Is the root of all Japanese aggression essentially just insecurity? I mean...

Tojo actually visited Prussia and was inspired by them. It wasn't subconcious.

In what way, war time atrocities notwithstanding? I'm not really read up on the subject, but korea was actually modernized and industrialized under japanese rule, which is a stark contrast to the usual european mode of operation which just amounted to "just build a fucking railroad so we can get shit easier out of the country"

>which is a stark contrast to the usual european mode of operation which just amounted to "just build a fucking railroad so we can get shit easier out of the country"

It's funny you mention that...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma_Railway

>Javanese, Malayan Tamils of Indian origin, Burmese, Chinese, Thai and other Southeast Asians, forcibly drafted by the Imperial Japanese Army to work on the railway, died in its construction — including 100,000 Tamils alone.
>12,621 Allied POWs died during the construction.

Also mines too

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benxihu_Colliery

They used Chinese civilians as slave labor and then...

>On April 26, 1942, a gas and coal-dust explosion in the mine sent flames bursting out of the mine shaft entrance. Miners' relatives rushed to the site but were denied entry by a cordon of Japanese guards who erected electric fences to keep them out.
>In an attempt to curtail the fire underground, the Japanese shut off the ventilation and sealed the pit head.
>Witnesses say that the Japanese did not evacuate the pit fully before sealing it, trapping many Chinese workers underground to suffocate in the smoke.
>The Japanese at first reported the death toll to be just 34. Initial newspaper reports were short, as little as 40 words, and downplayed the size of the disaster as a minor event.
>Later the Japanese erected a monument to the dead. This stone gave the number of dead to be 1,327. The true number is believed to be 1,549, 34% of the miners working that day, making it the worst disaster in the history of coal mining and the second worst recorded industrial accident.

There's plenty of stuff like this

T. nip

No, it's literally from seeing the entire world being fucked up by westerners and deciding that they should also join in the fucking up to protect themselves.
Also Chinese culture and Japanese culture are very different and have always been so. They consciously took elements of Chinese culture and introduced them in Japan, but never with the aim of copying the Chinese (this is also valid for pretty much all nations that did something similar AFAIK).

>warrior culture
That "warrior culture" never remained static in Japan, the Sengoku mentality was the mentality of one era among many others. However, the aspect that stressed blind obedience to a master did indeed have its effect as it can be correlated to the way in which people were directed to the same kind of obedience towards the divine incarnate, the emperor.
>Buddhism
There's nothing in Buddhism that even comes close to advocating conflict, of any kind. Japan's Nichiren Buddhism is actually rooted in ultranationalism, but Nichirenism was never the dominating ideology. In the overall history of Japan rulers have always been suspicious of Buddhism and sought to control it as much as they could. Furthermore Japanese nationalists of any age (and these guys existed for a veeery long time) detested most of what Buddhism contained and considered that the "natural" Japanese way of things was better. This was also true for Confucianism in one specific subject: revolutions to overthrow rulers that had lost "legitimacy"; this aspect of Confucianism was condemned and pretty much censored in Japan.

I'm not going to say Japanese imperialism wasn't brutal, but labor standards and the way national, to speak nothing of foreign or racially discriminated workers were treated were abysmal even in Europe and the US as little as a decade prior to WW2. I'm pretty sure similar incidents (maybe with smaller death tolls) happened in European colonies as well.

>but labor standards and the way national, to speak nothing of foreign or racially discriminated workers were treated were abysmal even in Europe

You're barely speaking English here

There's a reason the Chinese word for Japanese was "midget barbarians"

small benis :DDDD

>Japanese Aggression.
Meme.

Deadly combo of 19th century nationalism, fear of colonial rule, and actually believing every romantic bullshit that the """"""""""'Bushido Code""""""""""""" supposed to upheld.

>I'll just do what every western country does and steal shit from someone else
Except they continued doing that when the Western Colonial Powers- right after WWI- went "Guys, from now on, keep what you have, nobody get any more shit."

>19th century nationalism,
Japan's nationalism wasn't 19th Century Nationalism at all which went "Muh Liberalism" and "Muh Single Race and Nation."

Japan's went "Strengthen the country by centralizing it the fuck out and obey the emperor." If anything, it had strong grounding on Confucianism, which had a revival in 18th Century Japan which in turn gave birth to the Sonno movement.

Sun yat sen literally asked them to use their status wisely and the first fucking thing they did with their newfound power was go on a technological chimpout all accross asia and even helping the chinese communist party come to power (ironically enough)

They are not bad people, but when one of their arrogant pricks decides to edge it out that person will rally everyone else by the sword to die with him

Yeah they were late to the game. Fifity years earlier and they might have gotten away with it

That's only because shit was being flung and it bit Europe in the ass.

>callously brutal and inhumane even compared to western countries.
COUGH BELGIAN CONGO COUGH

>be tribesman living on an isolated island
>everyday chore of farming and hunting bear
>mainlanders calling themselves wajin begun to migrate to the southern parts of your island
>"all right, we could use some neighbours"
>wajin immigrants made a kingdom and expand further north
>make a profit out of it by trading with them
>they expand into our territory
>no signs of stopping
>fuck it and leave the island for a smaller island up north
>resumes life as always
>wajin's kingdom broke into pieces
>took the opportunity to mend bonds and resume trading with them
>the kingdom fused back
>they came back for us again
Remove wajin!

>Also Chinese culture and Japanese culture are very different and have always been so.

How does one steal culture?

Congo was Leopold's amusement park of death.