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I think I know a bit more about he subject than you, having studied the Edo era academically and being a licensed instructor in the military techniques carried

by kobeya 9y ago

I think I know a bit more about he subject than you, having studied the Edo era academically and being a licensed instructor in the military techniques carried down by one family of Tokugawa bodyguards, including the oral history that comes with that. That era was a shitshow ruled over by oppressive sociopathic samurai where life was short, domineering, and often brutal. They kept their country isolated from technology for the only reason of disempowering potential reformers. It is only looked back with fondness by those whose naïveté keeps them from knowing better, or who have nationalistic political agendas. The gunboat diplomacy was frankly a move of liberation that benefited the people of Japan. And it was not an occupation either -- fair trading terms were what was offered, by the standards of the day, a far better deal than China had for example. Japan was enabled by the deal, turned into a prosperous trading partner and world superpower a mere 40 years later. I don't know what lense you are looking at his through, but it is not refracting history correctly.

AlexCoventry 9y ago
> I don't know what lens you are looking at this through... Mostly from reading Buruma's Inventing Japan, and Dower's War Without Mercy and Embracing Defeat. The fact that the pre-Perry regime was nasty has no bearing on the causal factors of Japan's later imperialism
- kobeya 9y ago
  You are correct, but it's orthogonal to anything I said. The point I was making is that feudal Japan was an oppressive, nasty place and gunboat diplomacy, while not bloodless (see the internal conflicts of the Meiji Restoration), was a much smoother transition to prosperity for the inhabitants of Japan than alternative interventions being tried elsewhere. I don't buy the line that coercive actions are necessarily wrong. Using force to remove a dictator that is oppressing its people (or an entire caste of brutal autocrats) is morally justifiable IMHO. And if you compare the American involvement in Japan with the other sorts of things that were going on at the time in East Asia, it was pretty tame. Historians must restrict themselves to evaluating choices by the standards of the time under consideration. And by the standards of day, the Japanese got a pretty good deal, especially when compared with their neighbors.

by kobeya 9y ago

AlexCoventry 9y ago

> I don't know what lens you are looking at this through... Mostly from reading Buruma's Inventing Japan, and Dower's War Without Mercy and Embracing Defeat. The fact that the pre-Perry regime was nasty has no bearing on the causal factors of Japan's later imperialism

kobeya 9y ago
You are correct, but it's orthogonal to anything I said. The point I was making is that feudal Japan was an oppressive, nasty place and gunboat diplomacy, while not bloodless (see the internal conflicts of the Meiji Restoration), was a much smoother transition to prosperity for the inhabitants of Japan than alternative interventions being tried elsewhere. I don't buy the line that coercive actions are necessarily wrong. Using force to remove a dictator that is oppressing its people (or an entire caste of brutal autocrats) is morally justifiable IMHO. And if you compare the American involvement in Japan with the other sorts of things that were going on at the time in East Asia, it was pretty tame. Historians must restrict themselves to evaluating choices by the standards of the time under consideration. And by the standards of day, the Japanese got a pretty good deal, especially when compared with their neighbors.