How fair a statement is "[Japan's war and Europe's war in WW2] were both largely separate but coincidental events"?

by Sedretpol

Had a long talk the other day with a colleague who used to work for the European commission and we learnt a lot from him. But at one point he said he didn't really know much about Japan in WW2., so I tried to explain briefly.

  • Japan had a civil war
  • The winner of that war tried to conquer China via Japan.
  • He was foiled and then died.
  • His successor closed off the country.
  • Japan remained closed for a few centuries.
  • China gets rocked by the opium wars
  • (I can't believe I forgot to mention Commodore Perry and the Meiji restoration)
  • Japan takes inspiration from the west, strengthens their country, and re-enters the world.
  • They dust off Ieyasu's plan and conquer Korea and a few other places.
  • They do very well and are encouraged by this.
  • Eventually the country gets psyched up into a holy war to conquer the world (sort of).

He then commented that, as he suspected, they were largely separate and coincidental events to the Nazis. I didn't disagree, but I had never thought of it that way before. The only disagreement I can think of to connect the events is that they were both driven by nationalism and the great depression.

EuanRead

To clarify, am I right in saying that the question is related to ideas like: whether the conflicts would have arisen seperately or not/to what extent German expansion increased Japan's aggression, or wether or not the conflict in the east had much impact on the war from Germany's perspective etc?

I cannot answer the question myself but just want to prevent wasted effort as people may begin giving you examples of Japanese forces fighting European forces, and I get the impression you know that the European allies fought Japan extensively.