Season 1

Explores Japan's ambitious but destructive attempts to lead the whole of Asia out from the shadow of European and American dominance. Recounting the events of the most significant global conflict in the history of mankind and its equally dramatic aftermath, this two-part special investigates new and challenging insights into a battle that shaped the Asia-Pacific region. From the expansion its sphere of influence in 1895, with the installation of a puppet government in Korea, to the destruction of Pearl Harbour, discover how Japan's burgeoning power in Asia soon brought it into direct conflict with the West culminating in the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Focusing on the traumas suffered by the Korean, Chinese, South East Asian and Japanese people as they lived through four decades of bloody conflict, this compelling documentary tells the dramatic story of a proud and ambitious warrior nation, which ultimately paid a terrible price for its audacity.