Japan doesn't teach about its war-crimes. The West doesn't teach about its trade-crimes.

. “On July 2, 1940, Roosevelt signed the Export Control Act, authorizing the President to license or prohibit the export of essential defense materials.” Under this authority, “[o]n July 31, exports of aviation motor fuels and lubricants and No. 1 heavy melting iron and steel scrap were restricted.” Next, in a move aimed at Japan, Roosevelt slapped an embargo, effective October 16, “on all exports of scrap iron and steel to destinations other than Britain and the nations of the Western Hemisphere.” Finally, on July 26, 1941, Roosevelt “froze Japanese assets in the United States, thus bringing commercial relations between the nations to an effective end. One week later Roosevelt embargoed the export of such grades of oil as still were in commercial flow to Japan.” The British and the Dutch followed suit, embargoing exports to Japan from their colonies in southeast Asia.

I don't know what this resume of Japanese imperialism (or Japanese people seeking room to expand) has to do with the China- Australia relationship, which is where we started.

The Conversation has a nice take on the Spratly Islands also known as South China Sea. Nowhere near China, I might add.

I'm amazed that China has the money and power to keep pushing its world expansion plans along.

Check it out.

https://theconversation.com/fishing-not-oil-is-at-the-heart-of-the-south-china-sea-dispute-63580

Loudmouth and nickname,

The Sino-Japanese war was started by an accident on July 7, 1937. Several shots were fired by the Kuomintang army, presumably by infiltrated communists. Both Japan and China wanted to contain it; neither wanted to escalate it and in fact the two countries came to truce agreement a few times. But it became a big war without either side declaring war, and as the war got bigger and bigger, the US-Japanese relations soured and got strained, so the two countries started negotiations in Washington in spring, 1941.
The Roosevelt administration wanted to engage in war with Nazi Germany to help Great Britain and, therefore, wanted to avoid armed hostilites in the Pacific with Japan. Japan thought in the beginnig that it could easily knock down China but, as China received military assistance from the US and Great Britain, it found itself inadvertantly dragged into a prolonged, exhausting war, which was another big reason why it proposed negotiations with the United States. What it wanted was a withdrawal from China with its good appearace preserved like Nixon's "peace with honour."
Prime Minister Konoe was so shocked by the total embargoes of the US in July, 1941, and he also had thought that the armed forces, particularly the army, stood very much in the way of success in the US-Japanese talks, that he wanted to talk with President Roosevelt and make compromises which would have been impossible to attain domestically (within Japanese politics) and he intended to send the concessions directly by telegram to Hirohito and get over domestic resistance by dint of Hirohito's moral prestige. (Even the Japanese army was not monolithic and even Tojo did not want to go to war with the United States. He and the army liked to get out of the hopeless war with China. They insisted on a few years to take to withdraw from China but US secretary of State Hull insisted on a few months.) To be continued.

Both the army and the navy had agreed to Konoe's idea and selected generals, adimirals and military experts to accompany Konoe. Secretary Hull refused the proposal, saying that more details ought to be worked out beforehand.
Tojo succeeded Konoe as prime minister and he asked Shigenori Togo as foreign minister to continue the negotiations. Togo accepted the post after discussing with Tojo and making sure that war was not a foregone conclusion. Togo said to US ambassador Joseph Grew after recieving a reply from Hull on November 26 that he was shocked and completely disappointed (Joseph Grew/ Ten Years In Japan). The final decision was made in Tokyo on December 1, a week before the Pearl Harbour attack. The Roosevelt administration knew on November 26 when Hull handed the note called Hull Note to two Japanese ambassadors that Japan would respond militarily. (When the Suzuki cabinet was formed in April with Togo as foreing minister, 1945, J. Grew and others knew that the cabinet would lead Japan to surrender. Tojo said, "This is the end. This is our Badoglio cabinet. Actually, groups of Japanese had already started to consider how to end the war. Communication within Japan was intercepted or decoded by the United States, which knew Japan wanted to surrender.)
Many experts say the US-Japanese talks did harm to Japan but good to the United States, which wanted to make war on Germany, because Washington could do things which otherwise would have been impossible to do as the Roosevelt administration's hands had been tied down by strong anti-war feelings, because the negotiation was like playing chess in which each Japanese move could be countered by American one. America entered the European war by the back door, Japan.

The military clash that broke out at Changkufeng in 1938 was the reconnaissance manuevering to test the other's strength. This skirmish was followed by another at Nomonhan in 1939. The Rise Of Modern Japan). To be continued.

The Japanese "Kwantung army suffered on each occasion a serous reverse (ibid)."

Japan was dependent on the United States for virtually all its oil and iron supplies. It asked the Netherlands for oil sales but was denied. So its army advanced into northern Vietnam just in case for oil and other natural resources. What proved disastrous was its occupation of southern Vietnam. The United States retaliated with the total embargoes. Prime Minister Konoe was so shocked by this response, which he had hardly expected though many Japanese expersts had warned him of its serious implications. So he decided to meet with President Roosevelt.

1930s' Japan is usually termed militarist Japan. Even Japan at that time was very different from Germany: It did not have a concentration camp like Germany or Commnunist China; it did not have the police like Gestapo or Commnunist China's Armed Police and Public Security Police. Its parliament functioned and every bill had to be passed by it to be effective as a law except some special military expenditures.
"Consequently,...the Diet passed a Wartime Emergency Measure Bill...which authorized the government to take all necessary measures to ensure military production, supply of foodstuffs, transport, payment of taxes, and care for the victims of air raids. The original draft required the govenment to 'report' on the use of these powers to a special Diet committee. But the House of Peers amended the bill, requiring the government to 'consult' the Diet committee, rather than merely 'report' to it. Thus, even under the most extreme circumstances, the Diet was eager to retain the last vestiges of its power (Ben-Ami Shillony, Politics and Culture in Wartime Japan)." To be continued.

What is usually termed militarist Japan of the 1930s was in reality a country far different from Nazi Germany or Communist China. It did not have a concentration camp, the police like Gestapo or China's Armed Police and Public Peace Police or a strongly organized propaganda system like Germany's and China's.

More than seventy years have passed since the end of the war, and we can look at the past in a more disapassionate way. "the wartime regime of Japan, repressive as it was, was very different from the totalitarian states of that time in other places. When one realizes how tenuous and frail democracy is elsewhere in the world, and how strong is the tendendy towards arbitrary rule, one may conclude by wondering not why democracy failed in Japan, but rather how, despite the undemocratic tradition and the pressure of war, a totalitarian dictatorship did not evolve (Ben-Ami Shillony)."
It is widely held that the seed of democracy in postwar Japan was brought and sown and grown by the United States. This is totally wrong. Japan had been developing democracy in prewar days. All men twenty five years old or older than it were given suffrage in 1925. Women's suffrage was already discussed in 1920s and 30s. "Despite common American and Japanese (and probaly Australian) assumptions that Japan had made an entirely new political start after the war, this flow was basically the continuation of prewar trends, especially those of the twenties (Edwin O. Reischauer, Japan: The Story of a Nation)." To be continued.