and they believed that control of adjacent territories would yield many of these resources and strengthen the defenses of Japan.
The political decay and military weakness of China and Korea made these lands ripe for foreign aggression, and Japanese leaders eagerly joined Europeans in the game of winning territories and economic privileges from the weaker regimes of Asia. In 1872, the Japanese tried out their armed forces and the European techniques of forceful diplomacy by sending a punitive expedition to China’s island dependency of Formosa to chastise the natives for having killed some sailors from the Ryukyu Islands, which were now recognized as belonging to Japan. The expedition was successful, and Japan forced the Chinese to pay an indemnity.
Two years later Japan used the same tactics in Korea that the Americans had employed against the Tokugawa. By a show of naval might, the king of Korea was forced to open his land to foreign intercourse and to sign a treaty granting to Japan the special privileges usually demanded by European powers from Asiatic states. For the next two decades the new government contented itself with intrigues in Korea to gain control of the peninsula and to force the Chinese to give up their claim to suzerainty. Men like Saigo, the Satsuma rebel, had advocated a policy of immediate military expansion, but the dominant group in the government insisted that internal reforms must come first.
Not until 1894 did Japan feel strong enough for a real test of arms. In that year she precipitated a war with China over the control of Korea. The Japanese