When did they strike up a deal ‘hey, lets try to take over all the land we’ve been eyeing off all these decades!’?
Did they negotiate the whole thing through diplomates? Was Japan always part of Hitlers idea, or were they just something on the side to keep the rest of the allied world occupied?
I never fully understood how 2 nations could arrange to become an axis of power and rule the world, so here I am at sd 
I dunno, but I do know that ( According to the History Channel) the German SS were modeled after the Japanese Samauri, and that the Swastika is really an Ancient Japanese symbol that was reversed and tilted on its side to symbolize white supremacy…
Why they did this is anyones guess. I’m sure there are other history buffs that will chime in on this with more corrective information… and hopefully they will have cites or references to support it.
The Anti-Komintern Pact of 1936 was one thing (Japan largely opted out of that later), but the main treaty was the Tri-partite Pact of 1940. This essay has the suggestion that there was a hoped for effect of weakening British resistence in Europe by a war in the Pacific against the Imperial territories, and weakening America in the Pacific by involvement with the war in Europe.
Both the Nazi and Japanese governments of the time followed a liebensraum policy, had ideas as to racial purity and domination, and were the leading military forces in their areas.
So in time, wouldn’t they both have expect to clash with one another?
I don’t think either of those statements are correct. I’ll leave the formation of the SS as a Teutonic Knights-revival to someonw who knows more than me, but it’s pretty well known that Hitler didn’t get his swastika from the Japanese (or, more correctly, that he got it from sources other than the Japanese). In fact, the swastika is one of the more common symbols found in ancient times. Unfortunately, I’ll have to leave a cite up to someone whose not behind as restrictive an internet filter as I am.
Well, maybe, but when you just know you are The Master Race or are led by the Son of the Gods himself, that’s just a minor detail 
Or more likely, that would be foreseen as a far-future eventuality, and there were immediate common goals. As mentioned above, it seems to have started as a the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend kind of deal centered on neutralizing first Stalin and then the French and British empires. That both were extreme-ethnosupremacist fascist regimes with a liebensraum policy, as Ice Wolf mentions, probably helped a heap.
ISTM that at a shorter term, the goals were continental/civilizational hegemony, where the “Aryan” would rule the Caucasians and the Japanese would rule the East Asians, a select handful of nationalities would be allowed in as allies and collaborators, most would be reduced to helot status, and non-home-continent lands would remain in colonial bondage. Then what could have evolved would be likely a parallel of the scenario that happened immediately after WW2 between the Anglo-American and Soviet blocs of former allies: a Cold War between pretty-evenly-matched hegemonic blocs, with attempts to lure/subvert the remaining nations/continents into one sphere or the other.
Nitpick: it’s Lebensraum. “Liebensraum”, if such a word existed, would mean “love space”.
Also I’m not sure of Japan’s policy really was in the strict sense a lebensraum policy rather than a classic colonialist one. Was there a plan to expand the area settled by an exclusively ethnic Japanese population beyond Japan proper?
Although it is hard to judge the real importance, there are striking similarities between the histories of the two countries in the second half of the 19th century. In both cases you have a former empire that fell behind and is unable to secure the position to which it feels entitled. A bit simplified in Japan the cause was isolation, in Germany it was fragmentation. The German unification during the 1860s which culminated in the foundation of the “second” empire in 1871 almost exactly coincides with the Meiji Restoration, a period of radical change in Japan. After that both countries boosted industrialization, started the creation of a colonial empire and prepared huge modern armies. There were relatively close ties between the two countries in that era and to a certain extend Germany (Prussia in particular) served as a model during the Japanese reforms.
[B-52s]
The Love Space
Is a little old place where
We can get together, yeah!
Love Space ba-yay-bee!
[/B-52s]
Japan declared war on Germany in WW1, seizing bases in the Pacific that would serve her well in WW2. They were also supplying military aid to China well into the '30s, actively aiding Japan’s enemy.
The truth be known, Japan and Germany met at a dance. Japan was sort of plain but was wearing a tight sweater, and Germany, well, you know what happens when you get a bunch of drunk Germans at a dance with ugly women. 
Yes.
Around 1940, the Japanese government announced its plan to create a “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.” Supposedly, Japan would oust the Westerners and Western ideas from Asia and create an Asia for Asians only. Japan would lead these countries much like the lead goose leads the rest of the geese in a V formation during migration.
This was just propaganda, of course. Japan grabbed these countries’ raw materials for itself and transplanted large numbers of Japanese in the Asian countries it occupied - in China, Manchuria, Taiwan, Korea - all over.
Naturally, Japan’s expansionist aspirations preceded the announcement of the Co-Prosperity Sphere. In the late 19th century, Japan felt that it had just as much right to form colonies in Asia as the Western powers did. However, Japan soon found out that the Western countries were not going to treat it as an equal. Japan therefore decided to abandon any treaty-making and cooperation and just
take Asia for itself.
I recall reading a book called the *“The Fugu Plan” *or something to that effect about a plan put forth by some in the Japanese military government to settle Manchuria (or parts of it) with…wait for it…Jews!! Can’t recall the particulars or the reasoning. Can anyone verify or disabuse me of this notion?
Among other things, there were some Japanese leaders who had read and believed the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (the forgery that claimed that there was a network of Jews who secretly controled the world), and they felt that, that being the case, the Japanese might as well provide a home for Jewish refugees. because then the secret Jewish world goverment might be grateful.
Also, one of the firms that helped finance the Japanese in the Russo-Japanese war was a Jewish firm, and the Japanese government saw this as a kind of repayment.
Another factor was Chine Sugihara, the Japanese consul to Lithuania. In the course of about 4 weeks, Sugihara, acting against his government’s orders, managed to give Japanese visas to thousands of Polish and Lithuanian Jewish refugees, most of whom lived out the rest of the war in Shanghai and Japan. He did this in spite of the fact that he knew it would ruin his career. After the war, when asked why he did it, he said, “They were human beings and they needed help. I’m glad I found the strength to make the decision to give it to them.”, and also, “I may have to disobey my government, but if I don’t I would be disobeying God”
I’m mentioning him because his actions saved a lot of people, and also because he hasn’t really gotten the recognition that people like Wallenberg did, and he deserves it.
Wow, something somewhat similar happened in China during the rape of Nanking, only it was a nazi party member businessman who was the hero. John Rabe created the International Safety Zone that saved up to a quarter million chinese people and recorded the Japanese atrocities in great detail. He was censored by the Gestapo for his pleas to Germany for help. Odd that these two brutal regimes produced men who, when confronted with the evil of their ‘ally’ had the courage to stand against it.
Japan and Germany were both taking advantage of similar conditions in similar ways.
Germany was trying to pull itself out of a crippling depression and general unrest by expanding into regions occupied by “subhumans”, with the eventual goal of taking over the world. It put on airs of mystical racial superiority, but it was a land-grab coupled with intensely racist and xenophobic policies.
Japan was trying to pull itself out of self-imposed exile and international obscurity by expanding into regions occupied by “subhumans”, with the eventual goal of taking over at least the Pacific rim. Japan used another mythos to justifiy itself and rally the masses, but it was doing what Germany was doing, with the exception of not being quite as racist. They didn’t like the Chinese (or Koreans, or Indonesians, or etc.), but they didn’t herd them into showers and gas them.
The global context was pretty damned crappy by the 1930s. It was a global depression, with East Asia reeling from the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in China (when the biggest regional power is in a full-fledged civil war, everyone else feels the pain) and Europe reeling from the Great War. Germany and Japan, by pouring resources into massive war machines, were able to stomp on underfunded and unprepared neighbors until the other big guys (China for Japan, Russia for Germany, and (eventually) the US for both) decided it was clobberin’ time.
So they didn’t work together closely, no, but they found similar solutions to similar problems. And, of course, they wound up similarly destroyed at the end.
Thanks, Cap’n!!!
In the words of the Shoveller, you’re…“amazing”.
I think the lack of a “big” answer in this thread (although with much good input) reflects my own take on the matter:
That Germany and Japan were never really that close, even during the Axis period.
As one poster pointed out, Japan and Germany were enemies during WWI. Nor were they fully fighting on the same side in WWII. For example, Japan and Russia never declared war on each other.
From the perspective of the US, they were both the enemy and both were labeled fascist (rightly so), although I don’t think Japan ever labeled itself as fascist (I could be wrong). Hence, Americans probably lump them together more than they ought.
The war in the two theaters was quite different. Germany was genuinely nuts, starting a war of conquest against pretty much all of Europe. Japan, on the other hand, had already won its own war of conquest, pretty much. Consider that the Nanking massacre occured in 1937. Japan held a fairly firm grip on Korea, Taiwan, and a huge chunk of China. Pearl Harbor was definitely the single stupidest thing that Japan ever did. Had it not done so, it could probably have stayed out of WWII altogether. In any event, for the Japanese WWII was more about hanging onto what they already had. There was not much coordination to be done with the Germans, and AFAICT it was pretty much just one side rooting for the other to do damage to the US.
Right. The systematic extermination-for-the-sake-of-extermination of whole ethnicities (Jews, Roma, etc.) was a special characteristic of the Nazis. The Japanese Imperialists were more of a mindset of just not thinking it was any big deal to kill and abuse the “inferiors” to get their way, or just to make a point of who was in charge (e.g. Nanjing)
And even then, the Big Neighbor (Russia, China) was not exactly doing much clobbering in 1941 – in both cases they were the ones on the defensive.
(BTW: Japan also had a geopolitical commonality with the other partner in the fascist Axis, Italy: both had fought on the side of the Allies in WW1, but then were relegated to being treated as subordinate powers in the post-Versailles order)