Japan's Foreign Expansion Of Chaebol

In the Meiji period (1868-1912), the Japan has launched a serious of expansions to the China and the Korean two neighboring countries. In the expansion process, the "political business" who had extremely close relationship with the government was coordinating closely and supporting positively the government's expansionist policy from aspects of public opinion, financial resource, logistical support and so on, through manufacturing expansional public opinion, assisting the government in raising military expenses, undertaking military transport and project, developing the military industry and other activities. Meanwhile, these political business also fully used the colonial interests that the Japan had snatched from expanding, strengthening its own economic strength, which finally made them becoming as the "Meiji Zaibatsu" around 1910.In the Taisho period (1912-1926), the Japan has implemented a further escalation of expansion to the East Asia on the purpose of getting rid of the serious economic and political crises, by the opportunity of the European powers had no time to attend the East Asia region after the First World War had outbreak. In this expansion process, using wartime economy "booming" and advantageous international environment, a number of vendors developed as the "Taisho Zaibatsu" through speculative expansion. At the same time, the Meiji Zaibatsu expanded the investment of the military industry to adapt the request that the Triple Entente's massive military supplies ordering and the expansion of their own country's arms. In addition, they strengthened economic aggression to China through developing the "Sino-Japanese Joint" of factories. These activities also gave large economic advantages to the Meiji Zaibatsu, so that they became expansion.In the Showa earlier period (1926-1945), the Japan pushed the external expansion to the pinnacle, in order to get rid of the big economy crisis spreading the entire capitalism world. During this period of expansion, a group of arms dealers forestally developed the new industry, such as machinery and electrical industry, chemical industry etc that closely related to the military, and rose to be the "Showa Zaibatsu" in this process. At the same time, Meiji and Taisho these two old zaibatsu fully and actively coordinated the government's expansion strategy after "changing", by carrying on the military supplies production forcefully, launching unscrupulous plunding to the Chinese occupied area and dealing in drug in China and so on. Meanwhile, they also obtained the biggest war wealth throughout history, so that they got to be inflation.After the World War II ended, the United States made a democratic reformation to the Japan for completely eliminating its militarism during implementing occupation to the Japan alone. Among them, the USA gave a dismissal to the zaibatsu of having an important responsibility for the war. However, the USA later had transformed the foreign policy to Japan, which caused the reformation about dismissing zaibatsu not to be very thorough.Finally, this article expounds the gearing relation between zaibatsu and Japanese external expansion, and points out that the zaibatsu has an important responsibility for the war, as well as making a simple introduction to the influence that zaibatsu who revived under the new historic condition makes on today's Japanese society.