Japan — The Sino-Japanese War and the Road to Pearl Harbor

From Manchuria to full-scale war

After 1931 Japan did not stop at Manchuria. Through the mid-1930s the army pushed into northern China, detaching territory and creating demilitarized buffer zones that eroded Chinese sovereignty. In Japan itself, the trend toward military dominance deepened. A failed coup by young officers in February 1936 (the "2-26 Incident") frightened moderates and pushed the government to accommodate army demands. Increasingly, Japanese strategy was shaped by the ambition to create a self-sufficient empire, later publicized as the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere," in which Japan would dominate the resources and peoples of East and Southeast Asia.

The outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, 1937

On 7 July 1937 a clash between Japanese and Chinese troops at the