Japan’s history in the book is traced through changing imperial and national loyalties: it is first dominated by the United States, then wins independence and joins the Chinese-led Asiatic Confederacy. Later, the Japanese islands are devastated in an unsuccessful American effort to establish an air base. Japan’s changing alignment also helps expose how claims of universal political unity give way to rival blocs.

From Regional Power to Imperial Subjection

Japan had once been the bully of young China, but social revolutions weakened it. The weakened country then fell prey to United States imperialism, turning from a regional power into a subject of a larger contest for influence in Asia.

This domination reshaped Japanese political sentiment. The account presents the experience of American rule as the reason Japan became intensely Chinese in outlook: it eventually freed itself through a war of independence and joined the Asiatic Confederacy under Chinese leadership. The shift was not simply a change of government; it redirected Japan’s allegiance toward the opposing regional power.

Japan and the League’s Division

Japan’s political future became a point of contention within the League of Nations. An attempt to remake the League as a cosmopolitan authority, controlling the pooled armaments of all nations, foundered when tribal loyalties proved stronger than the impulse toward a shared sovereignty.

The Japanese question brought the division into the open. The League split into two bodies, each claiming to inherit universal authority from its predecessor but each in practice dominated by a larger allegiance: one American, the other Chinese. Japan’s alignment with the Chinese-led Asiatic Confederacy thus belongs to a wider reordering in which national and racial loyalties gathered around rival centers rather than dissolving into a single world community.

The Japanese Islands in War

During the later war between the American and Chinese powers, the Japanese islands were devastated in the United States’ vain attempt to establish an air base from which it could reach the heart of its enemy. The islands were described as having suffered devastation similar to England’s, which had been repeatedly attacked after an American air base was established in Ireland.

The destruction places Japan within the conflict’s expanding geography: the islands served as a proposed military foothold, and the effort to secure one left them devastated without achieving its purpose. At that stage, however, neither China nor the United States had yet been seriously damaged, underscoring the contrast between the destruction inflicted on strategic territories and the relative security of the principal powers.