And brutal. As empires go, the Japanese had no regard for the lives of humans who weren't ethnically Japanese. This old-world way of doing war saw some 250,000 [0] Chinese killed for aiding American pilots after their bombings of targets in Japan. [1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhejiang-Jiangxi_campaign
[1] https://www.historynet.com/jimmy-doolittle-and-the-tokyo-rai...
Imagine if they weren't defeated. Because they where one of the most preeminent countries in the world before defeat as well.