Succeeding in this, Japan later fought and won the Russo-Japanese War against the Russian Empire in 1904-1905, cementing itself as one of the world's great powers and first non-European nation to achieve this status. With its newfound power, Japan sought to make up for its lack of resources by securing them overseas, through invading neighboring nations, starting with its invasion of Korea in 1895, the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894-1895, where Japan conquered Taiwan. Historical background Īfter Japan's unification during the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the Japanese Empire had undergone a period of rapid westernization and industrialization, with the goal of making Japan a power on par with the other western nations. Mainland Japan is surrounded by sea, with the Sea of Japan to the west, the East China Sea to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the east. They also border China through East Hebei and their puppet Mengkukuo. Japan borders with the Soviet Union, both directly through the Sakhalin island and the northern Korean border as well as the northern border of their puppet Manchukuo.
Flat, arable land can be found around the major cities of Japan. It has a couple of urban areas, namely Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.
Mainland Japan is dominated by mountains, which run through almost the entire country. Japan also controls the puppet states of Manchukuo and Mengkukuo. Japan also owns the Korean peninsula, the city of Quingdao, South Sakhalin and a lot of strategic islands in the Pacific including: Taiwan, Okinawa, Saipan, Guam and Iwo Jima. It is mainly made up of the four major islands: Kyushu, Shikoku, Honshu, and Hokkaido. Japan is located in the far east of Asia. The signing ceremony of the Act of Capitulation took place on September 2 aboard the United States Navy battleship USS Missouri (BB-63). After several days of backroom negotiations and failed attempts to destroy the stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons of Unit 731 in Manchuria, which were captured by Soviet paratroopers, and the collapse of the Kwantung Army, in August 15, Hirohito addressed the nation by radio and announced the surrender of Japan. The total shock of these events forced Emperor Hirohito to intervene and compel the big six to agree on the terms of ending the war, taken by the Allies in the Potsdam Conference. Only hours later, the Americans dropped a second nuclear bomb on Nagasaki, destroying a small portion of it. Late in the evening of August 8, according to the Yalta agreements, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, and shortly after midnight on August 9, attacked Manchukuo and Mengkukuo. On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, flattening the center of the city. After invading China, Japan struck southwards, invading and conquering British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), in hopes of securing their resources, followed by an invasion of the British Raj. In 1937, after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, Japan declared war on China, beginning the Second Sino-Japanese War in which Japan invaded and conquered much of eastern China, installing additional puppet regimes along the way, including Mengkukuo and the "Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China". Some consider that World War II actually began with the invasion of China by Japan, first by taking Manchuria and installing their puppet the Manchukuo regime. Japan was the leader of the Axis powers in the Pacific Theater.
Neutral(1936), Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere(1939)