Instructor: Dr. Sherrard
Responding to the threat of Western imperialism in the mid-nineteenth century the Japanese began a massive defensive restructuring of their society. They modernized and westernized in a few short decades and by the beginning of the twentieth century Japan had become a major industrialized country. They had also joined the Western “Imperialist’s Club” in Asia. Japan lacked the natural resources to maintain its new industrial status and so began the conquest of their Asian neighbors in order to acquire those resources. After taking over Formosa and Korea at the end of the nineteenth century, they began World War II in Asia in 1931 when they initiated a fifteen-year conflict with China over that country’s Manchurian provinces