I am glad the commmentay is still on display. I hope my comments will be read by many people.
The people of the West, the United States included, made a favourable and friendly misunderstanding of China and an unfavourable and unfriendly misunderstading of Japan from the 19th century when East Asia and the West met in modern times. They thought China would quicly modernise itself but Japan would have much difficulty in doing so.

I said Japan's war, 1894~95, with China was for Japan's national self-defense, and Loudmouth said in reply, "So Japan had and still has a divine right to invade, absorb, settle Korea?"
Japan fought the war, not to invade, absorb, settle Korea. Japan fought it in order to avoid being divided and carved up by Western powers, as I (Michi Moriyama) said in my two comments, 15 October, 2010, on Nicholas Kristof/Look Out for the Diaoyu Islands/New York Times online.

https://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/look-out-for-the-diaoyu-islands/

Japan had received news of what the Western countries had been doing and the news of the Opium War mainly through her conact with the Dutch emvoys; the Japanese leaders thought that Japan would be carved up if the Russo-British rivalry was left as it was developing in this area. They wanted China to take the lead in defending themselves, but China was insensitive to and oblivious of the gathering storm, and so Japan had to take a chance; the leaders were not very sure be of victory and most, if not litterally all, of Western observers thought that Japan would easily be defeated by China.
It was a war fought, a proxy war, for the interests of Czarist Russia and perfidious Albion, with Chinese and Japanese blood.
To be continued.

It was Russian influence, not Japanese infulence, that extended over the Korean Peninsula. So the Japanese had to fight again in 1904~05. Great Britain and the United States again stood behind Japan because they did not like any increase of Russian presence; they lent a lot of money to Japan. It was not a Japanese win; it was a draw.

Settle Korea? Loudmouth was joking. Japan used far more money on Korea than she drew out from the peninsula. "By this standard, however, the best colonial master of all time has been Japan, for no ex-colonies have done so well as (South) Korea and Taiwan...The world belongs to those with a clear conscience, something Japan has had in near-unanimous abundance (David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations.)" I would rather have Prof. Landes had included North Korea and Manchuria. North Korea was the best industrialised part in the peninsula, and Manchuria in China at the time of Japanese surrender.

"Nonetheless, Japan's rule over Korea was very different from Western powers' control over their colonies.
1 Japan implemented no policies aimed at exploiting Korea.
2 Japan did not use armed suppression to govern.
3 Japan rigorously promoted the modernization of culture, society
and education.
4 Japan promoted the assimilation of Korean people into mainland
Japan. (Sonfa Oh, Getting Over It: Why Korea Needs to Stop Bashing Japan.)"

When China suffered a terrible defeat in the Opium war, her leaders still did not feel any need to change themselves; they thought as before that those blue-eyed, yellow-haired barbarians from the Occident would ultimately acknowledge the greatness and splendour of the Middle Kingdom and kneel down and kowtow.
When China was defeated in their war with Japan, their shock was enormous like the one the world boxing champion of the heavyweight class would fee

When China was defeated by Japan, her shock was such that the boxing champion of the heavyweigt class would feel if knocked down by a boxer of the flyweight class.
But the interesting thing is that Chinese children and young people are taught at school that the Opium War woke up China, not the war with Japan.
Another interesting thing is that Chinese school does not teach that Chinese leaders like Liang Qichao or young men Chiang Kaishek and Zhou Enlai went to Japan to learn.