How WW2 Ruined Japan’s Greatest Achievement – Sarah Paine

32 Comments

  1. They are two generations yes. But the fact that the generation that came after and bring its economy up is also the same generation that refuse to admit and teach what they have done during the war means they are really one and the same.

  2. Japan is part of the west.
    * constitution
    * respect for private property
    * religious freedom
    * market economy
    * explains nature with science and not superstition

  3. It's hard to talk about the Meji restoration without talking about how militarised, expansionist and based on a twisted version of Honor it was.
    Japan pretty much immediately started acting like a European nation and colonising it's neighbours while simultaneously treating them as subhuman which alongside the other factors ended up in the attrocities of WW2

  4. Japanese civilization was also built on Chinese culture. They borrowed heavily from the Chinese to the point that their written language, architecture, art is very much influenced by it. What their Meiji reform did was make them more imperialistic which ironically led to them being destroyed in WWII and eventually overtaken by those countries they once invaded and oppressed just shows being evil doesn’t prosper

  5. The 🇺🇸 paid for its defense for decades, while propping up dictators in the allies that helped it win the war. 🇯🇵 still owes reparations. Heck, it still has to apologize and teach their generations how their beloved ancestors wanted to make slaves of millions of human beings.

  6. But they decided to implement western strategies but here’s the problem Japan will probably be so low in population in 20 years that they’re gonna have to be 70% automated AI will Ron Japan they’ll be no flesh and blood working. That’s scary.

  7. What’s the Japanese did was look at the bottles and the failings of World War II where they abandon technology and decided that a 19-year-old with a samurai could be an American hidden in a trench behind the concrete if he just put the effort in but if he died, he will be honored for his sacrifice 1 million Japanese bodies later they decided let’s do something different

  8. Germany and Japan destroyed after ww2. Now the 3rd and 4th largest economies in the world. Gave up the hate and made something of themselves. Gaza lost the war in 1948 and still 5 generations later have leaders who would rather dig tunnels and buy weapons too destroy others and wipe them off the map, over land they lost in war. That Islam thing is barbarism when sacrificing your children is more important then giving them an actual future. Make it make sense.

  9. Footnote: You’re right that Japan is the only Asian member of G7 and the rest are Western nations. Remember, G7 was originally formed in the 1970s as a forum for the richest industrialized democracies which, at that time, meant those that had industrialized early and held global financial power.

    But….the economic dominance of the UK, France, and others didn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s deeply tied to centuries of colonization, slavery, and imperial extraction. Before its rise as an empire, the UK (then England and Scotland separately) was a a modest agrarian society, dependent on wool exports, aomparatively less wealthy than Italy or parts of the Islamic world, and technologically and economically behind regions like China and India (which were leading in manufacturing, metallurgy, and trade during the Middle Ages).

    What really propped up the British Empire and its offshoots, including the USA, was atlantic slave trade, colonial extraction, industrial revolution funded and fueled in by colonial profits, and control of vast resources and markets.

    When historians like Sarah Paine praise “Western” economic models without mentioning colonization, it risks whitewashing history by portraying wealth as a result of ingenuity and democracy alone, rather than also the violent extraction and global inequality that made it possible.

  10. She’s not wrong that Japan’s place in the G7 isn’t just about economics…it’s deeply political. The U.S. pushed for Japan’s inclusion during the Cold War to solidify a capitalist ally in Asia. Japan’s “economic reform” story echoes the Meiji era, atop-down, state-driven modernization serving strategic goals. It’s less about pure merit, more about alignment and power. You can twist facts and present them however you want.

  11. The idea that accepting the genius of evil people is also accepting their evil is something that sets humanity back plenty.

    Alot of 'evil' people are incredibly talented. The cost for their gains have already been paid. Should we let it be in vain, or learn from everyone despite their evil?

  12. imperial japan dreamt of becoming a eastern superpower
    the meiji reforms were based off western ideology
    thus japan saw no other way to rise but through the same “tried & tested” way western powers did; colonialism 😂
    but since japan was already too late in the 3G game & unclaimed “empty lands” all but gone & fairly modernised, they had to ursurp the western colonials hold in the east & their methods had to be brutal.

    now, the only reason they outlived their rise since ww2 was due to the cold war. the west needed a historically strong ally in the east, much like they needed west german in europe.