In 1867, a group of reformist feudal lords and warlords in southwest Japan raised troops in the name of "returning the government to the emperor" against the Tokugawa shogunate, which controlled the central government at that time. The Emperor issued 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 tokugawa shogunate's rule. On January 3, 1868, Emperor Meiji promulgated the Imperial Decree, officially abolishing the shogunate and establishing a new central government. Those who advocated the fall of the curtain and reform took control of the central government, which was called the Meiji government. From the late 1860s to the early 1870s, the Meiji government implemented a series of reform policies and measures conducive to the development of Japanese capitalism, and began the process of Modernization of Japan, which constituted a turning point in the development of Japanese history, known as the Meiji Restoration.
The "Meiji Restoration", that is, the main force of Japan's modernization has a strong feudal color, although it has a modernization orientation, but the feudal factors and the traditional Japanese religion Officiation, Shintoism, have had a strong influence on Japan's modernization and played a role in integrating society, so that at the same time as the Meiji Restoration began, Japan embarked on the development path of militarism. From the very beginning of the establishment of the Meiji government, the slogan of "rich country and strong army" was put forward. In the "Letter of the Emperor" (i.e., the Emperor's Imperial Pen Letter), published in the name of the Emperor on March 14, 1868, he declared that he would "inherit the great cause of the patriarchs" and "appease Er and other billions of trillions, open up thousands of miles of waves, and spread the power of the country in all directions." In 1872, the Meiji government issued a conscription order aimed at establishing a modern army that combined active service with standing service (i.e., reserve service). 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. In addition, the navy also has 25 modern ships with a total tonnage of 51,000 tons. By 1889, it had the Metropolitan Police Department and 692 police stations, 774 sub-stations, and more than 1,400 police stations. In 1890, there were 1653 modern industrial and mining transportation enterprises in Japan, and the dominant one was the military industry. In 1881, the Meiji government issued an edict on education, which clearly stipulated that militarist ideology was one of the basic contents of teaching at all levels and in all types of schools, and military training was widely carried out in schools. Militarism not only became Japan's national policy, but also internalized and constituted Japan's state system. The Army Provincial Bureaucracy, promulgated in 1874, stipulates that "the Secretary of State of the Army (i.e., the Minister) shall be appointed by the General. This system was later extended to the Admiralty, clarifying the military attaché system for ministers. As departments of government, the provinces of the army and navy must be appointed by generals of the army and navy, and this system actually enables the military to effectively participate in and restrain the government, and in fact has the right to intervene and veto the government. As long as the military's intentions are not realized, no one is sent to the government, and the government cannot be formed, let alone carry out its work. In 1878, the General Staff Headquarters was established. The General Staff Headquarters is headed by a general, directly under the Emperor, parallel to the government, and participates in the formulation of national policies. The General Staff Headquarters handles military affairs, and the government has no right to take care of them. Matters of military orders decided upon by the General Staff Headquarters may be directly ordered to be carried out by the Military Department. The Ministry of war (army and navy provinces) as government departments is therefore essentially subordinate to the General Staff Headquarters, which opens up a channel for the General Staff Headquarters to intervene in the government through the Military Department. Coupled with the military attaché system of the Military Minister, the military effectively has complete control over the government. 
The primary reason why Japan embarked on the path of militarism was that the Meiji Restoration was a very incomplete bourgeois revolution. Most of the initiators and organizational leaders of the Meiji Restoration were local feudal lords and warlords with a certain enlightened tendency and consciousness. Although they have some clear capitalist value orientation, they are more likely to use certain elements of capitalism from the standpoint of feudalism. After the Meiji Restoration, feudal factors were still widespread in all aspects. The political system has basically maintained the old model. The reformists in power in the new government both developed the modern capitalist industry and commerce of the city and maintained the old feudal territories. In 1872, the Meiji government issued a land license, which only recognized the landlords and self-employed farmers of the Tokugawa shogunate period as landlords enjoyed land ownership, and the vast majority of peasants still had no land and lived by renting the land of tenant landlords, and feudal production relations still dominated the countryside. The vast majority of the new industrial and commercial bourgeoisie in the cities originated from loan shark merchants who had extensive ties with feudal lords, warlords and bureaucrats, and they used various feudal means, methods and systems to operate modern industry and commerce, so that feudal relations prevailed in modern industry and commerce. The democratic freedoms of the bourgeoisie were not practiced, and feudal ideology prevailed. A large number of feudal elements were integrated into the development process of Japanese capitalism, and the predatory nature of the feudal landlord class combined with the cruelty of the primitive accumulation of capitalism formed the social basis of Japanese militarism (imperialism that Lenin later developed into what Lenin called military feudalism).
Another reason why Japan embarked on the path of militarism lies in Japan's political and cultural traditions. The imperial system produced by Japan's feudal society has always been closely related to feudal warlords and their military forces. During the Tokugawa shogunate, the Emperor was extolled as the descendant of the god who created the Japanese nation, the only supreme monarch in Japan, and the supreme authority in Japanese society. Although the emperor's power was effectively overridden, the Tokugawa shogunate exercised spiritual rule over the country in the name of the emperor and blackmailed the emperor to command the world. The Meiji Restoration also began with the conquest of the Shogunate by the feudal lords and warlords of the Southwest in the name of "returning the government to the Emperor", and ended the Tokugawa shogunate era in the form of "Imperial Restoration". The Meiji government was directly integrated with the imperial system, and the central government was always at the mercy of powerful military or those with extensive ties to the military. Emperor Meiji used the military to restore and consolidate his dominance; the military used the emperor to establish his de facto control over the country, and used the traditional religion of Shintoism to strengthen the emperor's supremacy in order to dominate society, forming an integrated social system of emperor-military and Shintoism. "The imperial system has had a strong militarist tendency from the time of its birth, and the establishment of the General Staff Headquarters has officially declared that the imperial system has adopted militarism." Ancient Japanese society has long been dominated by feudal warlords. The Kamakura shogunate (Genji shogunate) ruled for 150 years, the Muromachi shogunate (Ashikaga shogunate) in Kyoto for 236 years, and the Edo shogunate (Tokugawa shogunate) in Tokyo for 264 years. The long reign of feudal military forces cultivated the samurai class in Japan and kept the feudal warlords in cacophony. Successive wars have made "Shangwu" a japanese social ethos, which the American cultural anthropologist Benedict called "the tradition of the sword." This tradition was attached to the ferocity of the feudal landlord class and shaped the Bushido spirit of Japanese feudal culture. Over time, it has penetrated into all fields of Japanese society and become one of the most influential factors in the Japanese social and cultural system. After the Meiji Restoration, it formed the social and cultural foundation of Japanese militarism.
After the 1870s, Japan's aggressive expansion embarked on a frantic path of aggression and expansion, and the spearhead of its aggressive expansion was first pointed at China.
In 1874, the Meiji government invaded the Chinese territory of Taiwan under the pretext of retaliating for the killing of Ryukyu drifters by the indigenous people of Taiwan, and the Chinese Qing government expressed strong protests. Japan sent Senator and Minister of the Interior Ritsu Ōkubo as an envoy plenipotentiary to Beijing to negotiate with Li Hongzhang, the representative of the Qing government, and concluded the Sino-Japanese Beijing Special Treaty under the mediation of the British minister in China. Japan withdrew its troops, and China paid 500,000 taels of silver as compensation to repay the Cost of the Japanese invasion of Taiwan. Japan's easy blackmail success further stimulated its aggressive expansionist activities. In 1875, the Japanese Navy threatened Korea by provoking the Korean Fort on Ganghwa Island. In February 1876, the so-called Treaty of Friendship and Commerce was concluded with Korea. The first article reads: "Korea is an independent country..." The relationship between the Qing government of China and Korea at that time was a suzerainty and a vassal state, and this article was written in the name of the opening emperor in order to deny this established relationship, laying the groundwork for the future struggle with China for the status of the suzerainty of Korea and then direct the spearhead of aggression directed at China. Ryukyu has been an independent state since ancient times, but paid tribute to China. As soon as the Meiji government was established, Ryukyu was proposed as a japanese territory. In 1872, he forced the Ryukyu royal family to recognize himself as the king of the Ryukyu domain that belonged to Japan. The Ryukyu people opposed Japan's annexation, and the Qing government saw it as a provocation against China. However, after suppressing the rebellion of the Ryukyu people by force, the Meiji government abolished the Ryukyu Domain in 1879 and established Okinawa Prefecture. The invasion of Ryukyu triggered a sharp confrontation between China and Japan, bringing the two countries to the brink of war. In the end, Relying on political and geographical convenience and the support of Western powers, Japan annexed the entire island of Ryukyu in spite of Chinese protests. The above-mentioned acts of aggression by the Meiji government, except for the invasion of Taiwan, were nominally aimed at countries with which there were traditional clan relations with China, but their essence was to lay the foundation for direct aggression against China and clear the periphery. The Meiji government's militaristic policy of "glorifying the emperor overseas" has always regarded China as its main potential enemy and target of expansion. In 1880, on the basis of sending personnel to infiltrate Beijing and Tianjin, China to steal military intelligence, the chief of staff, Yamagata Aritomo, compiled an article entitled "Strategy for the Armament of Neighboring Countries", which collected China's military information, discussed China's armament, and presented the Meiji Emperor, which emphasized the need to prepare for the Sino-Japanese War. In order to prepare for war against China, the expansion of armaments is a top priority. He urged that "financial difficulties cannot be a reason to oppose the expansion of armaments, because a strong army is the basis of a rich country, not a rich country is the basis of a strong army". In March 1890, Yamagata Aritomo emphasized in his note to Emperor Meiji: "There are two ways for the country to defend itself independently and self-defense: one is to defend the line of sovereignty and not allow others to infringe on it; the other is to protect the line of interests without losing its own favorable terrain." What is the 'sovereignty line'? The territory of the country is also. What is a 'line of interest'? That is, the adjacent area closely related to the security of our sovereign line is also. Yamagata Aritomo's "line of interest" in Japan refers to North Korea and China. Yamagata Youpeng's way of "defending the country" is: one defends the territory, the second is to annex Korea, and the third is to invade China. This "defense of the country" was deeply appreciated by the Meiji Emperor and the Meiji government, and was designated as Japan's "fundamental national policy" . The Sino-Japanese War initially confirmed this strategic policy of Japanese militarism.
In May 1894, the Dong-gak Uprising broke out in Korea. While preparing to take the opportunity to send troops to annex Korea, the Japanese government also pretended to induce the Chinese Qing government to accede to the Request of the Korean Government to send troops to Korea to suppress the uprising. Japan's inducement of China to send troops was entirely a pretext for its own military dispatch and to provoke the Sino-Japanese War. From the beginning of June to the beginning of July, in less than a month, Under the pretext of escorting the envoys stationed in The DPRK to return to their posts and protecting overseas Chinese and enjoying the same rights and interests as China, Japan sent more than 10,000 troops to Korea, occupied strategic locations, and surrounded the Qing troops stationed in Asan, Korea. On July 25, without declaring war, it suddenly attacked the Army and Navy sent by China to North Korea. The Qing government was caught off guard and hastily declared war on August 1. The Sino-Japanese War lasted for eight months, and due to the corrupt political and military system of the Qing government and the guidelines of passive defense and defeatism, It finally led to the defeat of China. On April 17, 1895, the Qing government was forced to sign with Japan the Treaty of Maguan, the most humiliating treaty since the Treaty of Nanking. The "Maguan Treaty" stipulates that China recognizes Japan's control over Korea; China cedes the Liaodong Peninsula, the entire island of Taiwan, and its affiliated islands to Japan; compensates Japan for 200 million taels of silver in military expenses; opens four additional treaty ports in Shashi, Chongqing, Suzhou, and Hangzhou; Japanese ships can sail directly to the above ports, and Japan can set up consulates, build factories, import commodities, and various machinery and equipment at the above ports; and in order to ensure China's fulfillment of the terms, the Japanese army temporarily occupies Weihaiwei. Japan's seizure of the Liaodong Peninsula was in direct conflict with Tsarist Russia's aggressive expansion in Asia, and Russia united France and Germany, which were competing with Britain in the Far East, to demand that Japan return the Liaodong Peninsula. Although Japan was forced to return it, it blackmailed 30 million taels of silver as a price, so that China was forced to bear a total of 230 million taels of silver. This was the most serious consequence of the Sino-Japanese War – Japan's rapid accumulation of capital with extortion of reparations and the development of modern industry and commerce quickly made it one of the imperialist countries. China, on the other hand, has used its own money to forge its own nemesis.
The Russo-Japanese War took place from 1904 to 1905. The war that took place in Lushunkou, China, and the Liaodong Peninsula in northeast China was an imperialist war between Japan and Russia for control of northeast China. The war ended with Japan's victory, and Tsarist Russia transferred its privileges on China's Liaodong Peninsula and southern northeast China to Japan. Subsequently, Japan and Russia signed the "Japan-Russia Secret Treaty" three times, which divided the northern part of northeast China and eastern Inner Mongolia into Japan's sphere of influence. Since then, Japan has collectively referred to these regions as "Manchuria and Mongolia" as a frontier base for its monopoly and further all-round invasion of China.