No, your missing my point. I'm not saying nationalism didn't cause the war, I'm saying it seems more externally driven than internally. Japan going to war was

No, your missing my point. I'm not saying nationalism didn't cause the war, I'm saying it seems more externally driven than internally. Japan going to war was about becoming a major power and putting it in a position where it couldn't be colonized by external powers vice maintaining power by creating a common adversary. The incident in Manchuria surely wouldn't have been possible without those circumstances, but it also wasn't engineered to strengthen the Japanese ruling elite.