Japan giant neighbor to the status of a bloated vassal state The United States intervened to compel Tokyo to back down That crisis raised American ire and opposition to Japanese encroachment in China, along with Japanese antipathy to American usurpation of what the Japanese saw as their natural sphere of influence on the Asian mainland Another blow to American–Japanese relations came when Tokyo dispatched 75,000 troops to Siberia in 1918 It did not pull out until 1922, long after all other powers withdrew and only after the end of the Russian Civil War (1918–1921) Japan pursued three goals at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, two of territory and one of prestige: gain legal title to former German islands in the Pacific, win recognition of wartime gains in Shandong, and secure acceptance of an international principle of racial equality Japan was partially successful on the first two items, but was rebuffed on the third That proved an unnecessary blow to Japanese prestige by Woodrow Wilson and other Western diplomats Japanese umbrage deepened in 1924 when the U.S Congress passed “oriental exclusion” laws and severely restricted all immigration from Asia Japan’s wars with China and Russia, and then World War I, had provided real economic stimulus The boom ended in a severe postwar depression made worse by the Tokyo earthquake of 1923 Animosity toward the United States grew even as Japan’s export trade slackened Nevertheless, Japan was a key participant in the Washington Naval Conference (1922) The several treaties agreed there required Japan to retrench its naval build-up but not to surrender its underlying ambition to achieve economic hegemony over the adjacent Asian mainland The treaties benefited Japan, especially in its weakened economic condition However, many naval officers and other Japanese saw the Washington treaty system more as a major humiliation than a reasoned compromise Relations with Great Britain also deteriorated in the angry wake of British hostility to the “Twenty-One Demands,” Japan’s refusal to provide troops to the fight on the western front, and especially Japanese sympathy for decolonization by European empires in India and elsewhere in Asia More diplomatic distance was added with lapse of the 1902 Anglo–Japanese alliance That was a legality necessary to clear the way for the more general agreements of the Washington conference, but it was also a shift reflecting Japanese perceptions about a rising relative threat from the United States Civilian ascendancy in domestic Japanese politics during most of the 1920s then led to military budget cuts that partly concealed this growing animosity Much changed from 1927, starting with a national bank crisis A “Resources Bureau” was founded to ensure total mobilization for total war This included industrial, labor, and manpower mobilization plans However, the zaibatsu were not tamed but remained free to pursue economic goals outside the planning system Worse, the onset of the Great Depression in 1929 ended the international consensus on an open world trading order that was the main support of civilian ascendancy within Japan Trade shrank, overseas markets were closed, and unemployment rose By the early 1930s civilian ideas were discredited by economic failure and threatened by a series of political assassinations carried out by junior military officers, sometimes with behind-the-scenes support from superiors, but 597