Japan was not merely the first non-Western nation to defeat a white-majority power.

Why Did That War Happen? Look Through the Mirror Called the United States
August 10, 2018
The following is a continuation of Masayuki Takayama’s column "Henken Jizai" from this week’s issue of Shukan Shincho.
Ten years later, during the Russo-Japanese War, what had once been surprise transformed into fear.
Japan was not merely the first non-Western nation to defeat a white-majority power.
From ancient Greece onward, naval battles had always followed the ramming tactic—each ship attempting to strike the enemy's side with its prow.
But the Japanese navy sank forty Russian warships—including armored battleships—without even making physical contact.
Japan had redefined the very nature of naval warfare.
"The Japanese are a threat," wrote Theodore Roosevelt to his friend Alfred Mahan.
Bringing Japan down became a matter of pride—and destiny—for Western powers, especially the United States.
Roosevelt immediately brokered the Treaty of Portsmouth, deliberately ensuring that Japan would receive neither an inch of territory nor a single cent in reparations.
To further burden Japan, he saddled it with the troublesome Korean Peninsula.
These two maneuvers succeeded in severely weakening Japan’s economy.
Woodrow Wilson, through his Committee on Public Information (CPI), successfully drove a wedge between Japan and China.
Warren Harding nullified the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, isolating Japan on the world stage.
China’s borders, since the Qin Dynasty, had never extended beyond the Great Wall—but Herbert Hoover brazenly declared that Manchuria and Tibet were Chinese territory, delegitimized the state of Manchukuo, and drove Japan out of the League of Nations.
Franklin D. Roosevelt put the finishing touches on this half-century campaign to destroy Japan by laying a trap at Pearl Harbor—thus removing what the West saw as a threatening "nonwhite" power.
And yet, Japan rose again—its economic and cultural refinement once more astonishing the world.
It is precisely because of this that New Hampshire state legislator Nick Levasseur once said, “Two atomic bombs weren't enough.”
That statement was nothing more than the bitter outcry of a deep-seated inferiority complex.
Why did that war happen?
If you look at history through the mirror that is the United States, the answer becomes clear.