launched its industrial revolution, the first and only Asian country that succeeded in the process. The country became richer with its military more powerful among neighboring Asian countries in a short period.
In 1895, Japan captured international attention by defeating China easily and conquered Taiwan. According to Maciamo, Russia and Japan began fighting over the Korean Peninsula and Manchuria soon after the annexing of Taiwan, resulting in the Russo-Japanese in 1905. Japan conquered Southern Manchuria and the Karafuto/Sakhalin peninsula with minimal casualties. This gave Japan confidence in competing against Western powers. Soon the Japanese felt it their duty to protect Asian neighbors from Western colonialism annexing Korea in 1910 as it extends their control in Manchuria.
Japanese politics at this period was dominated by the military, with the cabinet of ministers of nonparty politicians backed by violent and overtly nationalist military factions like the Imperial Way. The assassination of influential politicians became rampant. China was taken in control by the militarists, and economic and social disturbance in the 1920s had Japanese farmers move to Manchuria to release tensions. In 1931, the puppet state of Manchukuo was created.
While the Japanese army was able to invade Peking, Shanghai, Nanjing, and some portions of North-East China in1937, the countryside remained free. The Japanese army, as compared to local guerillas, had a proportion of some 600,000 soldiers against 300 million Chinese.
Maciamo chronicled that Hitler and Japanese Prime Minister Hiranuma signed the Anti-Comintern Pact against the Soviet Union in 1936. Both pledged to support each other against Russia. By 1937, Italy joined the pact, but in August 1939, Hitler violated the pact and joined the USSR in invading Poland. Himanuma, the prime minister at that time, resigned because of the betrayal.
Japan, Germany, and Italy signed the Tripartite pact against the United States in 1940. After the Nazis invaded France setting up the Vichy regime, Japan occupied French Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia). Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, but Japan declined to participate. Meanwhile, the relationship of Japan, Britain, and the USA were dense since 1922, with a treaty limiting the naval warships of each nation to a ratio of 6:10:10. Frustrated and pressured by the expansionist military at home, Japan abandoned the treaty in December 1934. On one end, the US-supported China against Japan by selling cheap equipment, a violation of the Japanese-American commercial treaty.
The Japanese occupation of Indochina in 1941 resulted in the US calling for an international embargo of foreign oil supplies to Japan. This aimed to disable Japan’s army and economy in order to abide by American pressure of withdrawal from China and Indochina. The Japanese bargained for partial withdrawal from China, but the US wanted total abandonment. While the Japanese knew it could not afford a prolonged war against the United States, assuming the US will not mobilize an all-out war, they attacked Hawaii in December 1941, the signal of World War II. This ended the Japanese Empire.
What is clear with this portion of history is the twisted imperialist thoughts of Hitler and Japanese military leaders, their sustenance of ego and power, of which cost was a major global war. This matters because while nations learned from history about the maintenance of international goodwill, it also reminds us of bitter memories of greed for power.