1874) by
the great Mohammedan disturbances. There began also a conflict with
Japan which lasted until 1945. Mu Tsung came to the throne as a child of
five, and never played a part of his own. It had been the general rule
for princes to serve as regents for minors on the imperial throne, but
this time the princes concerned won such notoriety through their
intrigues that the Peking court circles decided to entrust the regency
to two concubines of the late emperor. One of these, called Tzu Hsi
(born 1835), of the Manchu tribe of the Yehe-Nara, quickly gained the
upper hand. The empress Tzu Hsi was one of the strongest personalities
of the later nineteenth century who played an active part in Chinese
political life. She played a more active part than any emperor had
played for many decades.

Meanwhile great changes had taken place in Japan. The restoration of the
Meiji had ended the age of feudalism, at least on the surface. Japan
rapidly became Westernized, and at the same time entered on an
imperialist policy. Her aims from 1868 onward were clear, and remained
unaltered until the end of the second World War: she was to be
surrounded by a wide girdle of territories under Japanese domination, in
order to prevent the approach of any enemy to the Japanese homeland.
This girdle was divided into several zones--(1) the inner zone with the
Kurile Islands, Sakhalin, Korea, the Ryukyu archipelago, and Formosa;
(2) the outer zone with the Marianne, Philippine, and Caroline Islands,
eastern China, Manchuria, and eastern Siberia; (3) the third zone, not
clearly defined, including especially the Netherlands Indies,
Indo-China, and the whole of China, a zone of undefined extent. The
outward form of this subjugated region was to be that of the Greater
Japanese Empire, described as the Imperium of the Yellow Race (the main
ideas were contained in the Tanaka Memorandum 1927 and in the Tada
Interview of 1936). Round Japan, moreover, a girdle was to be created of
producers of raw materials and purchasers of manufactures, to provide
Japanese industry with a market. Japan had sent a delegation of amity to
China as early as 1869, and a first Sino-Japanese treaty was signed in
1871; from then on, Japan began to carry out her imperialistic plans. In
1874 she attacked the Ryukyu islands and Formosa on the pretext that
some Japanese had been murdered there. Under the treaty of 1874 Japan
withdrew once more, only demanding a substantial indemnity; b