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With the Great Depression, Japan like some other countries turned to
Fascism. While it was a unique form of the system, probably due to cultural
differences, Japan paralleled the western form very closely, as its
Feudalism did hundreds of years earlier. Unlike Adolf Hitler and Benito
Mussolini, though, Japan had two economic goals in developing an empire.
First, as with its European counterparts, a tightly-controlled domestic
military industry apparently jump started the nation's economy in the midst
of the depression. Also, due to the lack of resources on Japan's home
islands, in order to maintain an strong industrial sector with strong
growth, raw materials such as iron, oil, and coal largely had to be
imported. Most of these materials came from the United States at the time.
So, for the sake of military-industrial development scheme, and just
industrial growth on the whole, mercantilist theories prevailed, and the
Japanese felt that resource-rich colonies were needed to compete with
European powers. Korea (1910) and Formosa (Taiwan, 1895) had earlier been
annexed as primarily agricultural colonies. Manchuria's iron and coal,
Indochina's rubber, and China's pretty much everything were prime targets
for industry.
Manchuria (today part of northwest China) was invaded and successfully
conquered in 1931, with little trouble. Ostensibly, this Japan did this to
liberate the Manchus from the Chinese, just as the annexation of Korea was
supposedly an act of protection. As with Korea, a puppet government was set
up (Manchukuo). Jehol, a Chinese territory bordering Manchuria, was taken in
1933.
Japan invaded China in 1937, creating what was essentially a three-way
war between Japan, Mao Zedong's communists, and Chiang Kai-shek's
nationalists. Japan took control of much China's coasts and port cities, but
very carefully avoided Europeans in their enclaves. The year before their
Chinese invasion, Japan signed an anti-communism treaty with Germany, and
another with Italy in 1937 itself.
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