What is one factor that motivated japan's imperialism before world war ii?
a. japan lacked many important natural resources.
b. japan's neighbors were ruled by anti-japanese dictatorships.
c. japan felt threatened by china's growing empire.
d. japan's morale was low after the treaty of versailles

a. japan lacked many important natural resources.

Explanation:

The history of contemporary Japan, the framework in which to situate the formation of Japanese imperialism, is divided into three phases. The first, between 1868 and 1912, is the time of the Meiji revolution. It means modernization and westernization. Liberated Japan from the incipient western colonial dependence, it allows a complete development that transforms it into a great world power. There are two moments in this process: from 1868 to 1881 it is the period of the reforms and the consolidation of the Meiji revolution; reforms that tend to widely transform Japanese society, while maintaining its traditional base. The second moment, from 1881 to 1912, corresponds to the apogee of Meiji Japan, with the new organization and institutionalization of the State and society, and at the beginning of the territorial and imperial expansion that, in its plenitude, forms an imperialism of its own, rival to the western. The second phase, from 1912 to 1937, is the era of Japan's world power: between the First and Second World War, the so-called Taisho era took place, between 1912 and 1926, and it was Showa, since 1926. Japan becomes a new center of world power.

The third phase, from 1937 to 1945, is during the Second World War: in the internal order the government of the military is reached, and internationally, the alliance with the Axis powers, leading the war process to the Japanese defeat in the year 1945. Throughout this process Japanese imperialism is formulated, which enters into rivalry and conflict with the Western imperialisms hitherto dominant in the Far East. This imperialism shapes three factors: the diplomatic and international rise of Japan to world power, the concrete external territorial expansion driven by the needs of that same economic and political growth that leads the country to build its own colonial empire in East Asia and, finally, , the ideological and social foundations of Japanese ultra-nationalism and imperialism within its own historical identity. The result of all these elements is the construction of the New Japanese Order in the Far East.