Imperial Japanese Army

The Imperial Japanese Army was the land force of Japan after reforms from the feudal system caused in part by the breaking of the Japanese isolationist policy, causing the downfall of the Feudal system as new ideas, goods and weaponry flooded the country. They are currently only Featured in Call of Duty: World at War.

Pre-1931
During 1904-05, Treaties with England and Japan resulted in Russian border disputes with Japan over areas around the Korean Peninsula turning into what is now known as the Russo-Japanse War. Japanese Naval strategy, suprise attacks, and the Russian Far-East Naval commander going down after his ship hit a mine resulted in the Japanese massacring Russian Naval forces (reducing the russian navy to the strength of Austria-Hungary, which apart from captured territories was otherwise landlocked) and The Japanese Employed a Korean tactic to counterattack and wipe out entrenched Russian forces before Reinforcements could come via the railway. Although the Japanese at the very worst tied every major battle, they were pressured by the other world powers into acting as if they had just lost the war, presumably because of European interests in Russia and to stop This Happening.

Later, during the Great War, Japanese forces were called on by the British to 'relieve' Germany of their holdings in Papua New Guinea. These were handed over post-war to be administered by Australia as a territory.

1931-1941
During the years between 1905 and 1931, the Japanese had been building up a strong resentment of the west from their treatment and (lack of) rewards from the western powers, and saw the west as being arrogant and unwilling to acknowledge their power (which, to a fair extent, they were, although some European holdings in the East were further fortified in response to the war. Japanese Military officials began a gradual takeover and re-education of the Japanese people, in a system not unlike what The Nazis employed before the Second World War.  Seeking for more friendly markets and Riibenusuramu, the Japanese invaded Manchuria, and proceeded to dispose of distant relations and friends of Chinese that looked at them funny.  The League of Nations (which Japan was part of) sent out an investigation to Manchuria and concluded that the Japanese were in the wrong, and that they invaded aggresively. They ordered the Government to withdraw from Manchuria, and the government complied, but by this time there were very few civilian politicians in government, and the military invaded further. By this time the world saw that the military was in control, and not the Government. But due to the League of Nations having no Military (a problem ratified when the United Nations was created) the most they could do was write some letters expressing their mild disapproval. Japanese forces continued their advance through China, and raped, pillaged and massacred along the way, culminating in the Rape of Nanking, where several hundred thousand inferior Chinese (the Japanese racist views had deeply sunk into the population by this point) had been thrown into mass graves and shot, stabbed and burned. As they continued this, however, their various western trading partners, such as the Australians under Robert 'Pig Iron Bob' Menzies (supplying iron) and the United states Under Franklin D Roosevelt (supplying oil) grew ever more concerned about where their trading goods were going, and that eventually they would be getting attacked by the Japanese using their own materials. Roosevelt's cutoff of Oil in 1940 Resulted in the Japanese having no major Oil sources in the country, so they had to find a new source or convince the Americans to resume supplies...