RF wrote:Unsuccessful because it was inept.
Japan was a major world power from 1905, when they defeated the Russians. In WW1 Japan confirmed that position by declaring war on Germany, seizing the Mariana, Marshall and Palau island groups and beseiging Tsingtao. They also sent some destroyers to the Med. Beyond that the Japanese contributed nothing further militarily. The British, French and the Americans put far more into winning the war and took the casualties. What Japan gained territorially from WW1 was proportionate to their contribution to defeating Germany. I don't see that they were snubbed at all Versailles.
I repeat that the Washington Naval Treaties gave Japan the world's third largest fleet, larger than the French and Italians, together with effective control of the western Pacific. The British and US had worldwide naval commitments, the Japanese did not. What the Japanese got was in fact quite generous, a larger navy than a major European colonial power in east Asia. I don't see that it discriminates in any way against the Japanese. Militarists in Japan made out that it was discriminatory to further their own ambitions rather than benefit the Japanese people as a whole.
Post 1945 the Japanese Empire has survived and prospered with only a tiny coastal defence force and no ocean going navy, let alone to having one of the world's biggest fleets. And there is no evidence that the Japanese people believe that they are currently being discriminated against by having such small military forces. Indeed some Japanese are distinctly uncomfortable with the suggestion that their forces and commiments should be increased.
..... I do not wish to get involved in a lengthy parsing of language and endless deconstructions of an endless succession of posts, so I will confine my remarks to the following. You are certainly entitled to your view, but repetition thereof in and of itself is not proof. I still look forward to your reasoned analysis pointing out the inept particulars of Japanese post WW1 international policy. By your standards, one could quite easily argue that Japanese PRE-WW1 alignment with the western allies was itself inept, because Japan most certainly gained nothing beyond a lot of insubstantial window-dressing that effectively hid a great power agenda meant to commit Japan to a persistent inferior international status.
I cannot see how post-1905 Japan could be described as a major world power - Japan could certainly be described legitimately as a regional Asian power, but it was far from a "world power". The Japan of today, to put it bluntly, is functionally a client state more or less comfortable in its reliance upon a lenient USA both for its post-war economic prosperity and its national defense.
What this devolves down to is an issue which we have argued elsewhere, i.e. - Japan's right as a nation to possess and act upon ambitions of empire.
B