Why was Japan the first non-Western nation that successfuly industrialised and started its own imperial expansion?

They grew a lot economically under the Edo period which was also very peaceful. It basically allowed an easy transition.

Yeah sorry, my sources are contemporary speeches and exchanges of letters in China and Japan, but your crash course history playlist surely taught you better.

Did you happen to forget that Japan intentionally closed off their borders to outsiders for centuries and gave up on developing advanced tech?

No. Nobody said human nature can't be ambivalent.
>and gave up on developing advanced tech?
That is straight out bullshit though.

>The reason Japan became a developed country is because they are always open to change and outside influences
>But when they aren't, it doesn't count
Go back to /pol/ or wherever you came from.

Yeah no. They closed off their borders to outsiders but kept a constant stream of knowledge flowing from the Dutch at Dejima.

...

nice epik upboated xDD

Being an island that has never/barely ever been successfully invaded and subjugated and having a fairly advanced civilization

They were open to change and influence, that's why they kept 5 harbours for foreign powers.Even Perry noted that the Japanese were astonishingly well educated in continental politics and had a solid grasp of medicine.

The shogun just didn't want to be overthrown by foreigners at the time of the tokugawa shogunate, which is why he closed the borders in a single man decision.

The japanese always had the potential to adapt ideas and modernize their society, which is what they did when faced with a do or die situation against an undefeatable adversary. The Chinese could never admit their own ways being antiquated and got cucked.

I mean what the fuck are your arguments apart from platitudes and calling everyone stupid? You must be one of these millenial degreed self acclaimed scholars I took a jab at in my post.

They learned from the best Imperialist out there.
I'm not even trying to give you a short answer because that is all the information you really need.

1500's-1600's they found out that there are bigger and badder nations out there besides mongolfags and Koreans. And it didnt take long for the Japs to learn from the techs that those guys brought. Of course the Shogunate banned Them. But when the time came to open the sea again, boy did they conform fast.
Of course they kept a lot of their traditions but as far as warfare and military techs, it was like they had discovered fire.

That doesn't answer the question at all. Why didn't other nations learn from the best Imperialist in a similar fashion?

The Japanese had already seen what happened to china and other nations, and after several small bombardments from sea they were very familiar with what western weapons could do and realized they were woefully unprepared.

Despite their zenophobia the people at the top realized the only way to beat those weapons were to copy them, more than that they realized they would have to adopt western science and academic methods in order to do that.

What the hell do you expect? All nations don't do the same fucking thing - some are good at the Imperial game and others are not.

As i said earlier, they had the intelligence, infrastructure and legal system to do so. Japan was a highly organized, highly efficient state with a lot of centralization when whites rolled up. India and to an extent China and definitely other places like South east asia and africa were much less developed, but japan was.

So the Zulus and their rich culture were just worse in the dirty game of imperialism. Got you sempai.

What about Arabs?

China and Korea were confident (arrogant) that they didn't need any barbarian "foreign shit."

Japan were more open to Western trade and influence, as they were doing that for thousands of years already by eagerly adopting Sino-Korean culture and technology. They had periods of isolationism but it was nothing compared to isolationist policies of "Build the Wall" China and "Hermit kingdom" Korea.

Basically, Korea and China paid dearly for their arrogance.

>So the Zulus and their rich culture were just worse in the dirty game of imperialism. Got you sempai.
What point are you making exactly? Every country can't be an imperial power, someone's got to be opressed

>What about Arabs?
The sickman of Europe? The Ottoman empire? Ha, they tried, WW1 tore them apart.

As for actual arabs, its literally a desert.

>So the Zulus and their rich culture were just worse in the dirty game of imperialism. Got you sempai.
Well...
>The Zulu attitude towards firearms was that: "The generality of Zulu warriors, however, would not have firearms – the arms of a coward, as they said, for they enable the poltroon to kill the brave without awaiting his attack."[13]

The Zulus definetely used firearms, my dear wikipedia scholar.

Only minor compared to China's isolationist policies. Japan was still more open to foreign goods compared to China.

Korea for example had a law that made it illegal for any foreigners to be in the country (after they saw what Europeans did to China). That's why Spain and France recommended their sailors to avoid Korea because anyone that had to crash land on Korea was immediately executed by provincial police on the beaches (they were paranoid that they were European spies that were trying to open the border).

I never said they didn't.

>That's why Spain and France recommended their sailors to avoid Korea because anyone that had to crash land on Korea was immediately executed by provincial police on the beaches
Based Koreans

Arabs had no greater ressources they could acess without help and were a very servile, fatalistic people at this point.

They did it right though. Closed themselves off from cultural influence which tears a nation apart (as literally happened when they reopened) but kept open trade to keep up with the latest tech (within asia) and news.

Assholes like you are why this board is bad

The fact that Japan was a feudal society that had controlled access to (relatively) advanced technology is fucking fascinating. It's basically WH40k Feral Worlds irl.

Who you talking to

I wouldn't go that far, but I know exactly what you mean.

Hard to call it a feral world when it would be move civilised than most hives.

my mom

I forgot Feudal worlds were a thing so replace Feudal with Feral.

There were some late efforts by imperialist China to modernize their miltary, if not adopt other western practices. But the government was already falling apart and the Manchu's adopting western dress and other things alienated ethiic chinese.

Teh shogunate also tried to reform but likewise the writing was already on the walls. The differences after the shogunate fell government fell into the hands of competent men who were determined to modernize and united the country around a previously established symbol.

The Kyomintang on the other hand were corrupt and incompetent with little respect old symbols

The Opium War showed them the exact thing they didn't want to have done to them: anal plowing by Western powers. Getting to an equal level as the West ensured that they wouldn't get colonized by anyone.

There was also the Nativist movement, which espoused the overthrow of the Shogunate and the samurai class and a return to the primacy of the Emperor and ancient Shinto traditionalism. Although there was a strata of it that was kind of "kick all these foreign niggas out", the predominant idea came to be that gaining knowledge from foreign powers was actually just AS ancient and purely Japanese as the power of the Emperor. So you had this strange kind of synthesis with hearkening back to ancient Japan and looking forwards and learning from Westerners to get on their level.

The grand irony is that once they had renegotiated the unequal treaties imposed upon them by Western powers and finally had equal standing, they started to negotiate their own imperialist unequal treaties with Korea and China. Learning by example indeed.

Good read, to put in more formal way it means Japan has the preconditioned ideal society necessary for quick and efficient modernisation, unfortunately this kind of argument is politically incorrect as you can see how it can easily trigger people

A large amount of hard cash.
A semi strong state.
Desirable trade goods.
A government that already had started to get a eye for development projects in the near future.
Being large but with very little in the way of navigable rivers.

The last one great increased the difficulty of force projection into Japan. The British had huge issues during the First Opium War when fighting outside the support range of naval guns. not to say Japan could of fended off a well planned attack by a western power in the mid 19th century just that it would be costly for the attacker. It changed the terms in which Europeans dealt with the Japanese.

The radicals that threw in their lot with the emperor saw modernisation, especially military, as the only means by which they could resist being conquered or colonized by western powers. From there, the emperor threw in lots of cash in an early economic stimulus program of sorts, designed to industrialize the economy, mostly so it could produce weapons on an industrial scale but also resulted in the happy coincidence of consumer goods also being produced on an industrial scale.

Did you forget that whole
>DIRTY GAIJIN FUCK WHITU PIGGU WE CROSE BORDER NAO
period of 300 years?

The borders were never really closed. Just limited and even then only to certain people. The whole
>JAPAN WAS ISOLATED FROM EVERYTHING FOREVER
Is a complete and total myth.

[Citation needed]

And you are a fucking ahistorical retard for thinking China with the 40 colonial cities on its coast was somehow more closed to outsiders

An elite humble enough to realize someone else had a much better idea.

What happened 1895-1945 then?

>Citation needed
You realize that there is a fucking word in the Japanese language during the Tokugawa Era for Western texts known as Rangaku? Japan was completely up to date with goings on outside of Asia thanks to the Dutch, Russians and even the British. On top of this, enemies of the Tokugawa like Chosu and Satsuma gave absolutely zero fucks about sakoku and purposely broke it as often as they could. Even WITHOUT European traders circumventing sakoku, Japanese merchants regularly purchased European learning materials from China. Japan was hardly isolated during the Tokugawa era. It's a Western misconception.

By allowing a flow of knowledge from Dutch influences yet also avoided foreign conflict and keeping uniform culture amongst a decentralized yet growing and flourishing people.

(OP)
Because westerners helped them. Students were sent abroad, and foreign employees (o-yatoi gaikokujin) came to Japan to teach and advise in large numbers, leading to an unprecedented and rapid modernization of the country.

[Citations still needed]

Literally any contemporary monograph on sakoku or rangaku.

This is a vast oversimplification.

Full disclosure: I am a Koreafag.
The power structure and culture of the Korean nation was not as well suited to adapt to change as the Japanese. The Japanese developed a highly centralized, bureaucratic government headed by an extremely stable executive branch. The shogun could to some degree resist the power of the nobles and impose some measure of order. That didn't stop a huge civil war from breaking out when the shogunate was overthrown by the imperial loyalists but for the most part, Japan was a very topdown country.

Korea on the other hand had court intrigues and factionalism that rivalled the Byzantines. Noble families vied and competed for access to the king. Eunuchs controlled the conduits of influence and access, and were as capricious as they were mercenary. The Admiral Yi Sun Shin was fucking tortured for Christ's sake because he was suspected of disloyalty and because others were jealous of his power. Because no one could replace the royal family, they settled for the second best thing, which was to keep them as weak as possible and keep their privileges and influence. Peasant reforms? Nope. Land redistribution? Nah bro. Increased taxes to pay for a standing army/navy to resist the Japs and Manchus? Haha not on my dime. Unfortunately for Korea, not one family was able to achieve total hegemony like the Tokugawas and we absorbed the technologically unambitious academic culture of the Chinese. I truly wish we were more in the Japanese cultural sphere than the Chinese but we're really just Chinese Lite edition.

>what is Dutch trade with Japan
everyone knows this

European interests.

They got ass blasted by the Americams and Perry.

then they discovered the benefits of western imperialism and industry.

contrary to popular belief many arab and asians attempted similar upheval and adoption of western ideals but by then it was basically too late.

japan comprehensively and voluntary removed its entire social hierachy and ruling class.

the collapse of the samurai and the shogun and the rise of a new technocratic elite with the teno emperor at its head allowed Japan to industrialize and militarize at unprecedented progress.

with an effective ruling class, hegemony of power held by the millenia old dynasty of emperors, japan was culturally connected to its past yet prepared for the age of western imperialism. after japan defeated russia, they effectively became a power to be respedted on the world stage.

as a supposed representation od all asians, japan was free to colonize korea, manchuria and invade china with little consequence.

>japan comprehensively and voluntary removed its entire social hierachy and ruling class
Yeah, but why was it possible for Japan and not for other Asian countries? That's where mystery lies.

Being an out of the way pointless place nobody wanted to bother with for the longest time and ergo not as BTFO as the rest of Mainland Asia.

They did still trade with the Dutch and had a whole branch of study called rangaku ("Dutch learning") to analyze the Western devices brought in by the Dutch.

American shock and awe and a willingness to collaborate with the foreigners instead of being spergs like the Indians and Chinese.

According to Victoria 2 it's basically because of the ridiculously high levels of literacy. Like it grows so fast you can soon start industralizing.

I guess this did have an impact irl.

because they had a prestigious and malleable head of state, the tenno. its a millenia old dynasty which has been a respected figure head of japan for a long time.

the reformers made the tenno the figure head of the state and after they defeated the old ruling class, the technocrats were free to make radical reforms that ere widely accepted.

japan effectively became a new nation ina matter of 10 years

The Last Samurai will teach you all you need to know.

India was precisely colonized because it cooperated with a lot of foreigners.

The fall of the Mughal Empire and the shittiness of Maratha rule as a unified state meant Indian princelings became their own powers in their right. In a race to one up their rivals, many employed the help of European states and mercenaries exchanging ever increasing deals on trade & land to fund their wars against each other.

in china and korea, these reformers were traitors and rebels. the old and conservative ruling class held absolute power because they were the traditional monarch and ruler.

prestigue plays a significant role in politics and in china and japan. the reforms held none

this desu

Japan did have good literacy rates for it's time period.

I'm pretty surprised how peoeple still ask how Japan developed and still not get it or look at other colonies/nations then compare them to Japan.

>have an extremely complicated writing system
>achieve traditionaly one of the highest literacy rates in the world despite that

Nippon is truly superior

>>have an extremely complicated writing system
>posts a picture with piss easy hiragana as example

you dun goofed.

The literacy thing surely is a sexy answer for the modern scholar. Education is everything and so on and so forth.
I'd question the impact on a reform, which was very much top down though. Not saying it didn't help spreading knowledge, but it surely isn't the definite answer to the OP question.

It's not that hard when you invest in education and you have independent agency over your own nation and money.

Like in the 1850's the Cree had better literacy in their written language then English and French Canadians and that's because James Evans script was really intuitive.

>extremely complicated
Japanese has ~2-3000 words in everyday use. The English language has 20,000. Japanese is nowhere near as difficult as most people claim. In fact, the reason they had one of the highest literacy rates is because they purposely dumbed the language down so peasants could learn it.

Because they could learn everything from western countries. Japan could get what western had developed for centuries in a very short term.

Similar process happened with Africa as well.

Japan was smart enough to not cooperate like the Indians or Africans, but also not to totally shut off the outside world like the Chinese and Koreans.

Don't trust the White man, but adopt his technology and institutions.

When you start winning you stop seeing how you could ever lose.

>statistics about crops 300 years prior to the events and obscure institutions no one gave a rat's ass about.
fucking kek

>Although there was a strata of it that was kind of "kick all these foreign niggas out"
it wasn't really a substrata though, it was pretty much the entire basis for the Shinto legitimists. Basically it was a rallying cry for the traditionalist Emperors as opposed to the foreign puppets that the Shoguns had become and was used by the Emperors to begin reasserting political power.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnō_jōi
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_to_expel_barbarians
Of course ironically enough the minute they actually got power they completely abandoned that shtick and began westernization almost full stop.

They only won the revuliton in the first place because they started importing western weapons and even adapting western tactics.

By the time Toba Fushimi was over it was clear to everyone that traditional weapons and tactics cant compete with firearms,

Japan was nationally secluded for 220 years until Commodore Matthew Perry arrived at Japan with his navy fleet and demanded Japan to trade with the rest of the world. Overtime they they picked up on how the western powers operated and adapted.

See Japan was nowhere near secluded or ignorant of the West.

>because they started importing western weapons
Both sides had up to date firearms, though. In fact, the Boshin War was pretty much a proxy war between European powers with the French providing assistance to the Shogun and the British and Americans providing aid to the rebels.

I'm not saying Japan cut itself off completely you stupid illiterate fuck

I'm saying China had way more CONTACT with foreigners. So much so that it got BTFO and ruined

>but also not to totally shut off the outside world like the Chinese and Koreans.
>40+ colonial cities, hundreds of european-weapon armed rebellions 1750-1900
>literally colonial port cities

Never happened

They got super mad that barbarian gaijin kicked their asses and went full modernization to beat whitey at his own game.

This is actually correct. Being forced unequal treaty was a real shame to Japan. So much so that they resolved to modernize themselves.

Watch The Last Samurai with Tom Cruise and then come talk to me

Japanese is anything but a hard or complicated language compared to the likes of their neighbours.

However, Koreans right next to them have what most consider the best writing system on Earth. Simple literacy is definitely not all there is to it.

The Japanese already knew about the shit westerners could do when the Portuguese met them. Then when William Adams arrived he became the advisor for all things foreign and showed them how to make ships that weren't dogshit.

You are cancer

During the Industrial Revolution, Imperial Russia was more western than the Russian Federation is today. Maybe the traditions of old feudal Russia have been preserved among the peasantry, but the aristocracy and urban elite where wholly western in their practices for the most part. Old Russian traditions where basically outlawed during the reign of Peter the Great.

>compared to the likes of their neighbours
Compared to any language really.

Meiji restoration (order at any cost) and the emperor and co realizing what needed to be done if they didn't want to end up like India. The black ships were a fucking wake up call they actually heeded.

Limited to a single fucking port and pretty much dependant on what the foreigners actually chose to share with them.

Implementing large parts of the german civil code (before the germans themselves, even) probably helped.

Japan was already a very prosperous, highly populated state with advanced legal systems and forms of Government and was for the most part very united. Other nations in the time period had severe issues which were only made worse by trying to "Westernize" too quickly; some were barely even Nation-States.