Faeelin
Banned
It proves that even before 1900, the Japanese were less interested in Asian liberation, and more interested in becoming their own colonial power.
I think it's more complicated than that. A lot of the Kuomintang founders had strong ties with japan's government and intelligentsia, and got a lot of funding there.
Japanese feelings on China changed as they continued to modernize and China descended into warlordism, which was very contingent.
A near half-century of crushing battlefield victories will make militarism just that much more appealing. Another way to butterfly it away is to have the European powers less colonial; for Japan that may would reduce the allure of having colonies {though I'm just spitballing here}.
I don't think it's a coincidence that Taisho Democracy blossomed after the disaster in Siberia.
Iris Chang wrote at length in The Rape of Nanking that the rise of Militarism in Japan had it roots in socioeconomic disruption from the Great Depression and a really brutal officer school system. So this has to be addressed.
Does he argue that the officer schools were suddenly more brutal in the 1930s?
Primarily because the causes of Japanese instability were different than those of German instability. Japan as the Empire of Japan never satisfactorily resolved the dilemma of how to have a modern army and a modern political system, and it was this inability to resolve it and also the simultaneous growing inability of the higher-ups to reign in the junior officers that created the witch's brew that became the Empire of Japan.
Which is why it went ape shit crazy in 1924, right?
In Japan's case a major complication was that the Shogunates had been hereditary military dictatorships, and that the Japanese Constitution was explicitly patterned on that of the German Empire which gave far too much free reign to its generals and admirals. So the appearance of Imperial Japan in its WWII variety was actually much more continuity than change, while if we factor in the degree to which that legacy from the Shogunate created obvious problems in an era that proudly called armies schools of the nation....
This seems pretty ridiculous, to be honest, and akin to saying Germany went nazi because it glorified the Teutonic Knights. For this sort of argument to make sense, you have to discount Japan's conduct between 1900 and 1929.