Japan perceived the danger. In order to prevent from being divided up and carved up by the Western powers, it was essential for Japan to wean Korea from Chinese suzerainty and make it an independent country that could resist foreign pressure and intervention. China had already lost Vietnam to France and since Korea was its last tributary, adhered to holding it. That was how the war broke out.
"Isolation was the rule for Japan...(Edwin O. Reischauer, East Asia: Tradition and Transformation, co-authored by J. K. Fairbank and A. M. Craig, Houghton Mifflin and Charles E. Tuttle, 1976, p. 553.)" If geopolitically situated as Norway or Switzerland was, Japan would have been saved from developing imperialism.
After the war and the Boxers' Rebellion Russian influence, not Japanese, increased in Manchuria. Great Britain felt threatened and anxious that it might be excluded from commercial activities in Manchuria by Russia. So the Russo-Japanese War was the second round.
After it Japan annexed Korea. "...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, Norton, 1999, pp. 437,8)" The Korean population nearly doubled during the thirty-five years. The average annual economic growth rate was at least more than three percent, some scholars say it was close to four. So Korean GDP would have become at least three times bigger. In 2008 two graduates from Nagoya National University were awarded the Nobel Prize for physics. Seoul National University was established before Nagoya and Osaka National Universities.
To be continued.

The British aristocracy and middle-class, for instance, were afraid of educating the working class, so they were afraid of educating colonized people. Chinese and Korean masses were left illiterate and ignorant by Chinese mandarins and Korean Yangban elite. The samurai class, if so-called for convenience sake, were not afraid of educating masses; they made very much of education. So they brought modern education in Korea and Taiwan.
Primary school had been already started in Korea but hardly spread. It took root and spread in the Japanese days. Koreans became literate, most of them could read the hangul alphabet. Middle schools and vocational schools were started as the economy developed. Life expectancy was twenty-four in 1910, it was forty-four in 1944. Torture had been used but it was abolished by the Japanese. In the museum of the Independence Hall of South Korea built in 1087, "...there is a life size wax exhibition depicts Japanese torture of Koreans that did not actually exist. The cruelty shown by the exhibition makes you cover your eyes. Students from schools all over Korea come to see the exhibition, which reinforces the lessons of their anti-Japanese education (Sonfa Oh, Getting Over It: Why Korea Should Stop Bashing Japan, Tachibana Publishing, Tokyo, 2015, p. 82.)" Oh came to Japan to study as a student. She gradually found gaps between what she had been taught and actually saw. She is a naturalized Japanese, teaching at Takushoku University, Tokyo. She is a persona non grata of the South Korean Government. When her mother died, she went back to Korea but refused to leave the airport. With the good offices of a Japanese consulate she was barely allowed to attend the funeral. When she wanted to attend her nephew's wedding, she was deported to Japan instantly on arriving at the Incheon International Airport. She says,"This book...argues that the narrow egoism and prejudice of the anti-Japanese view reflects Korea's history and racial characteristics (ibid. p. 9.)"
To be continued.

The biter bit ! TV report tonight.
Well, China suffering electricity shortages. Temperatures around zero in some parts.
It will be interesting to confirm that it is a shortage of coal.

Bazz,

Maybe the CCP is withholding coal from its people to get them angry at Australia.

"Look! There's the problem. It's Australia. They're not sending the coal to us. It's stuck on their ships and they won't give it to us."

"We have to invade Australia to secure our source of natural resources."

I will go back to 1905 or the Russo-Japanese War. Japan had picked out Great Britain in the Russo-British competition, because Russia had a territorial ambition and was likely to deceive and Britain was more interested in commercial activities and less likely to deceive.
Japan had spent 230 million yen, which it financed with much difficulty, knowing that asking for loans was risking being colonized. It cost eight times as much and could not fight Russia without getting loans. It was not victory for Japan, it was at best a draw. Japan had depleted human and material resources while Russia had its inexhaustible resources and manpower untapped yet and could go on. President Theodore Roosevelt wanted neither too strong or too weak against the other and intermediated for peace. France persuaded Russia to accept the invitation because it did not want to see its ally spend more energy in the Far East, both France and Russian facing German power on the increase in Europe, and Russia had big domestic troubles; it was only twelve years before the 1917's Bolshevik Revolution. The two countries signed the Treaty of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It was not victory so Japan did not get indemnities from Russia, it got only the Southern half of Sakhalin and some fishing rights. The last penny it owed was paid back in 1986. The war was a huge drain on Japanese economy, but Japan had to take chances for security.
(In passing, Americans were allowed by Japan to continue sending financial assistance during the Pacific War to Jews living in the Shanghai International Settlement. Jew living in other parts of China, Manchuria, and Japan were protected in spite of German protests. German Ambassador Ott and Germans living in Japan were angry. "The attempt (by the Japanese Government during the Pacific War) to transfer the traditional admiration for Britain and the US to Nazi Germany did not succeed, because respect for the West could not be obliterated while Germany's racism and arrogance offended so many Japanese...
To be continued.

Continued from my preceding comment.

"...Western culture, although denigrated and vilified, continued to exert a fascination, and these pro-Western feelings, which could not be erased, were soon to surface from the ashes of defeat (Ben-Amy Shillony, Politics and Culture in Wartime Japan, 1981, Clarendon Press, Oxford, pp.176-7.)"
"Any Westerner in Japan is almost automatically assumed to be an American unless he can prove the contrary - a situation that some find intensely irritating (E. O. Reischauer, The Japanese, 1978, p.415.)"

"Then why the Pacific War?" is a good question if someone asks it. Most Westerners have not asked it. I suppose most Australians have not asked it. Why? Because there is no money to make in the question?

Kaiser Wilhelm II warned President Roosevelt of the Yellow Peril after the Russo-Japanese War. What wrong did the Japanese do to be so labelled? The answer is that the Japanese did not behave well like the Vietnamese, Egyptians, Congolese, etc.

It was the US foreign policy that most amply put the Yellow Peril theory into practice against Japan. A misplaced theory, it was.

To be continued.