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> Japan had some valid grievances against the U.S. I'm curious what Japan's valid grievances against the Chinese, Koreans, or various Pacific island groups was

• emodendroket 12y ago
  Well, none (well I mean plenty if you want to go through thousands of years of history, but realistically, none), but modernizing largely meant copying Western ideas and that included having their own colonies and spheres of influence, just like Western powers. It's not as though that is the reason the US went to war with Japan.
  • pyre 12y ago
    > It's not as though that is the reason the US went to war with Japan. I realize this, but WW2, for Japan, was mostly about taking over much of SE Asia and that would have happened regardless of them going to war with the US.
    • emodendroket 12y ago
      I think the popular American image of the wartime Japanese doesn't have much to do with that, although they certainly did brutalize the places they took over.
• speeder 12y ago
  Japan attacked other asian nations to imitate UK and US, and defend against UK and US. Japan until mid 1800s was happily doing their own thing, and not caring for their neighbours, suddenly they had US metal ships on their docks, and the mighty China falling to UK. Their solution was outright imitate what western powers was doing, in several aspects (even clothes, mannerisms and cultural trends were copied), with the most important one being to act imperialistic, invade weak countries, and try to build the most strong military that you could, using resources from all the colonies as needed. Japan was only following a bad example set by the western powers, and trying to not become China.