So we all know that Japan took a lot from China regarding cultural, economical, political, and many aspects of their society. So when Japan was in the midst of empire building in the 19th-20th century, did they ever try to ditch those Chinese influences?
So it seems, I can link to some earlier threads that discuss this as you are waiting for a new response. In this older thread u/churakaagii writes that the Sino-Japanese relationship was somewhat strained long before the Meiji Restoration, and here our u/yodatsracist mentions the movement against Buddhism in the period you are referring to due to the perception of it as a foreign religion, and in this answer u/ParallelPain discusses the strange Meiji-era proposal to adopt the English language as a replacement for both Chinese and Japanese