Why did Japan enter a series of wars, called WWII? According to Siva, the reason was the Japanese overestimation of his own military power. More specifically, his pseudo victory over Russia in the Russo-Japanese War from 1904 to 1905 made him believe he was strong and competent enough to win battles with the Powers.
But that was just a diplomatic victory. Kaneko Kentaro, a Japanese civilian and a friend of Theodore Roosevelt, the President of the United States, asked him to stop the war soon after Japan won just one of the battles in the north of the Liaodong Peninsula.
The battle was the first one of the three battles Russia had expected to have against Japan. But it didn't have enough capabilities and preparations for the three, so it exerted his own full power to win the first one, and asked the President of the USA to stop the war, in order for Japan to hold a dominant position in the meeting with Russia after the war.
Again, it was just a pseudo victory, but the Japanese people was led to think they were strong enough to let them think they wouldn't have to prepare for the WWII and improve any weapons that they had used. In the most parts of the WWII, the Japanese soldiers used the same weapons their fathers created twenty years ago!!
An European researcher, who had been living in Japan till it took up entering the wars and who left for her native country, made a compact and comprehensive remark on how Japan lost the wars to the other countries. She said, "Japanese cannot compare his own powers with others."
Siva also made the same comment. The Japanese leaders didn't. They should have tried to avoid the wars anyway. A war is just a good game for a stronger country. It was not so for Japan. Siva wondered how Japan chose to be involved in the war, and found the cause was the overestimation.
