Japan not only industrialized rapidly it also militarized at the same time, transforming from a isolationists and loosely unified nation into a massive imperialists militaristic empire. The first large scale war Japan fought with a western nation was Russia, in the  Russo-Japanese War of 1904 to 1905. Japan surprised the world with its new army and navy when it successfully came out victorious over the Russian empire. Japan was the first non western state to defeat a western nation in war, and it also marked the beginning of wide scale Japanese imperialism into Manchuria and mainland Asia.