East and Southeast Asia - SAT Subject Test in World History

The only one of these answers that is an island that makes up part of the country of Japan is Honshu. The four main islands that make up the nation of Japan are Honshu, Hokkaido, Shikoku, and Kyushu. Honshu is the primary island that contains most of the nation’s largest cities, such as Tokyo. Seoul is the capital of South Korea, Osaka is a city in Japan, Hong Kong is an island off the coast of China, and Tahiti is an island nation in the South Pacific.

The Japanese Emperor during the Second World War was Emperor Hirohito. He encouraged Japanese militarism and argued that he was divinely ordained to rule the nation. Following Japanese surrender, Hirohito renounced his divinity and agreed to constitutional rule.

Hideki Tojo led Japan during the Second World War as Prime Minister. He authorized the attacks on Pearl Harbor that brought the United States of America into the Pacific and Atlantic theatres of World War Two.

Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution is particularly important for understanding Japanese-American relations and Japanese-Chinese relations. The Article officially and permanently renounces Japan’s right to maintain an armed force for the purpose of using war to settle international disputes. According to the Article, Japan is effectively forbidden, in its constitution, from engaging in aggressive war and can only defend itself.

1931 could reasonably be seen as the beginning of World War Two in East Asia. This was the year when Japan invaded mainland China, occupying the territory of Manchuria and insituting a puppet-government that lasted until the end of the war in 1945.

The Bataan Death March happened in 1942 after the Battle of Bataan in the Philippines. It involved the forced transfer of American and Filipino prisoners of war by the Japanese Imperial army, in which several thousand American and Filipino soldiers perished. It was later deemed a war crime by the Allied military commission.

The Battle of Leyte Gulf was the largest naval battle of the Second World War. It was fought between the combined Allied forces, led by America and Australia, and the Japanese Imperial Navy. The battle resulted in an overwhelming defeat for the Japanese Imperial Navy, which was never again able to engage the Allied powers in large numbers.

Admiral Isokoru Yamamoto is one of the most famous military commanders of World War Two. He led the Japanese fleet in the attack on Pearl Harbor and coordinated the fleet at the Battle of Midway. He is also widely remembered for the pioneering developments in aviation that he fostered in the Japanese navy, namely the use of aircraft carriers and small planes used as the primary weapons of naval engagements. He is not, however, remembered for personally surrendering to the American forces at the end of World War Two, as his plane was shot down by an American pilot in 1943.

The relations between Japan and China suffered in the years after the Second World War and continue to suffer to this day in large part as a result of atrocities committed by the Japanese during their invasion of China and perceived historical insensitivity on the part of the Japanese. The Rape of Nanking, a weeks-long massacre involving horrible violence and the rape of women that took place in 1937, is the most infamous and offensive of these atrocities.

For much of Chinese and Japanese history, the relations between these two countries have been amicable. China's influence over Japanese culture, language, and customs cannot be overstated; however, in the nineteenth century, things changed. The Chinese were humiliated time and again by Britain and the other European powers, and as the Japanese began to modernize in the Meiji Restoration, they came to look at China as backwards and unable to defend itself.

The Meiji Restoration is the name given to the modernization and westernization of Japanese society in the second half of the nineteenth century. As a result of Japan's increasing economic and military power combined with China's subjugation by the British and French, the Japanese came to view the Chinese as a backwards nation that was unable to defend itself.

During the Chinese Civil War, the Nationalist Party, which wanted to install a democratic government in China, was forced off of the Chinese mainland and eventually installed a Chinese state on the island of Taiwan (sometimes called Chinese Taipei). This led to a situation where the majority of Western countries, and Japan, recognized the government of Taiwan as the only legitimate Chinese government until the 1970s. The communist government of mainland China was considered illegitimate by the United States and Japan during the more fractious years of the early Cold War.

Trade between China and Japan, from the end of the Second World War until the early 1970s, was only conducted in an unofficial, black-market form; however, in 1972 (concurrent with Nixon's visit to China), trade relations between Japan and China were normalized and each country is now one of the largest trading partners of the other.

Since the end of the Second World War, the biggest obstacle to friendly relations between the People's Republic of China and Japan has been the memory of Japanese wartime atrocities. In particular, the horrific Rape of Nanking stands out as the most divisive of incidents. This situation is exacerbated by frequent Japanese refusals to recognize and apologize for the atrocities committed during the Second World War. In the twenty-first century, these issues have shown some signs of abating as Japan has issued some formal apologies and offered concessions to the Chinese government. Still, the people of each country remain distrustful of the people of the other country.

The Korean War was fought between the communist government of North Korea and the capitalist government of South Korea. The United States and other democratic and capitalist countries involved themselves on the side of the South Koreans, and China and other communist countries involved themselves on the side of the North Koreans.

The Japanese occupied the Korean peninsula in 1910 in one of their earliest waves of imperial expansion that would mark the next thirty-five years of East Asian history. The Japanese remained in Korea until 1945, when the northern half of the country was liberated by the Soviet Union and a communist government established there and the southern half was liberated by the United States and a capitalist government established there. This would lead directly to the Korean War.

During the Cold War the United States and the Soviet Union never came into direct combat with one another. Instead the capitalist nations of Western Europe and America fought a series of proxy wars against the Communist nations of U.S.S.R. and China. A proxy war is a war fought between two less powerful nations who are each backed by a much more powerful nation. The Korean War is the earliest example of this in the Cold War. It began when North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950. The American government sent troops and resources to the democratic South Korea and succeeded in pushing the North Koreans back into the North, however as the combined forces of America and South Korea marched into North Korea, China became worried that the war might lead to a full scale conflict between capitalism and communism in East Asia and so began to offer support to North Korea. The war eventually ended in an armistice in 1953, but tensions in the region continue to this day.

The Cultural Revolution was instituted in 1966 by Supreme Leader Mao Zedong, to make China modern, Communist, and unified. This took multiple forms, but particularly targeted the perceived "enemies" of the Chinese state, especially intellectuals, anyone demonstrating traditional culture, ethnic minorities, and those who voiced opposition. One of the notable methods of achieving the Cultural Revolution was to force young students to work in rural farms so they would know what it was like to participate in agrarian labor. The Cultural Revolution lasted until 1971, and caused widespread changes in Chinese society.

Mao Zedong was the leader of the Chinese Communist Party and the founder of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Mao drew much of his support from the peasantry, something of a curiosity amongst Communist movements, as usually the greatest Communist support base is the industrial working class.