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At the outbreak of the Great War, the Imperial Japanese Army was looking forward to a way to prove itself because they felt they had lost prestige during the Russo-Japanese War as opposed to the Navy. Japan seized Germany's holdings in Micronesia and captured Tsingtao from German and Austro-Hungarian forces after a week long siege. The relative ease of Japan's actions are thought to have helped contribute to the rise of militarism in the late 1920s and 30s.

How could Japan have been bloodied worse in its involvement in World War One? Could the Battle of Tsingtao have turned out worse for Japan, with heavier casualties? Or might Japan have ended up sending troops to another front?

With a harsher experience in the Great War, how will this ATL Japan proceed through the political instabilities of the 1920s? How will the IJA proceed now that it has lost prestige, as they see it, in both wars against European powers? Will the voices calling for the modernization of the Army be heeded and the traditionalists shouted down?
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