After the Meiji Restoration the gov leaders sole focus was modernization and they imported as much knowledge as they could from the West to industrialize rapidly. Brought over German military guys to train their army, etc.

So they took over Manchuria pretty easily given China was technologically inferior. China was also split with Communist and Nationalist forces battling each other. Liberating Manchuria just wasn't high on the list for either faction

And yeah they didn't take over the whole country. Just the Manchuria area where the Russians had been taking into their sphere of influence

Dan Carlin's last three Hardcore History podcasts are focused on this btw. Highly recommended

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4378224&forum_id=2#39087835)

Three decades was not enough time for them to advance relative to the Japanese who had been aggressively modernizing since like 1868 or so - almost a 50 year head start. Western tech and military advisors from Europe and the US helped speed up Japanese modernization and the place was naturally predisposed to advancing quickly and cohesively because it was small and centralized in many ways in three or four major cities with a huge % of the population urbanized as well as literate, that combined with a martial culture that had wanted to conquer China for almost 400 years was a big factor that allowed the Japanese to fuck the Chinese over huge.

There was also not really a major cohesive national identity in China at that time in some ways outside of the Han majority. The Manchurian Qing Dynasty was an ethnic minority from the northern part of China that had grown decadent and weak just as their Mongolian cousins had during the Yuan dynasty. They were all addicted to opium and hunting with bows and arrows, despising modernity in many ways. Places like Tibet, Mongolia, East Turkestan were really doing their own thing.

International relations for like 1000 years in that area basically boils down to acknowledging the new emperor and sending tribute, then returning to doing your own thing. Even Southern China wasn’t really governable to a huge degree - there was a proverb “The Mountains are high and the Emperor is far away” which meant that people would do whatever they wanted as long as taxes were being paid and nominal respect was given to the Son of Heaven.

It was a sort of very “chill” unchanging Confucian society.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4378224&forum_id=2#39087914)

Itagaki had met his generals and senior staff at his HQ at the former Raffles College in Bukit Timah and told his men that they would have to obey the surrender instructions and keep the peace. That night, more than 300 officers and men killed themselves by falling onto their swords in the Raffles Hotel after a farewell sake party, and later, an entire Japanese platoon killed themselves using grenades.[18]

About 200 Japanese soldiers decided to join the communist guerrillas whom they were fighting just days before in a bid to continue the fight against the British. But they soon returned to their units when they found out that the MPAJA, which was funded by the Malayan Communist Party, did not plan to fight the returning British.[18]

Nonetheless, some stayed hidden in the jungles with the communists, and when Chin Peng and remnants of the Malayan Communist Party ended their struggle in 1989, two former Japanese soldiers emerged from the jungle with the communists and surrendered.[18]

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4378224&forum_id=2#39088048)

After the war ended Onoda spent 29 years hiding out in the Philippines until his former commander traveled from Japan to formally relieve him from duty by order of Emperor Shōwa in 1974.[1][2] He held the rank of second lieutenant in the Imperial Japanese Army. He was the penultimate Japanese soldier to surrender, with Teruo Nakamura surrendering later in 1974.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4378224&forum_id=2#39089280)

china was almost entirely still a bunch of peasants during WW2, ofc they got literally and figuratively raped by industrialized japan

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4378224&forum_id=2#39089065)

You think Chinese farmers with sticks and rifles were stopping them?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4378224&forum_id=2#39089309)