Although the Japanese were deeply troubled by the geographical limitations, scarcity of resources, and limited development in Japan, since Toyotomi Hideyoshi unified the country, the ambitious Japanese have always hoped to expand their territory and obtain more resources and development space through external expansion.
Not only that, but they have even put forward a plan to connect them to the Asian continent by building a Japan-Korea bridge across the Sea of Japan and realize their "continental dream".
But can all of this really become a reality?
Japan, a famous island nation in East Asia, consists of four large islands: Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu, as well as more than 6,800 small islands. Despite this, the total area of this island nation is only 3780,000 square kilometres, and natural resources are scarce, requiring a large dependence on imports.
In addition to forest resources, natural resources such as oil, coal, and iron all need to be imported from abroad. In addition, natural disasters such as typhoons often plague Japan. However, despite this, Japan still has a "continental dream", and they are ambitious to use the Korean Peninsula as a "springboard" to unify East Asia and become a hegemon.
This dream was already formed during the Toyotomi Hideyoshi period.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi was given the post of Sekihaku in 1586 and began his dream of conquering China. He claimed that after the unification of Japan, he would let his younger brother rule, while he himself devoted himself to the conquest of Korea and China.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi even declared in 1587 that he would incorporate China into Japan during his lifetime. The "Tang" in his mouth refers to China, because in the Japanese language, China is called "Tang".
In 1592, Toyotomi Hideyoshi issued the Twenty-Five Satoru Book, detailing the strategic arrangements for the invasion of China and even considering how the spoils of war would be distributed.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi had a grand plan: to occupy Korea first, use the Korean Peninsula as a springboard, and then conquer all of China, and finally he hoped to command the navy to march into India at Ningbo and conquer Tianzhu at that time.
This shows that Toyotomi Hideyoshi's ambitions did not extend beyond East Asia, but even encompassed South Asia. This plan is considered to be the origin of Japan's "mainland dream" or "mainland policy".
However, although Toyotomi Hideyoshi had a beautiful vision, he suffered setbacks in realizing the first step of "occupying Korea". He invaded Korea twice in 1592 and 1597, but was defeated by the Ming army and ultimately failed.
Although Toyotomi Hideyoshi did not realize his dream until his death, this dream was passed down from generation to generation by the Japanese. After the Meiji Restoration, Japan gradually became stronger and established a strategy of military expansion.
During this period, Japan discovered the mediocrity and decay of the Asian continent and saw it as an excellent opportunity to realize the "continental dream".
After the initial victory of the annexation of the Ryukyus, Japan confirmed the weakness of the Qing Dynasty and formulated a plan to invade China. In 1887, Ogawa recorded in detail the plan of aggression in the "Qing Conquest Strategy", and in 1895, the First Sino-Japanese War broke out, and Japan was ambitious to conquer China, and then conquer the world, and realize its "continental dream".
In addition, Japan has envisioned a "bridge across the sea" to connect the Japanese island with the Korean Peninsula, thereby connecting Japan to the Asian continent. However, these acts of aggression did not realize Japan's dream, but instead aroused strong opposition and condemnation from the international community.
In 1897, the 26th king of the Joseon Dynasty, Yi Hee, decided to call himself "emperor" and changed the name of the country to "Korean Empire", which was the first empire in the history of the Korean Peninsula.
However, the empire's vitality was very short-lived and soon died out due to Japan. After the First Sino-Japanese War, Japan's ambitions swelled dramatically and actively expanded outward, and finally on August 22, 1910, South Korean Prime Minister Lee Wan-yong and Japanese representative Terauchi Masashi signed the "Japan-Korea Merger Treaty", permanently transferring the sovereignty of the Korean Peninsula to Japan, making the Korean Peninsula a Japanese colony.
After acquiring the Korean Peninsula, Japan had the bold idea of connecting the island of Japan to the Korean Peninsula, thus allowing Japan to establish closer ties with the Asian continent.
Located between Japan and South Korea, Tsushima Island faces the Busan Strait to the north and the Tsushima Strait to the south, making it an important passage from Japan to the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea. The Tsushima Strait is about 50-100 meters deep, with a relatively flat bottom and only about 41 kilometers at its narrowest point.
With this in mind, the Japanese planned to build a bridge across the sea from Shimonoseki, Hakata, or Karatsu on the Japanese mainland, via Iki Island and Tsushima Island, to Busan, South Korea.
According to the Japanese envision, the total length of the bridge will be more than 200 kilometers.
The construction of a sea-crossing bridge is a challenging project, especially in the deep maritime environment. The longer the length of the bridge, the more difficult it is to build. Even now, the world's longest sea-crossing bridge, the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, is only 55 kilometers long, and China's world-leading infrastructure technology still took 6 years to prepare and 9 years to complete.
It is conceivable that at the beginning of the last century, at the level of technology at that time, the Japanese wanted to build a 200-kilometer-long bridge across the sea, which was tantamount to a pipe dream.
What prompted Japan to build the bridge was to establish closer ties with the Asian continent and thus gain greater benefits in places like China.
Despite the enormous technical challenges of this project, Japan has made it a priority due to the huge benefits it brings. By the 40s of the 20th century, Japan had almost occupied East Asia, and its ambitions for the "Great Japanese Empire" were at their peak.
Under these circumstances, scholars in Japan have begun to conduct in-depth research and planning on the cross-sea bridge project. In 1942, Japan established an organization called the "East Asian Transportation Society" to study and demonstrate the project.
They concluded that they could begin the implementation of the "project of the century" as long as they had two conditions, namely, sufficient technical capacity to build a sea-crossing bridge, and finding the right time.
Japan's ambition to occupy our country began with their enormous interest in uniting themselves with the Eurasian continent. For this reason, they have been waiting for a complete victory over our country before moving on to the construction of the bridge across the sea.
However, their plan did not come true, because our country was victorious on August 15, 1945. Although the project of the Japan-South Korea cross-sea bridge was put on hold, the ambitions of the Japanese did not disappear because of this.
In the 80s of the last century, Japan successfully built the Kanmon Strait Bridge connecting Honshu Island and Kyushu Island, and the Seto Bridge connecting Honshu Island and Shikoku Island, which gave Japan confidence in building a sea-crossing bridge.
In this context, the "Japan-South Korea cross-sea project" has once again been put on the agenda. At the same time, in 1986, Britain and France decided to build an undersea tunnel across the English Channel, with a total length of about 50 kilometers, of which the undersea part was 37 kilometers long, which shortened the distance between Britain and France to "35 minutes each way", and this engineering idea undoubtedly further inspired the Japanese.
In this context, the famous Japanese construction company Obayashi Group put forward the idea of building a Japan-South Korea undersea tunnel - the Asian Continental Highway. The idea is to connect Japan and South Korea through the undersea tunnel and further promote exchanges and cooperation between the two countries.
New copy: The Korean Strait has a complex topography, with a water depth of 220 meters, and the seabed is soft and faulty. Therefore, the Obayashi Group plans to adopt a special construction method, that is, to place the bracket on the seabed and fix the cylindrical pipe at a depth of about 50 meters on the seabed.
In addition, five artificial islands will need to be built to ventilate the tunnels. Although this scenario seems feasible, there is no solution to the traffic accident in the undersea tunnel.
It is worth noting that the Japan-Korea Tunnel is not only a Chinese idea, but also a cult organization in South Korea, the Unification Church, which also promotes this idea behind the scenes, and established the "Japan-Korea Tunnel Research Association" in 1983 to conduct an in-depth study of the feasibility of the tunnel.
In 1990, when Roh Tae-woo of South Korea visited Japan, the two countries discussed the issue of the undersea tunnel. A year later, Japanese Prime Minister Toshiki Umibe visited South Korea, and the two sides conducted in-depth discussions on this issue.
This indicates that both Japan and South Korea have plans to build undersea tunnels, and specific routes are also being discussed. Specifically, at that time, Japan and South Korea envisioned three possible routes.
The first is 209 kilometers from Karatsu in Japan to Tsushima Island and then to Geoje City, and although the total length is the shortest, it is the longest undersea route to cross. The second route is from Dangjin to Tsushima Island to Busan, with a total length of 231 kilometers, the longest of all options, and also requires crossing the Haitian ** belt.
The route is more straightforward, with a seabed length of about 128 km, about 20 km shorter than the others, so it may be relatively easy to build. In addition, since this route goes directly to the port of Busan and the Gyeongbu transportation axis, its economic value is quite high.
The third route, which is from Karatsu to Tsushima Island and then to Geoje City, is more mediocre and less distinctive than the first two routes. However, even now, the Japan-Korea Cross-Harbour Tunnel is only in the planning stage, and many practical problems have not yet been resolved.
For example, how many tunnels do you need to build? Is it necessary to build both a road tunnel and a railway tunnel? How will the cost of the construction of the Cross Harbour Tunnel be raised? In addition, there are still many engineering and technical problems that need to be solved in the construction of the Japan-South Korea Undersea Tunnel.
According to Japan** reports, in 2002, South Korea ** had spent about 7 million yen to commission the Korea Transportation Development Research Institute to conduct research on the Japan-South Korea undersea tunnel, and in 2004, the research institute finally estimated that the total cost of building the Japan-South Korea undersea tunnel will be as high as 100 billion US dollars, which is five times higher than the cost of the Anglo-French undersea tunnel, even for Japan and South Korea, this is a huge expense, so the construction of the Japan-South Korea undersea tunnel has been stagnant.
In Japan and South Korea, the idea of the Japan-Korea Cross-Harbour Tunnel has also met with great opposition. Opponents argue that spending $100 billion to build an undersea tunnel needs to consider its economic benefits, while the economics of the undersea tunnel in Japan and South Korea do not seem to be optimistic.
On the one hand, in Japan and South Korea, air transport and sea transport dominate, if the submarine tunnel does not build a railway tunnel, then the efficiency of transport will be greatly reduced, even if the railway tunnel is built, it is only to share a part of the air and sea volume, the cost of the time is uncertain.
The prospect of the Japan-Korea Cross-Harbour Tunnel will not only connect the two countries, but also be able to connect directly to China, thereby widening transportation routes. However, exchanges on the Korean Peninsula are not yet active enough, and there are many obstacles to the north-south transport routes between the two countries, let alone connecting with China.
Therefore, opponents argue that the construction of the tunnel is not necessary, because it will not bring the same economic benefits, but will cost people and money.
Political factors have prevented progress on the Japan-South Korea Undersea Tunnel so far. Japan's visit to the Yasukuni Shrine in recent years and its refusal to recognize crimes committed against South Korea during World War II have caused continued tensions between Japan and South Korea, and the undersea tunnel project has been temporarily shelved.
For Japan, this has been planned for more than a hundred years"Cross-sea engineering"to implement its"Continental Dream"The plan still faces many difficulties and challenges.