Chinese Prisoners During Sino-Japanese War. Japanese soldiers march Chinese prisoners during the first Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895). The war marked the beginning of Japan’s policy of imperial expansion.

 

When young radicals overthrew the Tokugawa shogun in 1868, their overriding goal was to create a strong, sovereign Japan that could overcome the unequal treaties imposed by the Western powers. Over the next seventy-seven years, until defeat in World War II (1939–1945), Japan would assemble a vast empire in east Asia and the western Pacific. Yet the course of acquiring this empire was not predetermined but buffeted with disagreement and circumstance. Indeed the new leadership split over a plan to invade Korea in 1871. That action was blocked, but in 1875 Tokyo sent a fleet to the isolated nation, forcing Korea to open up to Japanese trade and contact.

 

BUILDING AN EMPIRE

For the next two decades Tokyo vied with China for influence in Korea, finally clashing in the short Sino- Japanese War of 1894–95. Japan’s startling victory in this conflict yielded its first major colony, the island of Taiwan (or Formosa). The Sino-Japanese War also made Japan one of the powers in China, with treaty port rights and extraterritoriality. Armed with this new status Japan participated in the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1900. Its forces marched into Beijing with the Westerners, and Tokyo signed the Boxer Protocol, which granted it the right to station troops at various locations around northern China. Yet Japan was profoundly unhappy with moves by the Russian Empire to control both northeast China (Manchuria) and Korea, and joined with Britain in an alliance to force Russia to retreat. The two nations clashed in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904– 05, and Japan’s victory in this conflict left it in a much stronger position on the Asian mainland. Japan soon gained complete control over Korea, made a formal part of the empire in 1910, as well as railway concessions and ports in southern Manchuria. Japan also gained the southern half of the Sakhalin Island off the coast of Siberia.

 

Tokyo never completely fixed upon a colonial policy but increasingly moved toward ‘‘assimilation’’ for Koreans and Chinese in Taiwan. The colonized were compelled to use Japanese surnames, to be schooled and educated in Japanese language, and to revere the Japanese emperor. When Koreans traveled to Japan, however, they discovered that few Japanese accepted them as equals; discrimination against Koreans was blatant and often deadly. World War I (1914–1918) brought Japan new opportunities; in 1915 it presented a weakened China with 21 Demands, designed to increase its power on the mainland. Japan also grabbed German territories in the area, notably the German-held islands in the southwest Pacific that Japan held until captured by the Allies in World War II. Unlike the Koreans and Chinese who could plausibly be ‘‘Japanized’’ few felt that the Pacific Islanders could be assimilated. Islands such as Saipan were transformed mostly by Japanese immigration.

 

1868: Tokugawa shogunate overthrown by radicals; Meiji period begins

1875: Japan invades Korea and establishes trade supremacy

1879: Japan annexes Ryukyu Islands

1895: Control of Formosa (Taiwan) following victory in Sino-Japanese War

1900: Japan aids China in ending Boxer Rebellion; establishes military outposts in China

1905: Japan wins Russo-Japanese War and gains more control of Asian mainland

1910: Japan annexes Korea and begins Japanese enculturation

1912: Yoshihiro succeeds to throne, Taishō period begins

1914: Japan declares war on Germany and enters World War I

1915: Japan presents China with 21 Demands

1917: Lansing-Ishi Agreement reinforces Japanese interests in China

1918: Japan launches Siberian Expedition to gain foothold in Russia; World War I ends