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ah Japan it looks so peaceful there with its [Mountain in Japan appears]

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islands and its sushi and it's no capped volcano and it's oh yeah maybe not

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Godzilla he's still kind of terrifying but he's also a great segway into Japan's

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role as an aggressor during world war two yeah.....

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well to do that though we actually have to go back in time to 1853 that was the [Man walks into police box]

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year Commodore Matthew Perry of the TV show friends mm sorry of the US Navy

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sailed to Japan and forced that country to open itself to trade from the West

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well the Industrial Revolution was going full-steam after all in the US had

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stuff to sell not that we or any other Western nation treated Japan very well [Man opens door and crates fly through the door]

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once they opened more doors to us there were treaty ports and Westerners

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you know didn't have to submit to Japanese law and there were tariff

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restrictions left and right the Japanese were of course not thrilled with any of

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this and they ultimately decided that the only way to get themselves out from [Japanese sailor transforms into a suit]

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under the thumb of the West was to take on all the trappings of a Western nation

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well they opened universities and established a universal education policy

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they built factories they wrote a constitution and adopted a

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european-style legal system and they modernized their military you know

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everything was like kings and queens and feudal lords and all that stuff before

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then well pretty soon as any country on the rise tends to do Japan started [Man appears on Japan on a map]

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looking around and wondering where its Empire was all-powerful nations have em

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right and Japan wanted one too - well then maybe the West would finally buzz off

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well in the 1870s Japan began to fight with China for control of the Korean

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Peninsula it also annexed the island of Okinawa in 1894 Japan and China fought

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the first sino-japanese war... Japan kicked China to the curb winning the island of

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Taiwan and opening up a Pandora's box that haunts East Asian affairs to this

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day... ten years later Japan went to war with

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Russia and won Port Arthur and the southern half of Sakhalin Island well in

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1910 Japan annexed Korea 1931 it took over Manchuria you see where this is

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going right? Japan had successfully made itself a [Pacman eating land]

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modern country and it was eating up territory left and right there were

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elements which in Japanese society who were all for this kind of aggressive

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behavior they could frequently be found in yes the military and then there were

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those who favored a more peaceful route who wanted to find a way to cooperate

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with the United States and other Western powers, trade with them and other stuff... By the

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1930s aggression and nationalism were the order of the day in Japan though and

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Japan felt that they had been bullied long enough by the West and they weren't

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gonna put up with it anymore so 1937 the second sino-japanese war

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began and the Japanese started racking up a body count to rival Germany's looks

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like the West and the East had a commonality to bond over after all

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you

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