Editing The World Wars (section)

===Rise of Authoritarians: Japan===
In the 19th century the Japanese feared the day when the powers of Europe would come by and stomp all over them like they did China and Southeast Asia. During the Tokugawa period, military technology had basically stagnated as there were no pressing internal or external threats that required [[Dakka|shootier guns]] or better tactics to sort out. There was much anxiety in the Tokugawa Shogunate about this (and even a limited attempt at army modernization by at least one Japanese domain) but things came to a head in 1853, when Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Tokyo Harbour and ended two centuries of isolation at cannon-point. The end of the Sakoku and bombardments by US and Royal Navy ships drove the necessity of modernization home. The Shogunate bought foreign guns and ships, lifted restrictions on shipbuilding and sent diplomatic missions abroad, but the pace of modernization and Westernization really picked up after the Meiji Restoration. By 1914 Japan had a solid public education system and set of universities, a well-developed rail network, a respectable industrial base and an army and navy which had beaten the Russian Empire. In the Great War they drove the German Empire out of the Pacific. Japan had arrived on the world stage, but despite that they were still concerned about the West and its influence, what with Britain and France being two of the largest and most acquisitive colonial powers on Earth. The Japanese saw what had happened to their neighbors and wanted no part of it. Combine this with a historic ''extreme'' hard on for cultural and political independence that can still be observed to this very day, and you start to get the anxiety faced by Imperial Japan.

Even so while the Meiji Restoration was successful in its general goals, it had its faults. It did end the Tokugawa class system and introduced a parliament, but it was still largely a system set up for the benefit of a small number of well connected oligarchs. The franchise was limited to only 1% of the population, with the prominent lordlings and industrialists who'd backed the Emperor in the Boshin War and their kids being disproportionately prominent in Japanese society. There would be considerable push for reform after the Great War (in particular there was universal male suffrage in 1925), but there would also be strong pushback by conservatives and militarist ultranationalists, especially after a huge earthquake devastated Tokyo in 1926 and the Great Depression came along to wallop the Japanese economy. Unlike their later partners in the Axis, there was no Japanese Hitler or Mussolini figure who masterminded and led a movement which came to dictate authority. Instead Japan had a collection of right-wing cranks and extremists and a military which was off the chain. The Imperial Japanese Army and Navy were loyal only to the Emperor (and in practice they just did whatever they wanted and asked the Emperor for permission after the fact) and the Diet had very little power over them at the best of times. Technically the Meiji Parliament continued to putter on, but from 1931-45 it was marginalized and subverted. Whenever prominent liberals and socialists who oppose rampant militarism get ganked by radical thugs who are pardoned by judges who are either on board with the militarists or afraid that they'll get ganked themselves, the power and influence of said nationalist militarists will steadily grow until they can more or less do as they please, specifically getting their imperialism on. 

Even though the Japanese had managed to modernize rapidly in a short span of time and kicked the shit out of the Russians, they were still often seen as inferiors by white people, [[Imperial Japanese Equipment|"yellow monkeys who could only copy what white folk invented" and other such nonsense]]. Some people like Wilhelm II and some nativist shitheads in the US, Canada and Australia saw the Japanese and East Asians in general as still being lesser, but still capable enough to be a threat ("The Yellow Peril"). When the League of Nations was founded, the Japanese had a seat at the table and the Japanese Ambassador requested that its charter have a non-binding statement on human equality<small><sup>3</sup></small>, which got some support, but Woodrow Wilson vehemently shot it down, mostly because this would require him to see [[Tyranids|minorities as anything other than evil cockroaches trying to devour the white man]], and GOLLY GEE WE CAN'T HAVE THAT NOW CAN WE? This sort of thing breeds animosity at the best of times, and these times were anything but. 

Things got worse with the Washington Naval Conference in 1921-22, which was called by the Allied powers in an effort to prevent another naval arms race like the one that had led into the war. The practical result of the conference and its treaty was to impose strict limits on the size and firepower of capital ships and aircraft carriers and downsize the British, American, and Japanese fleets by scrapping obsolete or unfinished ships. It also saw the dissolution of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance that had been signed in 1902, since the American delegates made it clear that the US felt threatened by this alliance and the British themselves weren't too sure about it anymore. Japan took both of these actions as an insult, especially the tonnage ratio imposed by the treaty, which was 5:5:3 UK/US/Japan. This meant that for every five tons of capital ship that the British and Americans built, the Japanese were only allowed to have 3 tons. The Japanese militarists and ultranationalists who'd demanded naval parity with the UK and US saw this as an insult, though a number of Japanese Navy officers, including Isoroku Yamamoto, actually supported the treaty, since they knew that Japan could never outproduce the United States. He and the "Treaty Faction" were largely ignored, and when Japan couldn't get better results at the London Naval Treaties in the 1930s, they flipped everyone the bird and started building ships that ignored the treaty limitations. 

From the Meiji period onward some prominent Japanese people came to the idea that the best way to fend off imperialism was to become imperialists themselves<small><sup>4</sup></small>, and they began gobbling up their neighbors from the late 19th century onward. Their first steps were pretty humble, taking back some of the Kuril Islands, Okinawa, etc. Then they stomped into Korea, renamed Taiwan "Formosa" because fuck your local names, and then logically jumped into trying to conquer all of China. 

Imperialism and colonialism? No, we're doing this in the name of Asian liberation, friend! A "Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" if you will. Pay no mind to the [[Grimdark|atrocious war crimes we're about to be committing]]. The Japanese kept this going into the 20th century when this sort of behavior was finally falling out of fashion among the Western powers, especially after 1931, by which time the military more or less dictated the course of Japanese politics. In 1931, they invaded Manchuria and made it into a puppet state under the deposed Qing emperor, then invaded China in 1937, killing millions as they went (around four times the death toll of the Holocaust to be precise, something that is largely ignored in light of the Holocaust itself and Japan's contemporary PR efforts). Japanese forces in China occasionally attacked [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Panay_incident foreign shipping], [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kweilin_incident airliners], and property. Despite this, international reactions were fairly limited — the European powers were too busy worrying about Herr Hitler and Nazi Germany and America had profitable trade agreements with Japan.

Not that Japan was in any way shape or form having a good time. Entire books can be written on all the crap that went down, but before they invaded China things had gotten to the point that there were no real political parties but Army and Navy whose officers near openly murdered each other.

* <small><sup>3</sup>Yes, there was an element of hypocrisy in the Empire of Japan making this statement. But Wilson was probably too racist to understand this or care.</small>
* <small><sup>4</sup>See previous footnote, the Japanese were very racist towards Koreans and Chinese, especially during the height of militarism. They just wanted to be the ones who were conquering all of Asia, not the Western powers.</small>