<P> Before World War II, Japan built an extensive empire that included Taiwan, Korea, Manchuria, and parts of northern China . The Japanese regarded this sphere of influence as a political and economic necessity, preventing foreign states from strangling Japan by blocking its access to raw materials and crucial sea - lanes, as Japan possessed very few natural and mining resources of its own, although it imported large amounts of coal from Korea, Manchukuo, and some regions of occupied China . Japan's large military force was regarded as essential to the empire's defense . </P> <P> Rapid growth and structural change characterized Japan's two periods of economic development since 1868 . In the first period, the economy grew only moderately at first and relied heavily on traditional agriculture to finance modern industrial infrastructure . When the Russo - Japanese War began in 1904, 65% of employment and 38% of the gross domestic product (GDP) was still based on agriculture but modern industry had begun to expand substantially . During World War I, Japan used the absence of the war - torn European competitors on the world market to advance its economy, generating a trade surplus for the first time since the isolation in the Edo period . By the late 1920s, manufacturing and mining contributed 23% of GDP, compared with 21% for all of agriculture . Transportation and communications had developed to sustain heavy industrial development . </P> <P> In the 1930s, the Japanese economy suffered less from the Great Depression than most industrialized nations, its GDP expanding at the rapid rate of 5% per year . Manufacturing and mining came to account for more than 30% of GDP, more than twice the value for the agricultural sector . Most industrial growth, however, was geared toward expanding the nation's military power . </P> <P> Beginning in 1937 with significant land seizures in China, and to a greater extent after 1941, when annexations and invasions across Southeast Asia and the Pacific created the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, the Japanese government sought to acquire and develop critical natural resources in order to secure economic independence . Among the natural resources that Japan seized and developed were: coal in China, sugarcane in the Philippines, petroleum from the Dutch East Indies and Burma, and tin and bauxite from the Dutch East Indies and Malaya . Japan also purchased the rice production of Thailand, Burma, and Cochinchina . </P>

Who brought stability to japan as it changed to a modern country