Starting with the Meiji Restoration in 1860s, Japan launched a road of aggression on both sea and land in Asia.

The first stage: Expansion in East Sea. Japan occupied Ryukyu Kingdom of the Ryukyu Islands in East Sea by force in 1872 and made it a territory of Japan Okinawa Prefecture in 1879. After occupying the Ryukyu Islands, Japan found an excuse that a Ryukyu fisherman was under attack by Taiwan natives and then invaded China's Taiwan Island in 1874. Failing to seize Taiwan at that time, Japan made an illegal probe to the Diaoyu Islands in 1885 to grab these Chinese territories. In 1894, Japan unleashed a war against China and Korea. One year later, the Japanese military occupied the Diaoyu Islands by the circumstance that China was unprepared. In April, 1895, Japan forced China to sign the Treaty of Shimonoseki, by which Japan took over Taiwan Island and claimed for a war indemnity of 230 million liang (405.7 million ounce) from China.

The second stage: Expansion into Asian Continent. Japan occupied China's Liaodong Peninsular for a time after the Sino- Japanese War (1894-1894). Due to the intervention by Russia, France and Germany, Japan gave up its occupation plan. After defeating China, Japan took Russia as a major rival to fulfill its aggression plan on the Asian Continent. Thus, Japan issued policies to develop army and prepare a war against Russia for hegemony. In 1904, the Russia-Japanese War broke out in China's northeast territories. The next year Japan and Russia signed the Portsmouth Treaty. Russia was forced to recognize that the Korean Peninsula was Japan's exclusive sphere of influence. Russia handed out major economic and political interests in northeast China to Japan. Japan also took over south Sakhalin Island from Russia. In 1905, Japan announced that Korea was its protectorate state and finally made it a territory of Japan in 1910.

As soon as World War I broke out in Europe, Japan occupied China's Qingdao harbor and Shandong Peninsula on the pretext of declaring war against Germany. In 1917, Russia underwent internal unrest because of the October Revolution. Taking this opportunity, Japan invaded Siberia in 1918. These aggressive acts of Japan triggered strong resistance from China and also were opposed by European powers and the United States. Under great pressure of the international community, Japan had to abandon its Shandong interests and retreat from Siberia. But military expansionism fanatics in Japan had become more powerful and rampant. The relations between Japan and the West continued to worsen.

Japan also adopted a hostile attitude toward China's national revolution and unification efforts. During the Northern Expedition (1926-1927) in China, Japanese troops committed the Jinan massacre against Chinese civilians in Shandong Province and assassinated Chinese warlord Zhang Zuolin in Northeast China to interfere in China's domestic politic situation, thus stalling China's unification.

In 1927, Japan's Tanaka Giichi cabinet held a secret meeting and made an expansion conspiracy called Tanaka Memorial that revealed Japan's evil ambition of conquering the world. Tanaka Memorial stressed the fulfillment of conquering the world should be based on an aggression scheme against China. Japanese troops attacked China's military base in Liaoning Province on September 18, 1931, and occupied northeast China in the following months, finishing the first step of action against China.

In 1937, Japanese invaders provoked the Lugou Bridge Incident near Beijing and launched a total war to conquer the rest of China. During the aggression war into China, Japanese troops conducted a large number of horrible massacres and war crimes to Chinese prisoners of war and civilians. The Japanese army left debris and mass corpses across China. Japanese invaders used chemical and biological weapons to kill Chinese and pressganged Chinese laborers to do heavy work as well as forced women to be sex slaves of their army. According to statistics, throughout the Anti-Japanese War, China's casualties reached 35 million and the direct economic loss was over $100 billion and indirect economic loss exceeded $500 billion.

The third stage: Expansion in Pacific Ocean. In December 1941, the Japanese navy air raided Pearl Harbor, the home port of the U.S. pacific fleet, igniting the fuse of the Pacific War. Following the incident, China, the United States and Britain at the same time declared war against Japan. At the beginning of the Pacific War, Japan once occupied most places of the western Pacific Ocean including Southeast Asia. Japanese troops committed many massacres in Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Burma, killing hundreds of thousands civilians and torturing prisoners of war of allied forces to death.

China had made a great contribution to winning the Anti-Fascist War. China pinned down and eliminated the main forces of Japanese troops in East Asian battlefields, greatly supporting allied forces to counterattack enemies in European and other battlefields. In August 1945, the Soviet Union joined in the war against Japan. Later on, the United States destroyed Japan's Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs for the first time in human history. Japan eventually announced unconditional surrender and accepted the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Proclamation completely and agreed to return all invaded territories. This marked that Japan's aggression road suffered an utter defeat since it was carried out in the middle 19th century.

After World War II, the world fell into a new confrontation of Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union. Thus, the United States changed the policy on Japan from transforming the defeated state to supporting it. But crimes of Japanese militarism were not thoroughly condemned and punished. With the support of the United States, Japan made a territorial claim for four islands that the Soviet Union had been occupying. In 1972, the United States gave the jurisdiction of Okinawa back to Japan and Japan took the opportunity to control Diaoyu Islands illegally again.