This study will examine the intellectual and ideological process whereby Japan moved from rule by oligarchs to a form of liberal democratic government in the 1920s and then finally to totalitarianism and total war in the 1930s. The study will argue that there were certain weaknesses or contradictions inherent in the ideology behind the national shifts which took place in the Meiji Era and which were translated into foreign policy in the first three decades of the 20th century. The basis of these weaknesses or contradictions had primarily to do with the inevitable conflicts which Japan experienced as it moved, in a relatively short time, from being an isolated and weaker nation to a regional and global power prominent in international relations:
For centuries the Japanese had lived in the shadow of China; for over two hundred years they had been almost wholly cut off from the world. Now they found themselves a center of world attention, feared, admired, and imitated by backward nations seeking to benefit from Japan's example (131).
As the authors note, this rapid change brought tremendous challenges to Japan's traditional way of life and government. This occurred because in moving into the world, Japan had to deal with "Western ideas and institutions" (131) which stood in stark contrast to Japan's traditional ideas and institutions. Once the doors to the West were opened, the flood of Western influences could not be stopped. At the same time, the traditional ways of Japanese life and government were so firmly rooted that the resulting clash of Western and Japanese ways was inevitably a volatile mixture with which Japanese leaders had to quickly learn to deal: "As to just where [the new lines of policy] should turn the ruling oligarchy itself was by no means clear" (132).
Modernization in all areas of Japanese life combined with the desire to deal more effectively with the West, but this, as mentioned, meant relating with ways o...