User:John199919/sandbox

Japan didn't have a lot of raw materials and was importing raw materials from elsewhere in Asia and they were also exporting finished products. By industrializing, the country, Japan, was able to dominate in the sale of manufactured goods. Japan remained determined to assert itself as a great nation and not to suffer domination by the West as China was. One of the oligarchs running Japan was named, Fukuzawa Yukichi. In 1885, Fukuzawa Yukichi, described Japan's need to be a leading power in Asia and to behave "in the same way as the civilized countries of the West are doing."

Militarily, Japan benefited not only from its rapid industrialization but also by being an island nation, and by having as a neighboring military rival a crippled power – China. And Japan had an advantage over Europe and the US regarding Asia by being geographically closer to targets of imperial interest.

Japan's naval ensign

Japan had another part useful for imperial expansion – arrogance – a view of their country as the land favored by the Gods, the land that others should recognize as superior. This was expressed as early as 1868 when Japan sent to Korea an announcement of the Meiji restoration. The announcement implied that Japan's monarch was superior in status to Korea's monarch. Diplomacy would have been served by Korea smiling at Japanese arrogance and accepting the announcement. Instead the Koreans rejected it, and Japan's militant patriots and supporters of Meiji rule considered Korea's response an affront to Japan's national dignity, and exchanges in the months that followed failed to mollify the irritation felt by both sides.

In the 1870s, Japanese warships, with troops, threatened the Koreans and struck at Korea's port city of Pusan and at Kanghwado island. Japan was proving its perceived superiority militarily, and in the 1870's Korea signed a treaty, drafted by the Japanese, that granted the Japanese in Korea extraterritoriality (exemption from the jurisdiction of local law), exemption from tariffs and recognition of Japanese currency at ports of trade.