Behind Japan’s modernization and Westernization was the recognition that Western imperialism was surging in Asia and that China was a prime example of what happened to countries unable to defend themselves against it. Accordingly, achieving political and military equality with the Great Powers of Europe and the United States became a central aim of Japan’s modernization program.

Strengthening Japan against Western aggression increasingly meant “throwing off Asia,” a phrase that implied rejecting many of Japan’s own cultural traditions and its habit of imitating China as well as creating an Asian empire of its own. Fukuzawa Yukichi, a popular advocate of Western knowledge, declared:

Historically the Japanese had borrowed a great deal from China—Buddhism, Confucianism, court rituals, city-planning ideas, administrative traditions, and elements of the Chinese script. But Japan’s victory in a war with China in 1894–1895 showed clearly that it had thrown off the country in whose cultural shadow it had lived for centuries. Furthermore, Japan had begun to acquire an East Asian empire in Korea and Taiwan. And its triumph over Russia in another war ten years later illustrated its ability to stand up to a major European power. The significance of these twin victories is expressed in Visual Source 19.4, a Japanese image created during the Russo-Japanese War and titled The Japanese Navy Uses China as Bait to Trap the Greedy Russian.