How were Japan's industrialization and imperialism linked?

When Japan began to
industrialize, the island nation needed more resources. In the late 1800s, Japan turned to
conquering Korea, which offered the Japanese access to coal, a vital resource for
industrializing nations. Korea was at that time a tributary state of China, and Japanese
imperialist expansion in Korea sparked the Sino Japanese War of 1894-1895 (the first Sino
Japanese War), which ended in Chinese defeat. The Japanese also gained control of the Liaodong
Peninsula, which sparked the Russo Japanese War of 1905 and which also ended in a Japanese
victory. By this point, Japan had become an imperial power. A second Sino Japanese War was
fought in the 1930s through War World II as Japan sought to continue their control over
Manchuria and over Chinese raw materials and labor. 

By the 1920s, Japan had
sunk into an economic depression from which it began to emerge in the 1930s. Japan tried to
protect its economy...

href="http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/japan_1900_power.htm">http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/japan_1900_power.htm