Japan 1904 to 1945: WACE Year 12 Modern History

What this dot point is asking

SCSA wants you to trace Japan's development from its arrival as a great power around the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 to 1905 to its catastrophic defeat in 1945. You need to explain how Japan modernised and expanded, the brief flowering and decline of "Taisho democracy" in the 1920s, the turn to militarism and ultranationalism in the 1930s, the drive for empire in China and the Pacific, and why and how Japan was defeated. The elective is examined through source analysis and essays in the external paper.

By 1904 Japan had transformed itself through the Meiji Restoration into a modern industrial and military power. Its victory over Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 to 1905, the first defeat of a European power by an Asian nation in modern times, confirmed its great-power status, gained it influence in Korea (annexed in 1910) and Manchuria, and fed national pride. Japan's political system combined a parliament (the Diet) with strong elites: the emperor as a sacred figure, the genro (elder statesmen), the bureaucracy and the armed forces, which reported directly to the throne.

The 1920s, the Taisho era, saw moves towards liberalism and party government, sometimes called Taisho democracy. Universal male suffrage was introduced in 1925, party cabinets governed, and Japan participated in international cooperation, signing the Washington Naval Treaties and joining the League of Nations. Yet this period was fragile. The same 1925 reforms came with the repressive Peace Preservation Law. Rural poverty, the vulnerability of an export economy, and resentment of perceived Western limits on Japanese ambition created discontent that nationalist and military factions exploited.

The Great Depression devastated Japan's export economy and discredited the party politicians and big business (the zaibatsu) associated with the liberal order. Ultranationalist ideology, glorifying the emperor, the nation and military virtues, gained ground. Assassinations of political leaders, including Prime Minister Inukai in 1932, intimidated civilian government, and the attempted coup of February 1936 entrenched military influence. The army increasingly dictated policy, pursuing autarky and a vision of a Japanese-led Asian order, later named the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

Expansion became full-scale war. Japan launched all-out invasion of China in 1937, marked by atrocities such as the Nanjing Massacre, but became bogged down in a war it could not win. Western embargoes, especially the American oil embargo of 1941 imposed in response to Japan's move into Indochina, confronted Japan with a choice between retreat and wider war. It chose war, attacking Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 and sweeping across Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Initial victories gave way to defeat after Midway in 1942, as American industrial power, island-hopping campaigns and naval blockade ground Japan down. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Soviet declaration of war in August 1945 forced surrender, and Emperor Hirohito announced capitulation on 15 August 1945.

Historiographically, debate centres on whether Japan's expansionism was driven by a coherent long-term plan or by the breakdown of civilian control and factional pressure from below. Some historians stress structural factors, including economic vulnerability and the constitutional independence of the armed forces from civilian government. Others emphasise ideology and the cult of the emperor. The role and responsibility of Hirohito himself remains contested.