World history in relation to Japan
This domain tests Japan's place in wider systems - East Asian diplomacy, the European empires, the two world wars and the Cold War - and the causal arrows that run in both directions.
Pre-modern connections
- Sui and Tang embassies: the 607 mission of Ono no Imoko, and the kentōshi until 894, imported the ritsuryō model and Buddhism.
- The Mongol empire's demands (1266 onward) produced the 1274 and 1281 invasions and, indirectly, the bakufu's fiscal crisis.
- Nanban trade, the Dutch factory at Dejima, and rangaku after the 1639 restrictions.
The nineteenth-century order
- The Opium War and the unequal treaties provide the template; Perry's 1853 arrival and the 1858 commercial treaty follow it.
- Meiji diplomacy used international law selectively: the 1902 Anglo-Japanese Alliance, then the 1905 Portsmouth mediation by Theodore Roosevelt.
The twentieth century
- WWI as a chance for expansion (Twenty-One Demands, 1915) and for the 1919 Versailles seat.
- Washington Naval Treaty 1922 (5:5:3 ratio) and the 1930 London Treaty split the navy into treaty and fleet factions; Japan left the League of Nations in 1933 after the Manchurian condemnation.
- Anti-Comintern Pact 1936, Tripartite Pact 1940, then the Pacific war; the postwar order under the US alliance.
Worked example
Question: how did the Washington ratios feed domestic politics? Reasoning: the treaty set capital-ship tonnage at 5:5:3 and was domestically read as a mark of inferiority; the naval general staff's opposition made treaty acceptance a political battle, and the 1930 London Treaty sharpened the split between treaty faction and fleet faction, narrowing later civilian control.
Traps
Treating the alliance with Britain as purely cultural; assuming Japan's League withdrawal came in 1931 rather than 1933; ignoring that the Opium War shaped Japanese thinking before Perry.