Why did Japan rise from an isolated society to a major industrial and imperial power in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries?
O Japan realized that to conquer and colonize eastern Russia, it would need to modernize its military forces.
The Japanese government believed that the best way to respond to Western imperial interest in East Asia was to rapidly
modernize.
o Western governments forced Japan to open its ports to trade with the industrialized nations of the West.
O Japan wanted to keep up with the rapid industrialization and modernization of China and Korea.

Explanation: During the first half of the Meiji period, Asian relations were seen as less important than domestic development. In 1874 a punitive expedition was launched against Formosa (Taiwan) to chastise the aborigines for murdering Ryukyuan fishermen. This lent support to Japanese claims to the Ryukyu Islands, which had been under Satsuma influence in Tokugawa times. Despite Chinese protests, the Ryukyus were incorporated into Japan in 1879. Meanwhile, calls for an aggressive foreign policy in Korea, aired by Japanese nationalists and some liberals, were steadily rejected by the Meiji leaders. At the same time, China became increasingly concerned about expanding Japanese influence in Korea, which China still viewed as a tributary state. Incidents on the peninsula in 1882 and 1884 that might have involved China and Japan in war were settled by compromise, and in 1885 China and Japan agreed that neither would send troops to Korea without first informing the other