Message from cwatson

[Anonymous]

As Professor Piteka spoke about Japan's colonization of 25% of Asia using formal total
colonialism and informal puppet governments, I wondered if this aggression was a result of
former aggressive Western powers who forced "...Japan into signing unequal treaties..."

The Meiji Restoration reading states, " Even the last shogun was fully aware that Japan would
have to become a centralized state in order to defend itself against the outside world..."

From 1874 until WWII, Japan's colonization allowed it to create buffer zones around perceived threats from:
Korea, Mainland China, Manchuria, Southeast Asia, Pacific Islands, and Pacific Archipelo
Micronesian Islands.

Internally, Japan moderized rapidly and developed politically. Japan may have been the Asian counterpart to British colonization in India and Africa, so it may have been nothing
more than "land grabbing" or a sense of superiority over other Asians.