WWII Test Study Guide
Meiji Restoration (p. 874):
• Rejected European traders and missionaries and kept foreign influence out of it.
• Western powers did not urgently need Japan as a partner because of its small size.
• Japan limited its own trade to Nagasaki with the Dutch.
• Policy remained until the late 1800s.
• Matthew Perry: demanded negotiations with the emperor at Tokyo because the US
wanted greater Pacific influence and trade.
• The Japanese realized how defenseless their cities were against naval attack through
gunboat diplomacy.
• Japan signed the Treaty of Kanagawa with the US that opened two ports to permit trade.
• The Emperor in Kyoto had no effective powers. Rather, the Tokugawa shogun ruled
feudally, each land with daimyo and samurai.
• Foreign merchants began to settle, and radical samurai reacted with antiforeign
terrorism and antigovernment assassinations against intrusion and unfair trade.
• Strong Western response, including the demolition of key Japanese forts.
• Weakened power and prestige of shogunate.
• Meiji Restoration: reform-minded domains led a coup that ousted the shogunate.
Demanded direct rule by the emperor. A turning point in Japanese development.
• The boy emperor was moved to Tokyo, the former home of the shogun.
• The emperor was carried around to meet his subjects. Despite this, the real power was
still in the Meiji oligarchs.
• Meiji reformers thought Japan must be reformed among Western lines. They dismantled
the classes and declared everyone equal.
• Examples included samurai being stripped of their swords and commoners being able to
join the military.
• Japan realized their citizens were passive during times of war and needed to be trained
to fight. A conscription law, modeled on France's, was issued.
• Japan was impressed by the defense of Paris in the Franco-Prussian War.
• The new War College was organized along German lines.
• Japan's new military defeated China, gaining Taiwan and Port Arthur, humiliated Russia
in the Russo-Japanese war, and annexed Korea from China.
• Japan got rid of extraterritoriality and gained control over its own tariffs. They have now
become an imperial nation with great political influence.
• Japan adopted a German constitutional monarchy with a diet parliament.
• As a result, Japan was authoritarian; the emperor was declared sacred and could rule
without the diet.
• Meiji oligarchs envisioned an industrial Japan.
• Japan competed with China in export of tea and silk, and developed heavy industry in
iron and steel. Import substitution cut western goods and accounted for 13% of national
product. Caused zaibatsus to grow.
Liberalism to Ultranationalism (p. 988):
• The Meiji conversion of Japan to a powerful nationalistic state by resisting Western
imperialism was impressive to Asia.
• After WWI, Japan seized Germany's Asian holdings and used LoN mandates to hold
them.
• Japan won new markets wartime Europe could no longer supply.
• Japanese nationalists believed Japan had a semidivine mission to protect Asia. They
signed an arms limitation and returned partial Shandong control, stabilizing East Asia.
• Japan was heading toward democracy with high living standards and a large electorate.
• Resources were scarce and Japan was an export economy that paid for imports.
• They were vulnerable to every economic boom and reinforced ideas of imperialism and
self sufficiency.
• Rapid industrial development created an imbalanced dualistic economy with
conglomerates, zaibatsu.
• This caused an oligarchy.
• Elites were jockeying for real power and cohesive leadership, emphasized by the Meiji,
had ceased.
• Ultranationalist militants rejected democracy, big business, and Marxism.
• Revived old myths.
• They assassinated moderates and planned uprisings; noisy and violent.
• The depression hit Japan extremely hard and everyone was starving. Ultranationalists
blamed the system and people listened.
• Manchuria was controlled by the Japanese army after its victory over Russia.
• Soldiers were concerned about the decline of Japan and Chinese nationalism.
• 1931: To prevent Chinese challenge over its control, the Japanese blew up tracks on a
Japanese-owned railroad near Mukden and occupied Manchuria in self defense.
• Proclaimed Manchuria independent, causing LoN to condemn its aggression and
Japan's resignation. The act was carried out by young officers and top generals in
Tokyo.
• 1937: Japan used a minor incident near Beijing as a pretext for a major attack and
occupied sizable portions of coastal China.
Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere:
What it was:
• Formally proclaimed in 1940 by Japan.
• An ideological framework justifying Japanese imperial expansion across Asia and the
Pacific.
• Built on the existing nationalist idea of Japan's "semidivine mission to protect Asia" from
Western colonialism.
The propaganda pitch:
• "Asia for Asians" — free the region from Western imperialism.
• Japan as the "big brother" leader of a unified, self-sufficient Asian bloc.
• Presented as liberation from British, French, Dutch, and American colonial control.
The reality:
• Japan essentially replaced Western colonizers with itself.
• Brutal military occupations across China, Korea, Philippines, Indochina, Dutch East
Indies, Burma, and more.
• Forced labor and "comfort women" — a system of sexual slavery imposed on occupied
populations.
• Extraction of resources (oil, rubber, rice) to fuel Japan's war machine.
• Massacres like the Rape of Nanjing (1937) revealed the true nature of Japanese
occupation.
Why it ultimately failed:
• Local populations largely rejected Japanese rule once they experienced the occupation
firsthand.
• The US cut off Japan's oil supply, forcing Japan to attack Pearl Harbor (1941) to secure
Southeast Asian oil fields.
• Japan could not sustain such a massive empire militarily or economically.
• Allied counteroffensives, island-hopping campaigns, and atomic bombs on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki (1945) ended the war and the sphere with it.