The Euro-Atlantic world reached the height of its power in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. While their governments took a back seat, individuals and corporations looking to expand their nation's power and prestige ventured across the world claiming territory, expanding markets, and advancing technology. While this had been occurring for centuries, the Industrial Revolution gave the West a decisive advantage over the places they sought to conquer. In sub-Saharan Africa, Europeans brought weapons like the Maxim machine gun to easily and brutally defeat those that lived there. Advances in medicine allowed European soldiers and their horses to take advantage of the vast savannas without as much risk from diseases like yellow fever. The Pacific islands, for so long isolated from the world by kilometers of open ocean, were now in reach of powerful European navies and the colonists they brought with them. Even China, which had been political, cultural, and economic hegemon of Eastern Asia for millennia, had fallen to ironclad European steamships and carved up into spheres of influence.
Japan too had practiced isolationism. The Tokugawa bakufu had closed all Japanese ports to foreign influence since the 17th Century. European culture, notably that of the Catholic missions from Spain and Portugal had been forbidden from entering Japan. Only the Dutch and Chinese were allowed to trade goods and ideas through Nagasaki, and even this was limited by the Shogunate. Feudal Japan had continued for the next two centuries and Europeans and U.S. Americans gained more power. Eventually, the 1830's came. The Middle Kingdom under the Qing Dynasty was strong-armed into giving several Euro-Atlantic states special legal and economic privileges, essentially stripping China of the sovereignty it had held with dignity since the ancient Shang dynasty.
This was an alarming series of events to Japanese officials, whom sought to spare Japan from the same fate. However, the corrupt Shogunate in Edo wouldn't allow much advancement or protective measures. The Genrō (Ni.-"Council of Elders") worked towards overthrowing the Tokugawa regime. They crowned Taishō as the new Emperor of Japan, boosting their legitimacy. Now in power, they went about Westernizing Japan. They abolished the feudal samurai class of private soldiers in favor of an Imperial Army, one wielding modern rifles, cavalry, and artillery. The navy was also expanded and brought into the 20th Century, important for an island nation. The Japanese archipelago is a chain of islands created by tectonic activity between the Eurasian and Pacific plates. Therefore, the islands are mountainous, with not that much arable land. To increase Japan's population, they conquered the Korean peninsula, long under the protection of China. Not only did Korea host potential farmland, but also resources like coal and iron to fuel Japan's industrialization project. China was also a target, and defeated in the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) and Boxer Rebellion (1900). Along with more resources and territorial gains in Taiwan and the Liaotung Peninsula, Japan also took the position as the great East Asian power. The next imperial action was taken in the mineral rich region of Manchuria, still under the de jure sovereignty of the Republic of China as successor to the Manchu-native Qing. However, the Russian Empire also had ambitions in the region, most notably as a vital railway connection between Vladivostok with the Russian heartland in cis-Uralia. The Japanese Armed Forces used Russia’s vast size to their advantage, immediately sinking the Tsar’s Pacific Fleet stationed in Vladivostok harbor. After that, it was just a matter of covering as much ground as possible, with the knowledge that a weak and demoralized counter-attack wouldn’t be able to respond in the region for months, either by land or by sea. Russia’s defeat at the hands of a non-European power was a shock to the Euro-Atlantic powers, seeing the potential in the Japanese Empire. Despite this and Japan’s best hopes on being able to compete with the West, most in Europe and the United States would still consider East Asia to be politically, culturally, economically, and biologically inferior to “the European race”. Russia handed over the southern half of Sakhalin Island, as well as the Tsar’s Manchurian influence; though the region was still contested between Japan and China.
This was Imperial Japan’s primary doctrine until 1945-to be able to not only withstand, but compete with Western powers on an equal footing. The Japanese Armed Forces also captured lands in Southeast Asia and islands in the Pacific. Among the first was the Ryukyu archipelago, home to the ethnically related but distinct Ryukyu people. After World War I, the Treaty of Versailles awarded Japan the Shandong province from the defunct German Empire, despite protest from China. It also established the League of Nations, of which Japan was a member by signing the Treaty. This supranational body was meant as a forum for sovereign states to work out disputes without descending into another Great War. Despite this, the Japanese delegation felt that the Western powers stinted Japan’s well-deserved spoils. Notably, the Western Triple Entente belligerents refused to recognize Japan’s status as equal to that of Europe or the United States. Japan saw this as a betrayal, further galvanizing its nationalistic project. In 1930, a diplomatic incident occurred between China and Japan in Manchuria. After three years of bureaucracy and what Japan saw as the West hypocritically hindering Japanese imperial ambition, Japan walked out of the League of Nations. They established the puppet constitutional monarchy of Manchuoko to solidify their hold on the region, but only Japan recognized the state. With their west secure, they turned to the Philippines, French Indochina, British Hong Kong, Burma and Malaysia, as well as the Dutch East Indies. For centuries, these had been key centers of trade and resource extraction for the Europeans, having so many high demand goods seen in Europe as ‘exotic’, as well as being close to China. When the American colonies rebelled and gained independence, the Europeans powers turned to this part of the world to keep their profits flowing. If Japan could take these, than it could prove to the world that they were equal to any Euro-Atlantic power, while simultaneously establishing themselves as the center of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. With most Allied forces in Europe or the U.S. and their supply lines already strained by the War, Japan could capture these holdings with little resistance. The only threat to Japanese military ambition in the Pacific was the U.S. Pacific Fleet, docked at the port of Pearl Harbor on Oahu, Hawai’i. Just as they had done forty years earlier against the Tsar’s navy, a quick and decisive attack would send a message to Washington that it wouldn’t be worth the effort resisting Japanese expansion. By the time any reinforcements or counterattack force came to relieve the Pacific, Japan hoped it would gain enough of an upper hand to have a chance against the U.S. What the Japanese failed to take into account is that nothing gets U.S. Americans willing to fight like an attack at sea.
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