The rise of totalitarianism in Japan began with the following events:
Similar to European nations like Italy and Germany, nationalism and aggressive expansionism began to emerge in Japan after the First World War.
The Treaty of Versailles (1919), which ended the First World War, did not recognize the territorial claims of the Japanese Empire, which did not please the Japanese and led to an increase in nationalism.
Throughout the 1920s, various nationalist and xenophobic ideologies emerged among right-wing Japanese intellectuals, but it was only in the early 1930s that these ideas gained full force in the ruling regime.
During the Manchuria Incident of 1931, radical army officers bombed part of the Southern Manchurian Railway and, falsely attributing the attack to the Chinese, invaded Manchuria.
Japan received much criticism after the invasion which led the country to withdraw from the League of Nations, which led to political isolation and redoubling ultranationalist and expansionist tendencies.
In 1932, a group of right-wing officers and the Navy managed to assassinate Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi.
The plot failed to stage a full coup, but effectively ended the dominance of political parties in Japan and consolidated the power of the military elite under the dictatorship of Emperor Hirohito.
