The biggest geopolitical shift of the twentieth century was the resurgence of Asia, over two or three centuries a fairly stagnant continent whose development had failed to match that of Europe and America. By the twenty-first century, three Asian countries – China, India, and Japan – were thrusting back to become Great Power rivals to Europe and America, but their thrusts had different rhythms. India remained a part of the British Empire until 1945. Its resurgence came later than the others, and its forms were the closest to European postwar models, combining democracy, capitalism, and avoidance of imperialism. China remained deeply divided by civil war until 1947, and then it became Communist, although also broadly non-imperial. Japan was the earliest Asian developer. The forms of its development were adapted from earlier Western models, including a form of representative government, capitalism, and imperialism, all given a distinctive Japanese coloration. By the end of the 1930s, Japan had a fairly advanced state-coordinated capitalist economy and had acquired a substantial empire in Asia through exercising formidable military power, becoming a full partner in the imperialism that by then covered most of the world. Its representative government had withered, however. Why did it take the imperial and quasi-despotic path? That is the central question of this chapter.

Ratcheting up militarism

With hindsight, the escalation of Japanese military imperialism through the 1930s seems inexorable, but it was not. In four incidents in China, Japanese soldiers took foreign policy into their own hands to ratchet up aggression. Only a fifth ratchet, the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, was a collective decision made at the highest government level. The first incident was in 1928, when Japanese soldiers killed the Chinese warlord ruler of Manchuria, thus extending Japanese influence there. This was seen in Japan as a mistake, and it led to the demise of the conservative government that had failed to stop it. More important were the incidents of 1931, 1935, and 1937, which coincided with rightward movement in Japan itself. Underlying these incidents and reinforced by them was the autonomy of military power in Japan, noted in Chapter 4, which now took a turn toward fascism. Japan in this period represented the triumph of military over economic and political power.