Dr Chris Harding

And the Japanese say, brilliant.

Depression and anxiety are the sorts of maladies you suffer if you have a civilized and quite complex mind.

Okay, okay.

You become a worrier.

You become a person with many thoughts, you know.

It's proof of our successful civilizing mission that more Koreans are turning up for help with depression.

So it's amazing that I think the sense of mission there is really real on the part of the Japanese.

The difficulty, of course, is once you get into the 20th century and once you have a foothold in mainland Asia, where are you going to stop?

Yes.

Yeah, it does.

If you think about the geography and if you think about the weakness of China in this period, there is a sense that this part of the world is very much up for grabs.

And if the Russians take it, then Korea...

falls next, most likely to the Russians again.

And as one of Japan's strategists puts it, and if you think about the map, this kind of makes sense, Korea, the Korean Peninsula, is a dagger at the back of Japan.

For centuries, if you get hold of the Korean Peninsula, it's a short hop to Japan.

It's unthinkable that anyone else would have the Korean Peninsula, so that's why they worry about that.

But then it's unthinkable that anyone would have Manchuria.

other than the Japanese, because then they can get Korea.

So there's that kind of series effect or a domino effect where, in order to be secure, you have to expand your interests.

And this leads Japan, 1904 to 1905, into this famous war against the Russian Empire,