Japan's Involvement In World War II

Pre-war Japan’s actions from 1852 to 1945 were driven by a strong passion in an attempt to avoid the tragic fate of 19th-century China. In essence they wanted to avoid failure and become a great power. There had been centuries of frontier encounters between the Chinese and the Japanese. They triumphed in the Russo-Japanese War. They overall powered what is known as the Second Sino-Japanese War. This war involved many battles, such as the Marco Polo Bridge Incident and the invasion of Manchuria. The Second Sino-Japanese war ultimately led to Japan’s involvement in World War II. This can be considered as Japan’s downfall in terms of winning wars and raging power. The Allied troops began to arrive in Japan in late August 1945, and the Occupation

Their economy thrived. Worker’s rights, land reforms and subsequent income maintenance policies directed to the agricultural sector, brought about a general rise in living standards. In 1945, noncultivating landlords received only ¥55 per koku for the rice they sold, whereas their tenants as its producers, received ¥245; owner-cultivators received both the official price and the bonus, or ¥300 per koku (Jansen et al., 1995). After the war all this changed. The land reform ensured that most farmers received the same income. The absentee landlords lost all their land and the people actually doing the work received it. Resident landlords were set a quota of being able to own no more than average of one chō of the land. Owner cultivators were allowed an average upper limit of three chō (Jansen et al., 1995). These land reform did not solve all of the agricultural problem within Japan but it helped greatly in the in transforming the rural social change that has begun and failed five decades before. It helped in the inequality in the distribution of

Countless contracts have been agreed upon under the supervision of these institutions. Regional trade agreements started to proliferate from the 1980s, and in the 1990s regionalism re-emerged as a major driver of trade liberalization and integration both in developed and developing regions (Santos-Paulino, 2017). Important agreements came into force across developing countries including ASEAN, MERCOSUR, NAFTA, COMESA, and CACM (Santos-Paulino, 2017). Towards the end of the 1970s, Japan began to contribute to the East Asia’s economic development through trade, direct investment and Official Development Assistance (ODA). The Japanese and Southeast Asian relation has developed dramatically since the war. In the 1950s, memories of Japan’s wartime aggression led Southeast Asian states to view Japan suspiciously (Patrick, 2008). Political relations were frayed and economic ones were very few despite the relationship of resource rich Southeast Asia and resource poor Japan. However over the years trust was built and now there has been major developments on economic integration throughout Asia. There are several stages in the process of economic integration, from a very loose association of countries in a preferential trade area, to complete economic integration, where the economies of member countries are completely integrated