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By the turn of the 20th century, the USA and Germany were challenging Britain in the world market for industrial goods. Over in the East, a new power was emerging that was destined to take its place on the international stage: Japan.
Much like China, Japan had been closed to foreigners for many years but the country was beginning to awaken and with this awakening came growing imperial ambitions. The Tokugawa shogunate had brought a relatively peaceful time to the country, but a growth in population and a number of natural disasters in the 19th century led to increasing unrest. Having witnessed China’s treatment by the West, the Japanese had sought to protect themselves against the foreign threat by isolating themselves. Nevertheless, as had happened with China, trade was forced upon them, in this case by the Americans.
In 1853 a heavily armed American fleet sailed into Tokyo Bay and forced the country to abide by the trade terms it stipulated. The ignominy of these trade terms led directly to the collapse of 700 years of shoguns and to the restoration of the emperor to the Japanese throne in 1868. The period came to be known as ‘the Meiji restoration’, or period of enlightened government. Despite attempts by traditional isolationists to prevent any change to the status quo, huge efforts were made to modernise and industrialise the country so that it could regain its independence from the Europeans and the Americans.
Where China failed, Japan succeeded: universal conscription was introduced, with the Samurai replaced by a regular conscript army modelled on the Prussian army, and the navy modelled on the British navy. Japanese scholars were sent abroad to study Western science, railways were built, and a European-style parliament was introduced. Class distinctions were abolished, education was improved and Western dress was adopted. Within a few decades the country succeeded in turning itself from an agrarian and feudal society into a powerful industrialised nation – a nation which to everybody’s surprise succeeded in defeating both China and Russia in two wars at the turn of the century.
In 1894, Meiji Japan defeated Qing China in a conflict of interests over Korea, which served as a buffer between the two nations. Following a battle that displayed the backwardness of China’s much larger army, Japan gained control of Taiwan and southern Manchuria in north-eastern China. China was also forced to recognise an independent Korea, which Japan would annex in 1910 and rule until 1945. Through China’s defeat, Japan gained recognition as a rising world power.