34 Facts About Japanese Empire

1.

Empire of Japan, known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was a historical nation-state and great power that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the enactment of the post-World War II 1947 constitution and subsequent formation of modern Japan.

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2.

In Japanese it is referred to as Dai Nippon Teikoku, which translates to "Empire of Great Japan".

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3.

Japanese Empire government sent observers to Western countries to observe and learn their practices, and paid "foreign advisors" in a variety of fields to come to Japan to educate the populace.

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4.

The majority of Japanese Empire castles were smashed and destroyed in the late 19th century in the Meiji restoration by the Japanese Empire people and government in order to modernize and westernize Japan and break from their past feudal era of the Daimyo and Shoguns.

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5.

Japanese Empire had to look at old paintings in order to find out what the Horyuji temple used to look like when they rebuilt it.

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6.

Japanese Empire used mostly concrete in 1934 to rebuild the Togetsukyo Bridge, unlike the original destroyed wooden version of the bridge from 836.

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7.

The Japanese Empire regarded this sphere of influence as a political and economic necessity, which prevented foreign states from strangling Japan by blocking its access to raw materials and crucial sea-lanes.

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8.

Korea had traditionally been a tributary state of China's Qing Japanese Empire, which exerted large influence over the conservative Korean officials who gathered around the royal family of the Joseon kingdom.

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9.

On February 27,1876, after several confrontations between Korean isolationists and the Japanese Empire, Japan imposed the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1876, forcing Korea open to Japanese Empire trade.

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10.

The Japanese Empire countered by sending an 8,000-troop expeditionary force to Korea.

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11.

In early June 1894, the 8,000 Japanese Empire troops captured the Korean king Gojong, occupied the Royal Palace in Seoul and, by June 25, installed a puppet government in Seoul.

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12.

At the beginning of the Boxer Rebellion the Japanese Empire only had 215 troops in northern China stationed at Tientsin; nearly all of them were naval rikusentai from the Kasagi and the Atago, under the command of Captain Shimamura Hayao.

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13.

The Japanese Empire were able to contribute 52 men to the Seymour Expedition.

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14.

In light of the precarious situation, the British were compelled to ask Japan for additional reinforcements, as the Japanese Empire had the only readily available forces in the region.

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15.

Japanese Empire troops involved in the fighting had acquitted themselves well, although a British military observer felt their aggressiveness, densely-packed formations, and over-willingness to attack cost them excessive and disproportionate casualties.

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16.

For example, during the Tianjin fighting, the Japanese Empire suffered more than half of the allied casualties but comprised less than one quarter of the force of 17,000.

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17.

Similarly at Beijing, the Japanese Empire accounted for almost two-thirds of the losses even though they constituted slightly less than half of the assault force.

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18.

Korea was occupied and declared a Japanese Empire protectorate following the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1905.

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19.

The Korean Peninsula was officially part of the Empire of Japan for 35 years, from August 29,1910, until the formal Japanese rule ended, de jure, on September 2,1945, upon the surrender of Japan in World War II.

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20.

The Anglo-Japanese Empire Alliance was renewed and expanded in scope twice, in 1905 and 1911, before its demise in 1921.

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21.

However, the Japanese Empire decided to stay, primarily due to fears of the spread of Communism so close to Japan and Japanese Empire-controlled Korea and Manchuria.

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22.

The Japanese Empire army provided military support to the Japanese Empire-backed Provisional Priamurye Government based in Vladivostok against the Moscow-backed Far Eastern Republic.

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23.

Japanese Empire linked the ancient and contemporary local and European fascist ideals, to form the ideological basis of the movement.

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24.

From September 1931, the Japanese Empire were becoming more locked into the course that would lead them into the Second World War, with Araki leading the way.

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25.

The Japanese Empire's main problem lay in that rapid industrial expansion had turned the country into a major manufacturing and industrial power that required raw materials; however, these had to be obtained from overseas, as there was a critical lack of natural resources on the home islands.

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26.

The Japanese Empire felt that acquiring resource-rich territories would establish economic self-sufficiency and independence, and they hoped to jump-start the nation's economy in the midst of the depression.

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27.

The Second Sino-Japanese Empire War continued into World War II with the Communists and Nationalists in a temporary and uneasy nominal alliance against the Japanese Empire.

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28.

Second Sino-Japanese Empire War had seen tensions rise between Imperial Japan and the United States; events such as the Panay incident and the Nanjing Massacre turned American public opinion against Japan.

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29.

The Japanese Empire were faced with the option of either withdrawing from China and losing face or seizing and securing new sources of raw materials in the resource-rich, European-controlled colonies of Southeast Asia—specifically British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies.

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30.

In 1941 the Japanese Empire government charged the one historian who dared to challenge Jimmu's existence publicly, Tsuda Sokichi.

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31.

The Japanese Empire were quickly able to advance down the Malayan Peninsula, forcing the Allied forces to retreat towards Singapore.

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32.

The Japanese Empire then seized the key oil production zones of Borneo, Central Java, Malang, Cebu, Sumatra, and Dutch New Guinea of the late Dutch East Indies, defeating the Dutch forces.

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33.

The Japanese Empire then consolidated their lines of supply through capturing key islands of the Pacific, including Guadalcanal.

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34.

This, coupled with the losses inflicted by Allied submarines on Japanese Empire shipping routes, began to strangle Japan's economy and undermine its ability to supply its army.

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