The Japan case indicates how a country's profile can change over time and how these changes are associated with different patterns of international behavior. Each period demonstrated different structural features and alternative pathways for adjustments to internal and external constraints. Examining the Japan case from the Meiji Restoration, through World War I and World War II, and the early 1980s, it was clear that Japan's profile continued to demonstrate powerful resource scarcities, and thus the continued dependence on external trade. The demand for imports could only be met by the supply of exports, thus shaping a vicious cycle of reliance on external resources. Japan was caught between a rock (invariant resource levels) and a hard place (external constraints on resource access). In the decades preceding major international conflicts Japan fostered its eventual technology-dominant profile enabling it to engage in a wide range of expansionist activities to reduce its resource constraints.