Regaining Confidence — Japan after the Loss of Empire

Abstract

Paradoxically the Japanese empire was both short and long. It was short-lived in the sense that it did not come to full bloom until 1942; it knew its highpoint in 1943 with the dramatized Great East Asian conference; and it ended abruptly in 1945. But the empire also covered a long span of time. From the 1880s at least Japan liked to be known as 'Dai-Nippon Teikoku', the empire of Great Japan. In terms of territorial acquisition she gained her first colony in Taiwan (Formosa) in 1895. It can therefore be argued that she had had longer experience as a colonizing power than Wilhelmine Germany. Perhaps the special characteristic of the Japanese empire was that it had a long run-up to a peak which occurred shortly before its final destruction.