The correct answer is 3, as one result of Western imperial interest in East Asia during the 1800s was that Japan rose from an isolated society to a major industrial and imperial power.
Japan remained isolated from Western influences until 1853, when Matthew Perry signed on behalf of the United States the Kanagawa Treaty, in order to open Japanese ports to trade with America.
For a long period, the restored contact with the West caused changes in Japanese society. After a strong civil conflict called Boshin war, the shogunate was forced to resign and the power was returned to the emperor. The Meiji Restoration of 1868 initiated several reforms. The feudal system was abolished and numerous Western institutions were adopted, including a Western legal and governmental system, along with other economic, social and military reforms that transformed Japan into a medium-high world power. As a result of the First Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, Japan annexed Taiwan, Korea and other territories to its expanding empire.
Thus it definitively established itself as a world power and the only one in Asia. After the First World War, 1918, Japan occupied a solid position in the Far East; It had the most powerful armed forces in the area, had great influence over China and had benefited economically from the war (it took care of the orders of the Asian countries, which the rest of the powers did not manage to attend).
