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Prior to the 20th century Japan was basically a self-contained, independent nation with little international ties. Japan, a great power since it defeated Russia in the 1905 Russo-Japanese War, was engulfed by sever economic depression. The Japanese economy and its people had suffered greatly through the Great Depression and began to sympathise with countries such as Germany and Italy who suffered greatly also. Like Germany and Italy, Japan replaced a parliamentary system with a fascist one under General Hideki Tojo and Emperor Hirohito, the figurehead ruler of Japan to whom all swore absolute allegiance. During the 1930s, the Japanese military established almost complete control over the government as it was seen as inadequate because it could not alleviate the stress of the Depression. Many political enemies were assassinated, and communists persecuted. Indoctrination and censorship in education and media were intensified. Navy and army officers soon occupied most of the important offices, including the one of the prime minister. Bent on expansion, Japan saw the raw materials of the Chinese province of Manchuria to be essential to recovering from the effects of the Depression and an aid to successfully complete its plan of expansion through the pacific. Japan followed the example of Western nations and forced China into unequal economical and political treaties. In 1931, after assuming control over Korea, Japan invaded Manchuria, it set up a puppet state, known as Manchukuo, in 1932. When the League of Nations refused to recognize the new state, Japan simply withdrew from the League. By 1937, Japan was waging an undeclared war in China, taking cities up and down the Chinese coast and slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Chinese. According to eastern accounts, World War II began in 1931. Japan was able to take over many Asian nations as well as Pacific Island nations fairly easily not only because Japan may have had the greatest navy in the world, but it also had the most clever propaganda policy. The Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, though eventually exposed as a hollow promise of freedom, allowed the Japanese greater freedom when assuming control of the regions in Southeast Asia it needed for rubber, oil, and other raw materials. To Tokyo, Southeast Asia only meant raw materials and the tools of war, a partial explanation for the incredible atrocities inflicted upon these peoples by their Japanese overlords. The Japanese planed to create a domino effect throughout the Pacific Islands and the mainland of Asia by taking the individual nations one at a time or in small groups to establish itself an empire which would be world central because it stretched as far as the international-date-line to the west coast of the United States. With so many military bases and room to spread and travel Japan thought it could establish an empire too great in terms of the shear amount of space it occupied, that none would dare challenge it. By 1936, the Japanese Empire included the islands of Japan, the Korean peninsula, and Manchukuo. Since 1931, Tokyo had worked to extend itself throughout China; however, after initial success, the Japanese found themselves bogged down in a stalemated war on the Chinese mainland. Still, Japanese expansionist aims went far beyond China. It was their destiny, they believed, to be master of all Asia and the Pacific Ocean. When war broke out in Europe in September 1939, the Japanese, despite a series of victorious battles, had still not brought their war in China to an end: on the one hand, the Japanese strategists had made no plans to cope with the guerrilla warfare pursued by the Chinese; on the other, the Japanese commanders in the field often disregarded the orders of the supreme command at the Imperial headquarters and occupied more Chinese territory than they had been ordered to take.
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