Japan’s march towards modernization and imperialism was done with remarkable speed. They went from a little island to the East to a world power in forty years. Like most people in positions of power, the Japanese government and military became overconfident an had an insatiable desire to dominant Asia, no matter what the cost. The crimes they committed against the people of Korea, China and Taiwan, to name a few, are horrendous and despicable. For six weeks in 1937, after the invasion and takeover of Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, the Japanese military destroyed the city, raped women, brutally killed civilians and prisoners of war with no mercy. The number of people massacred is debated amongst historians but it's around 300,000. That is more casualties than both of the atomic bombs used on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945 and is why a lot of victims of Japan's aggression have the mentality, "so what," when it comes to Japan being victims of war.
In Korea and Taiwan, the Japanese military were not as brutal physically, meaning it wasn’t an all out massacre, but inflicted just as much damage. They forced Koreans to learn Japanese and adopt it as their official language, take on Japanese names and dispose of their traditions, culture and national identities. They enforced a strict policy of kneeling down every morning facing the East and bowing to the emperor, who was in Tokyo. If you did not participate and often even collaborate with the military, even if meant turning against your neighbors, you and/or your family would feel the repercussions, which sometimes meant do or die. Women were forced into prostitution, referred to as comfort women, who provided services to the Japanese military. Japan enforced a lot of these policies in Taiwan as well.
With the success Japan had achieved with it's attempt at modernization, which led the way for their imperialist goal to rule all of Asia, they felt there were untouchable and could take on any "enemy" both large and small. To understand Japan's brutal path towards imperialism and their eventually demise one has to understand why they justified their imperialistic march.
Considered one of the founders of modern Japan, Fukuzawa Yukichi did not discriminate against the Chinese and Korean people when it came to his view on Sino-Japanese relations, but was very critical of their governments and their failed attempts in joining Japans path to modernization. Fukuzawa believed that in order for Japan to distinguish itself from a backward Asia they must enact strong policies against their Asian neighbors. He believed the war against China really stood for a war for civilization, professing, “a country which is trying to develop civilization and a country which disturbs the development of civilization.” He wanted to instill a sense of personal strength amongst the people of Japan and hoped that by modernizing they could build a nation that would rival all others. He wrote often about what it meant to be civilized and believed that civilization furthered education and knowledge.
In Fukuzawa’s editorial, “Datsu-A-ron,” he compares the spread of Western civilization to the spread of an epidemic. Although nothing can be done to prevent it he asserts that people should promote it so that they may enjoy its benefits. He felt strongly that Japan should disassociate itself with the rest of Asia rather than embrace it, thus creating a new ideology. He points out that although Japan, Korea and China were very similar to each other, their unwillingness to modernize would essentially lead to the demise of their nations. Japan wanted to gain equality with the West and Fukuzawa felt that they could never do so if their neighbors didn’t share their same aspirations. Korea and China were seen as weak. They were in no position to further Japan’s enlightenment, in fact Fukuzawa believed their stance could hurt Japan’s progress and could even affect Japan’s image with the West.
Japan’s modernization likely came from the fear that if they didn’t they would be colonized by the West. Fukuzawa took the same stance towards Korea and China and help implement these policies in Japan. He felt Japan would have to deal with its uncooperative neighbors in the same way as the West, which helped fuel Japanese imperialism. Fukuzawa was not only a propagator of ideas on public policy but he sets up the climate for war giving an ominous prophecy of what was yet to come. With this ideology, their victories over China and Russia and their successes as colonizers, Japan felt they could take on the West-and win.
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