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> But we rarely think about ethnic imperialism — an empire trying to gobble up neighboring polities because of linguistic and cultural similarity, so that it c

> But we rarely think about ethnic imperialism — an empire trying to gobble up neighboring polities because of linguistic and cultural similarity, so that it can be the ruler of a specific cultural sphere. (In fact, the British conquest of Ireland, the Japanese conquest of Korea and China) Uh no. The Yamato people wanted these countries for land and resources. Japan was never interested in extending their culture, nor proactively assimilating other ethnic groups into their own, with the exception of maybe the Ryukyuan on Okinawa. If this were the case, you’d seen it in Taiwan. They didn’t want to assimilate the Koreans who already in their country for generations, either. I can only presume author is a white person, because the cultural affinity of Japan bifurcated from China a millennial ago. Speaking of which, the other motivation was to prevent and buffer Japan from being controlled and humiliated by a white colonizers, as was the case with China.

yongjik 3y ago
Japan's colonial policy on Korea varied over time, but they were consistently hostile against educating people in the Korean language (I mean, they wanted low wage workers for the empire, so obviously they would want them to speak passable Japanese), and toward the end it became a full attempt at erasing Korean identity, with banning the Korean language in classrooms, forcing Shintoism on Koreans, and even forcing every Korean to abandon their own name and pick up a Japanese name [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C5%8Dshi-kaimei https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C5%8Dshi-kaimei > Speaking of which, the other motivation was to prevent and buffer Japan from being controlled and humiliated by a white colonizers, as was the case with China. I mean, yeah sure, that's what Japan claimed. In the same sense Hitler was defending the great German Lebensraum from evil intruders.
yorwba 3y ago
> If this were the case, you’d seen it in Taiwan. Yes? Japan only controlled Taiwan from 1895 to 1945, and only started really ramping up assimilationist policies towards the end of that period, but the influence of Japanese culture was nonetheless quite great, with many locals becoming bilingual in Japanese. Then the ROC took over, instituted Mandarin as the official language while suppressing all others, and after losing control of the mainland retreated to Taiwan together with a large influx of Mandarin speakers. Now Mandarin is the dominant language, despite not being present before the end of Japanese rule. So when you don't see many obvious Japanese influences in Taiwan today, don't forget that more time has passed since the end of Japanese rule than Taiwan was controlled by Japan in the first place.

yongjik 3y ago

Japan's colonial policy on Korea varied over time, but they were consistently hostile against educating people in the Korean language (I mean, they wanted low wage workers for the empire, so obviously they would want them to speak passable Japanese), and toward the end it became a full attempt at erasing Korean identity, with banning the Korean language in classrooms, forcing Shintoism on Koreans, and even forcing every Korean to abandon their own name and pick up a Japanese name [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C5%8Dshi-kaimei https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C5%8Dshi-kaimei > Speaking of which, the other motivation was to prevent and buffer Japan from being controlled and humiliated by a white colonizers, as was the case with China. I mean, yeah sure, that's what Japan claimed. In the same sense Hitler was defending the great German Lebensraum from evil intruders.

yorwba 3y ago

> If this were the case, you’d seen it in Taiwan. Yes? Japan only controlled Taiwan from 1895 to 1945, and only started really ramping up assimilationist policies towards the end of that period, but the influence of Japanese culture was nonetheless quite great, with many locals becoming bilingual in Japanese. Then the ROC took over, instituted Mandarin as the official language while suppressing all others, and after losing control of the mainland retreated to Taiwan together with a large influx of Mandarin speakers. Now Mandarin is the dominant language, despite not being present before the end of Japanese rule. So when you don't see many obvious Japanese influences in Taiwan today, don't forget that more time has passed since the end of Japanese rule than Taiwan was controlled by Japan in the first place.