Japan didn’t avoid colonization entirely. It attempted to get some action on the colonizer side.
Japanese government realized that they are behind in development both technological and economical.
Those were the colonized countries. So to avoid being colonized, they did all in their power to become colonizers themselves.
The irony is that out of all colonized countries the Japanese colonies were the one that net benefited from colonization. At the cost of brutal oppression and atrocities, but Japanese considered those their 'land' and instead focusing purely on extraction of wealth (europen model) they were developing infrastructure.
All in all, the whole 'colonization was not so bad' is whitewashing of history. And we should stop putting positive light on it. Just because one slave owner was 'good' it doesn't make slavery justified.
This is a completely inaccurate representation of the various Japanese colonial projects. While some historians might refer to what became Taiwan in these terms, very few would say the same of Korea or the territories in China the Japanese occupied.
In fact, the viciousness and extractive nature of the Japanese colonial projects are what justified to many the corollary anti-colonial violence that eventually escalated into civil war in the Korean peninsula. For example,An Jung-geun, who assassinated the Japanese colonial administrator Ito Hirobumi, is still considered a national hero in both the north and the south.
Eh, you're whitewashing history right there.
Projecting today's morals,values & information on to a past people who did not have those who were raised when the norm was the norm.
Savagery existed throughout mankind and to think otherwise is silly.
Every land had tribes who may have formed an alliance but also would have just as likely killed & enslaved others outside their tribe. _Every_ land.
Of course we can and we do that, that is the only way we progress as a species.
Killing and enslaving is objectively wrong, no matter if you are 15th century peasant or 20 cent soldier.
What next? Ethnic cleansing are/were not so bad as they result in strengthening of national coherence? Eugenics is simply caring for the future generations?
Its a slippery slope argument giving a pass to past actions as they 'didn't know' its bad what they had done.
> Savagery existed throughout mankind and to think otherwise is silly. I have not said that you are building a straw-man here. I advocate not to call the savagery act anything but savagery.
>Every land had tribes who may have formed an alliance but also would have just as likely killed & enslaved others outside their tribe. _Every_ land.
So that gives me a right to kill you and enslave your family?
In other words, some things simply don't need to be defended. We can acknowledge that they happened and discuss them levelly without trying to put bad actors in a better light. To invoke Godwin's Law a bit, we do manage to discuss Nazi Germany without constantly saying "Well actually we are all better off because they did lead to some advances in science and technology". (As an aside, colonialism is arguably more recent than Hitler - Nigeria for one did not gain independence from Britain until 1960. Yet one is considered "too soon" but the other is treated as though it happened in some distant past that we should all have gotten over by now.)