Daily quote by Empire of Japan

• If new warships are considered necessary we must, at any cost, build them: if the organization of our army is inadequate we must start rectifying it from now; if need be, our entire military system must be changed...
  At present Japan must keep calm and sit tight, so as to lull suspicions nurtured against her; during this time the foundations of national power must be consolidated; and we must watch and wait for the opportunity in the Orient that will surely come one day. When this day arrives, Japan will decide her own fate, and she will be able not only to put in their place the powers who seek to meddle in her affairs, she will even be able, should this be necessary, to meddle in their affairs.
  • Hayashi Gonsuke, statement after the end of the First Sino-Japanese War when the Triple Intervention by Russia, France and Germany compelled Japan to surrender its claims to Port Arthur and the Liaotung Peninsula, quoted in Richard Storry, Japan and the Decline of the West in Asia, 1894–1943 (1979), p. 30