Why did the Japanese start a program of imperialism?

Answer 1

Japan had very few Natural Resources and a growing population.

Countries grow powerful in relation to the amount of resources they use in their industries, so to grow, they had to obtain their resources from other countries by the cheapest possible means, ie. by force.

Answer 2

Imperialism is extending one's country over others. Said another way, it is collecting countries. Japan wanted all of the countries in Asia, so it would have all of the raw material in asia. It also wanted Russia, as it was closer to Japan than South East Asia. But after fighting Russia twice, once in 1904-1905, then again in 1939, they had had enough of fighting Russia.

Answer 3

Japan, after centuries of stability and control under the shogunate, with the shgun as head of state and the emperor as the religious leader who didnt involve himself in temporal matters, was forcibly reopened to the west by an american naval officer. He japanese saw the fate of china. China, the eternal kingdom, the country from which japanese culture and languae originally came from, had become a pie cut up and served to the european imperial powers. The chinese, after the return of their great fleet of treasur eships, saw that there wss no place in the world as good as them, somif they left themsleves open, they would only be losing parts of their greatness for other, lesser peoples to grow on. Somthey shut themselves to the outside world, much as japan had done, and now they were thralls to europeans. The japanese did not wan tthe same fate. So, they overthrew the shogunate, and estalished the emperor as both religious and temporsl leader of japan. A military, imperialist culture grew up around the emperor, taking their cues from such european autocracies as the prussians. They expanded incredibly fast. You literally had a man who had grown up in a feudal, medieval culture, and his grand children grew up in an industrialized imperial power. You had castle being torn down to build railroads. It was due to this, the opening up of japan by imperial powers, that japan came to emulate and imitate theae imperial powers. This, unfortunately led to the corruption of japanese society. This was why the japanese invaded china and korea, this was why the rape of nanking, the baton death march, and other atrocities wrre commited by the japanese, because they had been tainted by imperialism. This is why i am not sorry that we dropped the bomb on japan. We were the ones that opened them up to imperialism, and we needed to have been the ones to rectify that mistake. Now, the japanese are peaceful, democratic, capitalist. Many lives where lost, but our sin has finally helped to wash away the sin of imperialism from the japanese people.