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Comment by bell-cot | Hacker News Reader

> Speaking of Japan, ...

IIR, Japan was a pretty xenophobic, unified, and militarized place when the Europeans showed up. And without either reputed or obvious Tier 1 riches - such as Central & South America's precious metals - to motivate a hard-fought conquest. Especially when 'most everywhere else in South & East Asia was comparatively easy pickings.

> Why do people still believe ...

Because, if you use sufficiently Eurocentric metrics, it usually was. And picking those metrics feels pretty good, if you identify uncomfortably closely with that sort of capitalism.

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> Japan was a pretty xenophobic, unified, and militarized place when the Europeans showed up.

Other than unified, that describes most places in the 15th or 16th century.

> Because, if you use sufficiently Eurocentric metrics, it usually was.

The one country in Asia* to not suffer colonialism (Japan) is way ahead of all the others that did have it, especially on "Eurocentric" metrics such as GDP and productivity and democracy and human rights. That alone should be a rebuke to colonialism's purported development powers.

* Arguably Thailand is another but it was forced to cede land to colonial powers. It too is considerably richer than its immediate neighbors.

The one country in Asia to not suffer colonialism (Japan) is way ahead of all the others that did have it, especially on "Eurocentric" metrics such as GDP and productivity and democracy and human rights. That alone should be a rebuke to colonialism's purported development powers.

I don't think this is a good example, given the actual modern history of Japan.

Contemporary Japanese democracy and respect for human rights aren't indigenous Japanese developments. They were literally forced on Japan by the victorious Americans after the homegrown Japanese militarist empire, which didn't GAF about either, catastrophically lost a major war.

Industrialization wasn't an "indigenous Japanese development" either. Other than Britain, every country had to import the industrial revolution.

Japan could only start that war because of its early industrialization. Colonies didn't start WW2.

In an alternate historical timeline where Japan industrializes but doesn't start the war? It would need to have had less militaristic and xenophobic leadership in the early 20th century than it did in our timeline. And IMO that would've led to more democracy* and human rights anyway over time.

*Important to note: Even pre-WW2 Japan went from absolute monarchy to a semi-constitutional monarchy, with suffrage for all adult males granted in 1925.

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