Up until the nineteenth century Japan was governed by a feudal system that actively shunned outside influence.
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This resulted in a Japan that was bereft of technology generated from the European industrial revolution. In an attempt to introduce foreign trade, the United States of America in 1853 sent a naval force into Tokyo Bay and forced the ruling aristocrats to sign treaties that opened Japan to the rest of the world. The Japanese were not only shocked by the might of the American military but also highly embarrassed. While some advocated immediate war with the West, others embarked on a program of watching and learning.
In 1868, the ruling Shogun regime was over-thrown and a new imperial government headed by the Meiji emperor, exalted as a sun god, was created in an attempt to unite the islands of Japan. Within a generation Japan was transformed into a world power, culminating in a victory against Russia in 1905. With the recapture of territory in the Liaodong Peninsula, absolute supremacy in Korea, and new acquisitions on the mainland, in particular Manchuria, many Japanese saw it as their destiny to expand and govern other lands.
Although allied to the British during the First World War, Japan began to regard her Western allies with growing contempt borne largely from the belief she had received insubstantial gains from the Treaty of Versailles and was coerced into an agreement to significantly reduce her naval armaments at the 1922 Washington Naval Conference. This same conference also convinced Japan to return former German holdings in Shantung to China. Although success in the war enabled Japan to garnish wealth from military and commercial sales, the disarmament agreements and the devastating stock market crash of the 1920s effectively destroyed middle class affect and ensured the imperial military influence would not only remain but continue to increase over the following decade.