Japan: A historical analysis

In Japan, governments since the Meiji restoration of 1868 legitimated their rule by depicting themselves as the defenders of the nation and the sacred Imperial institution from predatory Western powers (Berger pg.330). As a result, the Japanese military establishments wielded tremendous political influence and enjoyed high social prestige in the prewar period (Berger pg.330). The nation as a whole was taught to unconditionally support the military and the government. To question these establishments was in a sense viewed as unpatriotic. You fought for these institutions and they fought for you. By the early twentieth century the Japanese had been effectively banned on openly racial grounds form the United States and the British Dominions, and the United States made this brutally clear again in 1924 in a new exclusion act based on race (Reischauer 1977). As the Japanese saw the situation, they were not only being discriminated against in a humiliating way but were being economical...