orced to sign treaties, clearly outgunned by the western powers, and needing trade to solve economic problems. This "marked the end of Tokugawa seclusion" (Bunge 19).
Beasley writes that in the later Tokugawa period an ideological split took place between Confucianism and the belief that Japan's "special qualities" were a matter of "divine descent" leading to the emperor, and requiring absolute loyalty to that leader. Thereby, a link developed between nationalism and the divinity of the emperor which would develop into the belief that Japan deserved to be in control of far more than its own islands. This ideology set up a situation in which expansionism was inevitable, based on the belief that
Japan is the land of the gods and we their descendants. . . . Japanese . . . are superior to the peoples of China, India, Russia, Holland, Siam, Cambodia, and all other countries of the world (Beasley 24-25).
Japan under increasingly military leadership adopted the ideology that t
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