Why did Japan rise from an isolated society to a major industrial and imperial power in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? * 3 points Japan wanted to keep up with the rapid industrialization and modernization of China and Korea. Western governments forced Japan to open its ports to trade with the industrialized nations of the West. The Japanese government believed that the best way to respond to Western imperial interest in East Asia was to rapidly modernize. Japan realized that to conquer and colonize eastern Russia, it would need to modernize its military forces.