Imperial Japan

>Ottomans tried to westernize for centuries, failed and collapsed
>Russia tried to westernize for centuries, stagnated at best
>Japan tried to westernize, transformed from a feudal backwater into a modern industrial world power in a matter of 50 years

How the fuck did they do it? This is literally the only case in all of history where a non-Western country managed to catch up and in some cases exceed the West all on its own. It makes all other powers looks like retards who never even tried.

This still boggles my mind. Can anyone explain this?

Japan knew they were behind in technology, and realized that it was either being dominated or not.
Imagine what the protectionist japanese felt when Perry arrived and forced them to open up for trade with massive warships.

>Japan knew they were behind in technology, and realized that it was either being dominated or not.
What, and China didn't? So after getting raped up the ass multiple times in the Opium wars, they didn't even know they were outclassed?

Guess they just didn't want to win hard enough!

The Qing refused to westernize because they were the Qing.

Imagine the Republicans being the only party in the US. That's what it was like.

>Pre-placed internal strife and long standing hatred for ruling government made rebellion (and subsequent reforms) more likely to happen sooner anyways. (The Qing and the Ottomans either held out too long, resisting reforms, or reformed too late, or both)
>Homogeneous and subservient-to-authority population uniting around a literal god-king for their rule
>Culture idolizes strength, conquest, and domination
>Conquers, dominates, and power-plays once given the means to do so
>Modernized while surrounded by primitive shitholes in comparison, making conquering everybody else easier.

That's what makes Japan so impressive to me. I have the impression the elites pretty much accepted the necessity of change. The shogunate gave up easily, there were nous huge rebellions of nobles who refused to give up their advantages (well of course it happened, but those wars were pretty short in the end)
Doing that was just si hard in France, they had a bloody revolution, napoleonic Wars and more revolutions after that. Japan really is special.

the first opium war should have been an eye opener, but it wasn't. There were people like Lin Zexu who realized the implications of the Qing military's pathetic performance but bringing up the need to modernize was political suicide. Instead a stabbed in the back myth developed. One particular incident was widely spread for propaganda purposes, a skirmish where Qing bannermen had managed to defeat British marines by engaging during a driving rainstorm so their guns failed. Even though this was realistically an extremely minor victory it was blown massively out of proportion and was shown that Qing fighting spirit was stronger than any technology.

When they got the shit kicked out of them again in the second opium war people started to realize how fucked they were, and started the self strengthening movement. But they weren't willing to radically reform the structure of society the way Japan did. The self strengthening movement was really only interested in building armories and shipyards so China could make modern weapons just like the kind Europe had, but weapons are worthless if you don't know how to use them. The old army was simply given the new weapons without being reorganized whatsoever, or even being instructed in what tactics they required. They also didn't change the civil service exam, so to get into government you needed to have a very specific humanities education in confucian classics. This barred anyone with an interest in science or engineering from ever getting a government job.

There was like two decades of conflict though (1850's-1870's), many assassinations (Ii Naosuke for starters) and open battles, whole provinces going for open revolts. It wasn't a bloodless thing but they were pretty much alone in their part of the world, France was in the middle of the whole Europe.

Heavy investment from the US to keep an asian capitalist pole.

>comparing the ottomans who were neighbors to the most advanced states of their times both militarily and diplomatically to Japan, literal islands surrounded by backwards people who refused to adapt

ok

>Homogeneous and subservient-to-authority population uniting around a literal god-king for their rule
>Culture idolizes strength, conquest, and domination
This is really the key points in regards to Japan.
They were pretty quick to eschew their 1000x honour for matchlocks before. Why not again?

groriousu nippon

NIPPON STRONK

You forgot the second half of that.
>modernize
>eventually fall under a military junta that can charitably be described as fucking insane
>attack the most powerful nation on the planet because of paranoia
>get driven to the brink of annihilation and lose all the clay you got in the last 50 years

>eventually fall under a military junta that can charitably be described as fucking insane
>eventually
The shogunate isn't a military junta now?

U.S rebuilding them after the second world war. Densely populated island, favorable trade conditions, and a studious population led to a booming high tech economy at the turn of the century.

Before the second world war, Japan had an alright industrial complex, but they were still way behind in economic decision making process and economic theory. It wasn't until the 80's/90's that they actually caught up and started innovating to match western economic theory.

They have hentai and other fucked up taboo shit, id say they ended up the worst

It took an American soldier of fortune to force chinkniggers to learn how to modern warfare.

Not the shogunate, the clique of ruling generals in WW2.

Culture. China basically thought it didn't need to modernize, or rather many in China knew it did, but were constantly stifled by other elements. They thought that China had nothing to learn from the outside, probably based on the previous century or so where China was the most powerful and advanced place in the world by a mile and ruled over 1/4 of the globe's population.

Japan, on the other hand, has a culture of adapting and never were very traditionalist. They shamelessly copied Chinese culture in their early days while considering it superior to their aboriginal culture. When the Portuguese and Dutch made contact with them, they very quickly opened trade with them and transformed their society accordingly. And when Perry sailed into Tokyo, they very quickly Westernized.

A good example can be seen in the development of the Imperial Japanese Army. In the early days, the advisors were primarily French, the uniforms were based on French uniforms, and they overall modeled themselves after the French, who were thought to be the master land power at the time. After the Germans' quick victory over the French in 1870-1871, suddenly they adopted a Prussian flavor and hired Prussian advisors.

Also, what about Thailand? I don't know much about them, but they also seemed relatively well-off compared to China.

Japan was still pretty backwards in most industrial areas until after WW2. Their industrial output was much smaller than all the first rate powers in the war and their ability to innovate left much to be desired.

China's issue was that the famed bureaucracy that they had also created complacency. People grow up and join that bureaucracy stick tot he same tried and true models. It would have been interesting to see if Matteo Ricci remained a chinese advisor, what kind of state China would have gone through.

China was never a technological backwater, the Grand Canal was the single greatest technological achievement for almost all of Human history. Suez was childs-play compared to the Grand. But what was the Grand canal primarily used for? So that chinese authority could be river kings, getting ferried up and down the river on their yachts, being pulled by Gondoliers.

they lost a lot of territory, but were able to remain independent because they were a convenient buffer state between british and french colonies in south asia

>probably based on the previous century or so

*millennia

Japan has been trading with western nations for centuries and in the 1800s had a craving for everything American.

Railroads
Telegraphs
clothing
weapons
etc

not to mention that American military and govt influence has been rooted in Japn since 1945

>because of paranoia
>most powerful nation on the planet in the 30s
the USA were very powerful especially economically and had a huge potential for obvious reasons but they were not a superpower yet
also the world was still blatantly ruled by colonialism and Japan felt the need they had to colonize as well to acquire the natural resources they needed

>attack the most powerful nation on the planet because of paranoia

the US was nowhere near the most powerful nation on the planet in 1941 and was considerably behind japan at the time

Anime.

>anime is Japan's plot to get back at the west by isolating an entire generation of males into NEEThood

[spoiler]its working[/spoiler]

the richest, most industrialized, most rich in natural resources, able to use most of its population for warfare, in the best geographical position etc etc

how the fuck was the US not destined to be #1

Didn't the Taiping rebellion start because some dude failed the impossibly difficult exam like 4 times and lost his mind?

>the us was behind japan in 1941
haha ok

destined to be =/= actually is at the time

I mean you don't attack a country with millions of men in reserve and just about plenty of everything waiting to go into production. Surely the japs knew about the potential of the US.

Yep, they knew. That's why they came up with the plan to knock the US out of the war quickly. Take out the carriers at Pearl, once achieved, establish a fortified defensive ring of islands to prevent the US entering the Pacific without suffering casualties they felt would be unacceptable to a democracy

honestly it still could have worked up until midway and even after that, which more or less guaranteed eventual victory, it still took four years to beat them

>this is what subhuman mongrelized americuck believe
kek

Japan took a huge gamble on westernization and they're lucky it didn't horribly backfire like with China. They literally fought wars over it.

The reason they managed it is purely because any time it could have gone wrong it didn't.

>being so wrong
they wanted a peace treaty, they would however never get it ever

paranoia? na. history my dude.

they were still wearing top hats when they surrendered to the us

Not him, and I agree with you that Japan was a serious threat until Midway and Coral Sea, but here's the issue: their whole plan relied on Americans wimping out after taking a few losses. Their impression of Americans came from gangster movies which stereotyped them as all shifty selfish money-grubbing individualists who would fold as soon as they met the banzai charge of disciplined and fanatical Japanese soldiers, just like Japan had been doing for years to shitty and disorganized Chinese conscripts.

Unfortunately for them, American G.I.s were professional, well organized soldiers who held the line when the Japanese banzai charged and pushed their shit in with machine guns whenever they tried it. American resolve was far stronger than they anticipated and the American industrial heartland was essentially untouchable, even with major set-backs it would have turned into a grinding war of attrition, which simply would have favored the larger and more robust American economy.

china also realized that after the opium war but it was a fairly large and difficult to innovate with.

Yeah, and the fact he caught a fever after the second time he failed, which resulted in near-death hallucinations that he later claimed meant he was the son of God/Jesus's brother due to a poorly translated paraphrased edition of part of the Bible he somehow acquired.

>This is literally the only case in all of history where a non-Western country managed to catch up and in some cases exceed the West
Thailand and Ethiopia had some successes as well.