♥ Sunday, April 13, 2008♥
Japan. What really caused them to go into a war that had such disastrous outcomes? Knowing the problems that Japan faced after World War One is essential to understand their feelings at that point of time.
One of Japan’s fears was the lack of resources they had in their country especially oil. It is simply impossible for the Japanese to survive without importing goods and they needed to export goods to make enough money to import essential items.
Japan also feared being colonized by the Western powers in the Pacific. Japan thought that if it did not strengthen themselves to become a world power, it will soon be colonized by the Western Powers. Japan wanted to colonized other countries and not be colonized. It made decisions that deemed best for them at that time.
Protectionism is something that was a big problem to Japan. As protectionism was imposed by countries, Japanese exports dropped by two thirds and many factories that were built by 1929 were lying idle. Japan was lucky that they benefited a little by the trade links that it had made in Asia during World War One. Protectionism proved to be a problem as it raised the price of Japan’s imports.
Japan’s goal was to be a major power. In order to achieve that, they had to possess more of Asia, especially China where there will be an economic and political advantage. Japan’s foreign policy could be summed up in the phrase ‘aggressive opportunism’. They would take what they could, when they could.
All these reasons lead Japan to war with other countries which caused many disastrous problems to people.
Its a colorful world..
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