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Turning point of Japanese History

Wed.3, Fri.3

Name: Hana Tabata

ID: 202968
Written Assignment #4:
"Why did Japan go to war?"

The reason why Japan go to war with America is that the citizen was positive about war,
and the government didn’t have the choice not to go to war. I would like to talk about
what the government thinks and what citizens think about to go war. I guess that
Japanese citizens at that time had the confidence to win. They thought if Japan goes
war, the Japanese situation go better way economically, or position in the world. They
have the experience to win at Sino-Japanese war and Russo-Japanese war. In fact,
during WWII, the news in Japan about war is a lie or hidden by the government. For
example, when the Japanese military lose at one place, the fake news said, ‘the purpose
of this place was accomplished, so we go back.’, without saying the loss. I guess that the
Japanese government made citizens agree with going to war by controlling the news.
This pushed the citizen to think positively about war. I argued that the government
thought no choice not to go to war. I think some military leader was aggressive and had
the confidence to win. I think they were irritated that Japan had won the Russo-Japanese
War and the Sino-Japanese War so far and had risen in status in the world but was still
not considered an equal. The conditions were too much for Japan at that time for the
new idea of internationalism. For Japan, which had entrusted its economic situation to
China, the inability to invade China was very damaging. Japan, which had treated China
like a colony, would now find it difficult to establish peaceful trade and good economic
relations with China. I believe that their track record of winning wars and their
conflicting inequality toward Japan led them to war. On the other hand, there would be
some Politian or government leaders who didn’t try to go to war yet. This is because
Japan's military power has not yet been developed enough to go to war with the United
States. I think they expected to not win. However, if even one Japanese person is
confident of war, the U.S. will recognize that Japan has attacked. Even if those who
opposed the war still decided not to go to war, if some Japanese military forcefully
started a war and reached the halfway point, they would surely lose and have to take
responsibility as leaders. If so, they would have had no choice but to support the war. In
addition, there is an economic problem. As I mentioned earlier, not invading China
would destabilize Japan's economy. However, if we do not stop invading China, we will
lose trade with the U.S. and be in economic trouble. If either course of action would
cause economic problems, I think we would have had no choice but to go to war.