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World War I permitted Japan, which fought on the side of the victorious
Allies, to expand its influence in Asia and its territorial holdings in the
Pacific. Acting virtually independently of the civil government, the
Japanese navy seized Germany's Micronesian colonies. The postwar era brought
Japan unprecedented prosperity. Japan went to the peace conference at
Versailles in 1919 as one of the great military and industrial powers of the
world and received official recognition as one of the "Big Five" of the new
international order. It joined the League of Nations and received a mandate
over Pacific islands north of the Equator formerly held by Germany. Japan
was also involved in the post-war Allied intervention in Russia, occupying
Russian (Outer) Manchuria and also north Sakhalin (with its rich oil
reserves). It was the last Allied power to withdraw from the interventions
against Soviet Russia (doing so in 1925).
During the 1920s, Japan progressed toward a democratic system of
government. However, parliamentary government was not rooted deeply enough
to withstand the economic and political pressures of the 1930s, during which
military leaders became increasingly influential. These shifts in power were
made possible by the ambiguity and imprecision of the Meiji constitution,
particularly as regarded the position of the Emperor in relation to the
constitution.
 Japan invaded Inner (Chinese) Manchuria in 1931 and set up the puppet
state of Manchukuo under the last Manchu emperor, Pu Yi. In 1933, Japan
resigned from the League of Nations. The Japanese invasion of China in 1937
(the second Sino-Japanese War) followed Japan's signing of the
"anti-Comintern pact" with Nazi Germany the previous year and was part of a
chain of developments culminating in the Japanese attack on United States
naval forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941.
After almost 4 years of war, resulting in the loss of 3 million
Japanese lives and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan
signed an instrument of surrender on Missouri in Tokyo Harbor on September
2, 1945. As a result of World War II, Japan lost all of its overseas
possessions and retained only the home islands. Manchukuo was dissolved, and
Inner Manchuria was returned to China; Japan renounced all claims to
Formosa; Korea was granted independence; southern Sakhalin and the Kuriles
were occupied by the U.S.S.R.; and the United States became the sole
administering authority of the Ryukyu, Bonin, and Volcano Islands. The 1972
reversion of Okinawa completed the United States' return of control of these
islands to Japan. Japan continues to agitate for the corresponding return of
the Kuril islands from Russia.
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