I’m someone who likes to have in depth conversations at parties, and last night I met an American who labeled himself a history buff. We discussed a few books on the history of Japan (some of which I read, others I did not, but he did seem to know what he was talking about regarding the areas I understood), and he mentioned a podcast named “hardcore history” which I “had to” listen to.
A native Japanese man joined us and we all talked for a while. Eventually the topic moved to the current economic situation of Japan, and I left to go to the bathroom. When I got back, they were having a debate which eventually turned into a somewhat heated argument (for Japan that is, if this was in the UK there would be chairs flying across the room)
What it boiled down to was that the Japanese guy thought that Japan’s economic success post WW2 was due to:
1) Japanese work ethic
2) Producing high quality products that are globally in demand
3) Being one of the largest exporters of culture in the world
Pretty standard stuff to be honest, and is what I also thought. HOWEVER, the American was claiming something quite interesting that I had never heard before. He was saying that Japan’s economic rise post WW2 was due entirely to China turning communist.
He claimed that post WW2 there was a lot of bad blood between the west and Japan, for obvious reasons, but that the western super powers viewed China’s turn to communism as the largest threat in the future along with Russia. This meant that establishing territorial presence and allies in Asia was of the upmost importance for America to do immediately post WW2, since that’s when China became fully communist.
What triggered the Japanese fellow was that the American said, had not China become communist, Japan would be economically and socially around the same level as China is today. This obviously offended the Japanese guy a little bit, but the American explained. He said that after WW2, Americans and Europe despised Japanese for how they had behaved during WW2 and viewed them as literal savages, whereas they had feelings of neutrality or pity towards the Chinese. If China didn’t become communist, America would have let Japan rot and Japan would have struggled for decades, just as China did, to make the difficult climb back up towards economic prosperity. But since China did become communist, America was forced to help rebuild Japan and make the economy strong so that Japan itself didn’t fall to communism, as well as mold Japan into an ally for the US and allow US bases in the country.
He said that due to America rebuilding Japan that Japan got a massive head start and was able to prosper and become the nation it’s known as today. He said without it, you might even view Japan as equal to vietnam or something as Japan would have had a very hard time building itself up again with lack of foreign support and resources (since the axis was defeated, and all the surrounding asian countries hated Japan for what they did during the war)… so basically becoming a de facto colony of America and accepting their reconstruction was the only way out.
The Japanese guy was getting pretty annoyed, but he didn’t really say anything probably out of politeness, and eventually left the conversation. I think it’s pretty rude to say something like this when you’re IN Japan, but I don’t think American’s are known for their manners.
Even so, it was quite an interesting thing to hear. Thoughts?
by PinkMoonLanding
