Abstract
At the end of the 19th century, it was commonly believed that all successful modern powers had to expand overseas. It was clearly recognized that the international arena was controlled by the Western powers which were continuously struggling with one another for greater national strength. The Japanese leaders thus believed that strong foreign policies were a sign of internal health and power. Moreover, rivalries among the Western powers in Asia were well known to the Japanese.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Japan had obtained a dominant place in Asia and gained formal equality with the Western powers. Pursuing its quest for modernity, it emulated the great powers acquiring an empire, which enabled it to become a model modernizer in the non-western world. Japan's drive for the empire had numerous roots that can be linked to western imperialism. We will first study the international context that led Japan to choose imperialism, and the western methods it used to do so. We also look into how it used ideology to justify its choice and, finally, how it used its empire from an economical point of view.
