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Japan is the only country of color to successfully modernize (industrial revolution).
Japan is said to be the only country among people of color that succeeded in modernizing through the industrial revolution. So why was only Japan able to succeed?
Japan has been isolated from the rest of the world for over 200 years, and we are generally taught in school that modernization began with the opening of the country. What exactly is the industrial revolution? The industrial revolution can be thought of as a power revolution.
Watt in England improves the steam period and creates a machine that converts the power of steam into rotary motion. This was a revolutionary invention at the time. He will be able to transmit rotational motion to various gears and realize complex movements in various locations. So, what was the machine like up until then? It was similar to how humans and cows rotate their shafts, or when they step on a loom with their feet to obtain rotational motion.
This is the power of steam, and if you keep the fire burning, you can get an output many times greater than human power. What this achieves is mass production of products.
Until then, it was called a cottage craft industry, and as the name suggests, people made things by hand, but from now on, we will enter an era in which machines will be making large quantities of the same items.
This is the industrial revolution. Products manufactured in large quantities are cheaper and become popular among various classes. Steam locomotives also provided the infrastructure for transporting these large amounts of goods. From this era, the demand for coal to generate overwhelming thermal power increased explosively.
So, why did Japan succeed in the industrial revolution? Japan already had the technology to make these machines by watching and copying. During the Edo period, techniques were honed and improved as a traditional craft during the apprenticeship system, and the sword culture continued for a long time, making iron processing technology one of the best in the world. has in the metal processing field. Unlike human power, steam engines produce overwhelming power, so wooden machines would easily break. In other words, even the smallest parts of various machines must be made of metal and assembled. When Japanese people saw Western industrial machinery, they may have simply thought, ``Oh, I think I could make something like this.''
One reason is that Japanese people are good with their hands, but clocks were the most precise gear-based machines of the time. It is said that Japanese clocks were already created in Japan during the era of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Currently, Japanese clocks have a reputation for being the most accurate and unbreakable in the world, but these technologies were not invented yesterday.
■English subtitles
There is another thing that Japan achieved that was necessary for the industrial revolution. It is a departure from the feudal system. In the West, a civil revolution had already taken place, and the industrial revolution began more than 100 years later. Free citizens were already active during the Industrial Revolution, and their lives were not tied to feudal lords or land as in the feudal system.
In other words, when wealthy people at the time started a company that mass-produced products using industrial machinery, they could recruit and hire employees.
This is the proletariat, and a mobile labor force is essential to the industrial revolution. The Meiji Restoration was truly a revolution that destroyed the feudal Edo shogunate system and created a civil society.
The Japanese at the time were able to accomplish something that had never been seen before in the world: they simultaneously carried out an industrial revolution. Then, if you think about why other countries of colored people were unable to modernize, it can be said that it is because these two points were not met. One is metal processing technology. The other is the formation of a civil society, which means breaking away from feudal society.
In the first place, Southeast Asian countries and other countries of color were all colonized by the West from the latter half of the 15th century, so it is difficult to imagine that the countries under colonial rule would be able to achieve the industrial revolution that first occurred in the West in the late 18th century. It's impossible to say so. For example, what if we look at the neighboring countries of China and the Korean Peninsula?
China also has a sword culture, and has a long history of using iron tools. However, they were unable to break away from feudalism. As for the Korean peninsula, Korea did not have the technology to make needles and wheels, so they imported them from China. What this means is that the needle meant that people didn't have fine metalworking skills, and the wheel meant that people didn't know how to bend wood into rings, so they didn't know how to move things. It was carried on the back of a person, carried by a person, or placed on their head. In other words, it is impossible to improve the efficiency of infrastructure, and in the first place it is impossible to make the gears in industrial machinery or perform detailed metal processing.
What was fatal on the Korean peninsula was that the class system was exactly as it was before the Middle Ages, and it was a distorted society with 40% slaves, so talk of a mobile labor force was a thing of the future. . In order to firmly protect this old Korean society, the aristocratic class, the yangban, completely eliminated various reforms for modernization. It can be said that both were fatally lacking.
Only 27 years after the Meiji Restoration, Japan defeated the Qing Dynasty, which was considered a major power, and 10 years later defeated Russia. After World War I, Japan sat at the table at the center of the world as a permanent member of the League of Nations in 1919. This was only 51 years after the Meiji Restoration. In this way, Japan was the only people of color to achieve modernization, and the idea was to spread this wave to Asia.
Sun Yat-sen's Xinhai Revolution was made possible with Japan's support, and Sun Yat-sen, who founded the Republic of China, believed that Japan's Meiji Restoration was the cause of the Chinese Revolution, and that the Chinese Revolution was actually the result of the Restoration. I'm making a statement. During his exile in Japan, Sun Yat-sen took the name Sun Yat-sen and was a person who learned about Japan's modernization. There was a man named Kim Ok-gyun on the Korean peninsula, but the revolution in Korea ended in failure, and Kim defected to Japan. However, when he went to Shanghai, he was assassinated by an assassin sent from Korea. It is ironic that just four months after Kim Ok-gyun's death, the Sino-Japanese War began, resulting in the independence of the Korean peninsula and the beginning of reforms toward modernization.
As a result, China started the Xinhai Revolution in 1912, 44 years after the Meiji Restoration, and the annexation of Japan and Korea began 42 years after the 1910 Meiji Restoration. In fact, as Asian countries eventually achieved independence after the war, the process of modernization was necessary in any case, but it is worth noting that Japan was the only country of color to achieve this. However, it is clear that the modernization of Asia was derived from Japan's Meiji Restoration, and in this regard, China, the Korean Peninsula, and Japan, without exception, have recognized this important process within the theme of mod
How many natural resources are there in the waters near Japan? Possibility of Japan including EEZ.
Trauma of Japan, a country without resources
Japan's area is not small
Is Japan 52.4% of mainland China?
Rare earths, oil, these are just the beginning
Cabinet Secretariat “The Future of the Sea”
Are undersea resources a treasure trove to save Japan?
Japan is in a state where it can be said that marine resource development is almost untouched. As a country lacking in natural resources, it relies on foreign sources for many natural resources, including oil. During World War II, Japan was surrounded by ABCD as a country with no natural resources, and was in a situation similar to a food raid. They lost the war due to America's overwhelming amount of supplies. One cannot help but wonder why marine resource development did not progress after the war. Since we lost the war because we didn't have the resources, there may be many people who argue that searching for resources means starting another war, but this is a completely different story.
Japan's land area is 380,000 km2, ranking it 62nd out of 196 countries in the world. Japanese people tend to think of Japan as a small country because they tend to focus on top-tier countries such as the United States, China, and Russia, but Germany, Finland, and Poland are smaller in area. However, Japan is a maritime nation. When looking at the total of territorial sea, contiguous zone, and EEZ, Japan ranks 6th in the world in terms of ocean area with 4.47 million km2. And if you add the extended continental shelf, it is 4.65 million km2. If Japan's land area is added to this, the area that Japan can independently mine is 5.03 million km2.
China is covered by countries such as Japan and Taiwan, and there are few oceans that China occupies. That's why they dream of expanding into the ocean, but China's land area is 9.6 million km2, and in fact, including the sea, Japan has about 52.4% of mainland China. is. Because China has a large land area, natural resources and oil are mined. However, Japan's seabed resources are still unknown.
In 2018, researchers from Waseda University and Tokyo University discovered that hundreds of years' worth of global demand for rare earths, which are essential for manufacturing precision equipment, is found on the ocean floor around Minamitorishima in the Ogasawara Islands. This was discovered through the team's investigation. A research team from Ibaraki University and Hokkaido University has announced that one of the world's largest oil fields may lie dormant off the coast of Ibaraki Prefecture's Goura coast in 2020.
Cabinet Secretariat Ocean Policy Headquarters Secretariat “The Future of the Sea” Excerpt
The Basic Law on Ocean Policy was enacted in April 2007 and came into effect in July of the same year. The Basic Law on Ocean Policy outlines the basic philosophy of harmonizing the development and use of the ocean with the conservation of the marine environment, as well as the responsibilities of the national and local governments. It also stipulates that a Basic Ocean Policy Plan be established approximately every five years, and that the Ocean Policy Headquarters, headed by the Prime Minister, be established in the Cabinet. The current Basic Plan on Ocean Policy, which was approved by the Cabinet in April 2013, clarifies ``the vision of Japan as a maritime nation'' and sets out initiatives that should be prioritized in light of changes in the social situation regarding the ocean. and indicates the direction of ocean-related measures. It also specifically describes the efforts that the government should comprehensively and systematically implement over a period of approximately five years in the 12 areas specified as "basic measures" in the Basic Act on Ocean Policy. The existence of energy and mineral resources such as oil, natural gas, methane hydrate, and submarine hydrothermal deposits has been confirmed in Japan's territorial waters, EEZ, and continental shelf, and the possibility of Japan becoming a resource superpower is hidden.
The 2007 Basic Law on Ocean Policy was formulated during the first Abe Cabinet, and Japan's exploration of seabed resources went into full swing. What if Japan becomes a resource-rich nation? I would never have thought of that. Because Japan is a small country... No. There is a high possibility that there will be a breakthrough in undersea exploration. There may come a time when Japanese people don't have to work so hard.
Possibility of the world's largest oil field off the coast of Izura, Ibaraki Prefecture - Hope for investigation and mining including security.
It is estimated that there is a huge oil field off the coast of Izura in Ibaraki Prefecture. A slag called carbonate concrete was formed by the bond between calcium and carbon, and the origin of carbon was unclear by research teams at Ibaraki University and Hokkaido University who found that it was natural gas. From the area of ??the reef, the total amount of natural gas ejected from the seabed is estimated, and the fact that natural gas is emitted means that there is a high possibility that oil resources are buried under it. If oil resources are discovered, they will be one of the largest in the world.
There seems to be an opinion that it is cheaper to buy oil from abroad as before because it takes a lot of time and cost from investigation to mining, but as a problem including security before the economic point of view. I want you to proceed with the investigation. In the first place, QUAD is the area where oil tankers pass from the Middle East, and China is trying to control it, and its original purpose is to prevent those movements.
What if oil comes out in Japan? Will the Spratly Islands issue and the Taiwan Strait issue become less important to Japan? No, it wouldn't be. China is cleverly developing oil resource diplomacy, which is a card of further threat to Asian countries. Achieving a free and open Indo-Pacific by QUAD could sell Japanese oil to Asian countries and reduce China's influence on the Spratly Islands relatively. I would like the country to discuss the overall benefits of having resources, not just the perspective of which is cheaper.
Japan received a warm welcome at the Bandung Conference. Gratitude from each country for colonial liberation.
Shunichi Kase, Counselor for Foreign Affairs, attended the first Asian-African Conference in 1955, which was attended by 29 countries, and described the reactions of each country at the time as follows:
People from both Africa and Asia welcomed the event with comments such as ``Thank you for coming'' and ``Thanks to Japan.'' The Greater East Asia Joint Declaration, which established Japan's brave fight for the peoples of Asia and its significance, shines in history. If Japan had not issued the Greater East Asia Declaration and made the liberation of the Asian peoples the purpose of the war, or if Japan had not sacrificed and fought for Asia, we would still be under British control. It remained a colony, a Dutch colony, a French colony. Today's Asia exists because Japan made great sacrifices and fought bravely for the Asian people. That's what it meant.
People from both Africa and Asia welcomed the event with comments such as "Thank you for coming" and "Thanks to Japan." If Japan had not fought with such sacrifices, we would still be a colony of England, France, and the Netherlands. The Greater East Asia Joint Declaration, which established Japan's brave fight for the peoples of Asia and its significance, shines in history.
The Asian-African Conference was held as a place for the Asian and African countries that gained independence one after another after the war to unite in mutual recognition of national self-determination.
Ten principles for peace adopted at the first conferenceFundamental human rights and the United Nations Respecting the purpose and principles of the Charter
Respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries
Recognize the equality of all human beings and the equality of all nations, large and small.
Do not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries
Respect the right to individual or collective self-defense under the United Nations Charter
Do not use collective defense for the special interests of great powers. Also, do not put pressure on other countries.
Do not jeopardize the territorial integrity or political independence of other countries through invasion, threat of invasion, or use of force.
International disputes are resolved by peaceful means
Promote mutual benefits and cooperation
Respecting justice and international obligations
Korea always says they represent Asia, but they don't represent .
Does Japan procure labor from anti - Japanese countries? - Are you not considering the issues of immigration policy?
It is said that Europe and the United States are reconsidering their immigration policies due to failures, but the United States views immigration from South America as a problem with guns and drugs, not immigration from Canada or Europe. When considered as a white group, they tend to have a lower birthrate, and it is predicted that white people will become a minority in the United States by 2060.
If Europe is facing social unrest due to immigration from Muslim countries, it is certain that this will happen if it accepts immigrants from countries that can be described as hostile religions. In Europe, the periphery means Islamic countries or Africa due to location. However, travel and work within the EU are basically free, so EU countries accept foreigners. The reality is that the West is trying to prevent immigration from dangerous countries.
What is fatal for Japan is that historically it has not been blessed with neighboring countries. If Japan had the issue of which country to procure labor from based on this kind of thinking, then it would be a crazy idea to bring labor from a country that routinely provides anti-Japanese education to its citizens. There are members of parliament.
In Asia, at least in terms of cultural background and religion, there are countries that believe in Buddhism, countries that have an affinity with the Japanese imperial family as a kingdom, have a good level of education, are pro-Japanese countries, and have a strong acceptance of Japan. It would be desirable if there could be collaboration that would allow Japan to be involved with educational institutions in partner countries.
In any case, Japan's efforts to combat the declining birthrate will be over once the second baby boom generation fails to have children. Even if the competitiveness of Japanese companies increases due to the weak yen, they will not be able to bring their production bases back to Japan, and on the other hand, if they continue to flow to other countries, their GDP and tax revenues will simply become income for other countries.
