> Postwar Japan was a different beast for quite a while. Weird Al Yankovic's line "don't you know that other kids are starving in Japan" was what parents used t

> Postwar Japan was a different beast for quite a while. Weird Al Yankovic's line "don't you know that other kids are starving in Japan" was what parents used to guilt their kids into eating until Biafra happened. Sure, but that was largely due to the effects of WW2. Children were also starving in Germany and the UK in the postwar era. In reality, Japan modernized in the late 1800s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiji_restoration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiji_restoration