American Leadership 1919-1929 

By the end of the First World War, Japan's main rival in the western Pacific region was the United States. America had acquired its own possession in the Philippines in 1898 and annexed Hawaii, Guam and Wake Island, but was behind the other powers in its commercial exploitation of China. Worried by growing Japanese power, the US had embarked upon an ambitious naval building programme before the war and committed to constructing a navy "second-to-none" during it. Japan responded with its own new ships as a direct counter move. 

To restrict Japanese expansion by forging a new order for east Asia and the Pacific, but also to respond to the adverse financial climate of the early 1920s, America brought the major powers together in Washington over the winter of 1921-2. The USA, Britain, France and Japan signed a pact to respect each other's Pacific colonies for ten years and agreed to consult if disputes arose. A nine power agreement recognised China's independence, territorial integrity and open door commercial status. A naval arms limitation treaty between the US, Britain, France, Japan and Italy set a ratio of capital ships to be held by USA, Britain and Japan at 5:5:3. They agreed to abandon their existing capital ship programmes for ten years, subject to certain exceptions, and to scrap ships already built or under construction. The Japanese protested unavailingly at this disparity, even though their fleet still maintained its superiority in Asian waters. Yet again, they felt denied equality with the West. Moreover, the stabilising influence of the 1902 Anglo-Japanese alliance was lost when Britain, forced by the US to choose between American and Japanese friendship, did not renew the treaty in 1921. 

For the moment, Japan had bowed to the force of American power politics. However, frustration at the lack of progress overseas was fomenting unsettling changes to the established order at home. Public displeasure at the naval treaty compelled the Cabinet to resign. Numbers of extreme nationalist factions, angry at the perceived insults of the West (particularly at the Paris Peace Conference), were growing rapidly. These groups were having an increasing influence on both civilian and military life, often employing violence as a prime tactic. Political assassinations became common; in the thirty years before Pearl Harbor, six Prime Ministers were murdered. 

In the 1920s, the army and navy, which held powerful positions of influence within the political hierarchy, became increasingly unruly. The army, in particular, was gripped by the same extreme nationalism which had taken root in other areas of society. Such extremists, which included officers of all ranks among their number, were successful in acquiring a strong grip on the Japanese Army in Korea and Manchuria. The two services had divergent foreign policy aims. The army advocated expansion on the Asian mainland, where the Soviet Union would be the enemy. The navy looked outward across the Pacific, where it would encounter the Americans, as it searched for supplies of oil vital for Japanese survival.

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