Japan in its military dictatorship phase was brutal, that is for sure.
1. Japan was late (by 30 years) to the forcing of concessions on China. The Europeans were the first to demand concessions from China, and that process was not ignored by Japan.
2. Japan was late to establishing colonies in Asia. Again Japan was preceded in that by the Europeans and the U.S., and again Japan observed that and as Japan industrialized came to see it as European and American blocking actions against a modernizing Japan. In Southeast Asia the Europeans even admitted they were blocking recently industrializing Japan.
3. Looking out from Japan in WWI (when they were on our side) they saw an Asia largely occupied by the Europeans and Americans, from India all through Southeast Asia, up through the Philippines and the coast of China.
While HOW Japan came to deal and react to 1.,2. and 3. above is the subject of good criticism. That they did react to all that was not strange, even from a general Asian perspective. From a general Asian perspective the suddenly outward looking Japanese Empire was following on and reacting to the western colonization of so much of Asia.
Happy nightmares.