kraftiekortie wrote:
It was a "golden age," for Japan.
Japan accomplished many, many things in such a short time. That is to be admired, via any objective standard.
But, alas, Japan used the progress they made to become the main aggressor in the East Asian theater. Alas, especially, for the Chinese.
They shouldn't have perpetrated all those atrocities against the Chinese.
It would have been nice had they been more "conventional" aggressors. Then, I wouldn't judge the Mejii Restoration so much.
Were talking about two different things.
The term "Meiji Restoration" only refers to the late Nineteenth Century in Japan. The brief period of transiton from being a feudal hermit kingdom to laying the foundations of the modern nation. The pre WWII Twentieth Century is thought of a separate later phase. The Meiji was when the Japanese were still getting their act together in their own country (even fought a civil war shortly after our own civil war)-and were not into attacking neighbors yet.
So the Meiji was good for Japan, and actually also good for everyone else because Japan began to go whole hog into trading with everyone else.
The turn of the century when Japan began to flex its muscles is thought of as being in the next phase. The phase in which they took the wrong turn, and veered off into gradually increasing militarism, and gradualing escalating imperialism and aggression. WHY they took that wrong turn is indeed the interesting question. But the atrocities your talking about were in the 1930's. Long after the "Restoration" was a done deal and considered ancient history.
But you're right that when the Japanese invaded China proper (while China fighting its own civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists) in the 1930's they were about a nice as the Nazis would later be in Europe. The number of civilians murdered in Nanking was more than the death toll of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.