I think Japan did see many of the mistakes made, but the history is more complicated than just saying Japan was a warring nation for 50 years. Japan had centuries of warrior rule and military tradition, but also a long period of internal peace. What it kept was its independence, warrior culture and strong national pride. Then it faced Western colonial powers, Russian expansion, a weakened China being carved up, and growing pressure over resources and trade. Japan had very few natural resources of its own and became heavily dependent on imported oil and raw materials. The later US embargoes and asset freezes increased that pressure even more. None of that makes what Japan did in China, Korea and elsewhere right. Japan became a brutal imperial power itself. But they had seen what colonial powers were doing throughout Asia, and if we want to understand why Japan took that road, we have to look at the whole chain, not just the final result. Germany is a bit different. Modern Germany has spent generations confronting its past, and I do not see much hatred today toward ordinary Germans because of what the Third Reich did. Could you elaborate on where you see that hatred coming from? A little history lesson. China was already weakened internally by corruption, population pressure, fiscal problems and enormous rebellions such as the Taiping Rebellion. But Western imperial powers made the situation considerably worse. Britain defeated China in the Opium Wars, and Britain, France, Russia, the US and others imposed the so-called unequal treaties, gaining ports, trade privileges, extraterritorial rights and other concessions. Japan watched this happening. It also saw Western gunboats force Japan itself to open in the 1850s. Japanese leaders understood very clearly what had happened to China and concluded that Japan had to modernize rapidly or risk the same fate. So when Japan later looked at China, it saw a huge neighboring empire that had been weakened partly by its own internal problems and partly by decades of Western and Russian pressure. Japan then exploited that weakness and became an imperial power itself. This makes the story much more complete: the Western colonial powers helped create the Asian power environment that Japan then learned to play very aggressively. Sources https://history.state.gov/milestones/1830-1860/china-1?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://history.state.gov/milestones/1830-1860/opening-to-japan?utm_source=chatgpt.com
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