In 1894, Japan provoked the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War, after 8 months of bloody war, China was defeated, in 1895, the Qing government and Japan signed the most humiliating "Treaty of Maguan" since the "Treaty of Nanjing", the Qing government used its own 230 million taels of silver indemnity to create a fierce and inhuman enemy for China - Japan, this enemy has since invaded China for half a century!
Sino-Japanese War
In the middle of the 19th century, Japan was under the feudal military regime of the Tokugawa shogunate, the emperor had no authority, the shogunate rule was corrupt, the people were not happy, and the country was closed for more than 200 years, making the shogunate financially difficult, and many middle- and lower-ranking samurai were increasingly dissatisfied with the shogunate.
In 1853, U.S. Navy Commodore Matthew M. Perry led four steamboats into Japan's Edo Bay, forcing Japan to open its doors and trade with the outside world, and the whole of Japan fell into a panic.
The current situation of internal and external troubles made the Japanese gradually realize that only by overthrowing the shogunate rule and learning from the capitalist countries could Japan become rich and strong, so a vigorous curtain-down movement broke out.
In 1867, a group of feudal lords and warlords in southwest Japan, who were eager for reform, raised an army against the Tokugawa shogunate in the name of "returning the government to the emperor", and the emperor secretly cooperated, issuing a secret edict confirming the legitimacy of his actions.
On October 14, Tokugawa Keiki, the last shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate, resigned and returned to power with the emperor, ending the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate. On January 3, 1868, Emperor Meiji promulgated the Imperial Decree, officially abolishing the shogunate and establishing a new central government.
After these feudal lords and warlords who successfully fell and advocated reform seized the central government, they quickly implemented a series of reform measures to develop capitalism, which launched the process of Modernization of Japan and became a turning point in Japan's development, known in history as the "Meiji Restoration".
The "Meiji Restoration" did promote The rapid opening of the modernization process in Japan, but the initiators and organizers of the "Meiji Restoration" were mostly feudal lords and warlords themselves, and although they had a certain capitalist value orientation, they were more likely to use certain elements of capitalism to maintain their feudal system.
As a result, after the Meiji Restoration, the feudal system still had a wide influence, and the political system still maintained the old model, on the one hand, they developed the modern capitalist industry and commerce in the city, on the other hand, they maintained the old feudal territories, the vast majority of peasants still had no land, and feudal production relations still ruled the countryside.
The vast majority of the emerging industrial and commercial bourgeoisie in the city are loan sharks, who are inextricably linked to feudal lords, warlords and bureaucrats, and who adopt various feudal means and methods to operate modern industry and commerce, so that industry and commerce still have a strong feudal color.
The Meiji government was directly integrated with the imperial system, and powerful military figures always controlled the central government, with the emperor using the military to restore and consolidate his dominance, while the military used the emperor to establish control over the country and the traditional Japanese Shintoism to strengthen the emperor's supremacy in order to better dominate society.
In addition, the feudal warlords ruled Japan for 650 years, cultivating the samurai class and the spirit of shangwu in Japan, which was attached to the murderous feudal landlord class, and shaped the bushido spirit of Japan's feudal culture, which has penetrated into all fields of society.
Therefore, a large number of feudal factors, the spirit of traditional Bushido and the development of capitalism were deeply integrated, resulting in a kind of freak of "combining the predatory nature of the feudal landlord class with the cruelty and madness of the primitive accumulation of capitalism", which is: militarism.
Emperor Meiji of Japan
The Meiji government, which had embarked on the militarist path of "advocating force and military expansion," had at the outset put forward the slogan of "rich country and strong army," and on March 14, 1868, in the name of the emperor, Japan declared that it would "inherit the great cause of the patriarchs, open up thousands of miles of waves, and spread the power of the country in all directions."
From 1872, Japan began to establish a modern army that combined active service and standing service, and by 1890 Japan had 7 active modern army divisions with more than 53,000 people, and nearly 30 standing army divisions with more than 256,000 people, and the navy had 25 modern ships with a total tonnage of 51,000 tons.
Militarism has not only become The national policy of Japan, but has also been internalized into the Japanese state system, and in 1881, the Meiji government issued an edict on education, which clearly stipulated that schools should take the idea of militarism as the basic content of teaching, and military training was generally carried out in schools.
At this time, as the head of the military department (army and navy province) of the government department, he must be appointed by the army and navy general, which means that the military actually has the right to intervene and veto the government, as long as the military's intentions cannot be realized, it will not send people to participate in the government, and the government will not be formed, let alone carry out its work.
In 1878, Japan established the General Staff Headquarters, headed by the generals, directly under the Emperor, in parallel with the government, to participate in the formulation of national policies, and the government had no right to deal with the affairs of the General Staff Headquarters. The General Staff Headquarters can directly command the Military Headquarters, which means that the Military Department, which is a government department, is also subordinate to the General Staff Headquarters.
This opened the door for the General Staff Headquarters to intervene in the government through the Military Ministry, and according to the regulations, the Minister of War had to implement the military attaché system, so the military actually completely controlled the Japanese government, and from then on, the Japanese emperor and government were integrated under the banner of militarism.
Militaristic Japan has become more greedy and predatory, and since the 1870s, Japan has rapidly embarked on a road of frenzied aggression and expansion, and the spearhead of its aggression and expansion has first pointed to its neighbor, China.
"If the westward march into the Pacific Ocean was the destiny of the United States in the 19th century, then the westward march into China was the destiny of Japan at the end of the 19th century and the 20th century.", for Japan, a country that ran wild on the road of militarism and burst with self-confidence, the decadent, conservative, declining, and turbulent China was almost at hand.
Japan's growing ambitions are enormous, and its ultimate ambition is to overthrow the United States, the strongest in Europe, in order to dominate the world; to dominate the world, it must first sweep away Asia, and if it wants to sweep away Asia, it must first conquer China," a vast and resource-rich neighbor that inevitably becomes the main object of Japanese plunder.
In 1874, Japan invaded Taiwan under the pretext of retaliating for the killing of Ryukyu drifters by the indigenous people of Taiwan, which was strongly protested by the Qing government, and immediately after, Japan sent the minister Ōkubo Ritsu to Beijing to negotiate with Li Hongzhang, the representative of the Qing government.
Under the "mediation" of the British minister in China, the Sino-Japanese Beijing Treaty, which humiliated the country, signed the "Sino-Japanese Beijing Treaty", which stipulated that Japan would withdraw its troops, but China must pay 500,000 taels of silver as a reimbursement for the Japanese invasion of Taiwan. This time, the successful extortion of China was an easy attempt to further stimulate Japan's aggressive expansion.
In 1875, the Japanese Navy provoked the Korean Fortress on Ganghwa Island by force and threatened Korea, and in February of the following year, Korea was forced to sign a "friendly" treaty of commerce with Japan, the first of which stated that "Korea is an independent country", which was intended to negate the relationship between China and Korea's "suzerainty and vassals" and pave the way for its future conquest of Korea and aggression against China.
Aritomo Yamagata, the head of the Japanese Staff Headquarters
The Ryukyu Kingdom has been an independent country since ancient times, and has long belonged to China's sphere of influence in history, paying tribute to China. In 1872, when Japan visited Japan through Ryukyu envoys, it suddenly forced the "canonization" of the Ryukyu king as the king of the domain, and Ryukyu desperately resisted, and the Qing government argued on the basis of reason.
In 1879, the Japanese government suppressed the rebellion of Ryukyu by force, abolished the Ryukyu Domain, and established "Okinawa Prefecture", the Qing government was unable to send troops to aid Ryukyu, at this point, the Ryukyu State was destroyed and became Japan's "Okinawa Prefecture"!
The acts of aggression against Taiwan, Korea, and the Ryukyu Islands were in fact Japan's testing of the waters for direct aggression against China, and it was also to clear the periphery and lay the foundation for the aggression of China, because the Militaristic Meiji Government of Japan has always regarded China as its main potential enemy and target of expansion.
In 1880, yamagata Aritomo, the chief of staff, wrote the article "Strategy for the Armament of Neighboring Countries", which he wrote on the basis of sending personnel to secretly infiltrate Beijing and Tianjin to steal military intelligence, and China's military intelligence and armaments were recorded and reported to the Meiji Emperor as preparations for the Sino-Japanese War.
Yamagata Youpeng proposed that in order to prepare for war against China, the most urgent task at the moment is to expand the armament, because a strong army is the foundation of a rich country, not a rich country is the foundation of a strong army. Ten years later, Yamagata Aritomo proposed to Emperor Meiji the "way to defend the country", one is to defend the line of sovereignty and not allow others to infringe on it, and the other is to protect the line of interests without losing its favorable terrain.
Yamagata Aritomo's "line of interest" in Japan refers to North Korea and China. Therefore, his so-called "way of defending the country" is to put it bluntly: first, we must defend our territory, second, we must annex Korea, and third, we must invade China. Yamagata Aritomo's "Way of Defending the Country" was deeply appreciated by emperor Meiji and the government, and since then, it has been designated as Japan's "fundamental national policy".
In May 1894, the Dongxue Party uprising broke out in Korea, and Japan actively prepared to take the opportunity to send troops to annex Korea, but ostensibly induced the Qing government to agree to the Request of the Korean Government to send troops to suppress the uprising, the purpose of which was to create a pretext for its own troops and provoke the Sino-Japanese War.
In less than a month from June, Japan sent more than 10,000 troops to Korea, occupied strategic locations, and surrounded qing government troops stationed in Asan, Korea, under the pretext of escorting envoys to Korea and protecting overseas Chinese, as well as enjoying the same rights and interests as China over North Korea.
With everything in place, the Japanese government went to war without declaring war, and on July 25 raided the Chinese army and navy sent to Korea. The decadent, declining, and sluggish Qing government was defenseless and had to hastily declare war on August 1.
However, Japan had long since figured out that the corrupt and incompetent Qing government was weak and deceitful, and after an eight-month Sino-Japanese War, China was defeated and forced to sign the Treaty of Maguan with Japan on April 17, 1895, which was the most humiliating treaty since the Treaty of Nanking.
Japan seized the Liaodong Peninsula through this treaty, and there was a direct conflict of interest with Russia, Russia united France and Germany to demand that Japan return the Liaodong Peninsula, and although Japan was eventually forced to return the Liaodong Peninsula, it also took the opportunity to blackmail the Qing government for 30 million taels of silver, and the total amount of indemnities paid by the Qing government to Japan was as high as 230 million taels of silver.
After the Sino-Japanese War, Japan developed modern industry and commerce by extorting 230 million taels of silver obtained by the Qing government, thus quickly becoming one of the advanced imperialist countries in the world, while the sad Qing government used its own 230 million taels of silver to create a fierce and inhuman enemy for China - Japan.