Honestly though, they were kinda shit for most of their history. Japan didn’t really become a major world player until after the late 19th century, when they realised just how far behind they were.
Japan basically got the chance to be something bc Qing Dynasty refused to work with Imperialists colonists. The americans and portugues would have loved to be on China instead of the shitty Japan. Even thailand would have been mlre interesting to colonialists.
A major mistake that haunts the entire region to this day.
There’s this whole anthropological theory that people’s from regions that have less resources resort to pillaging as means to survive; after many generations they become so good at it that they just simply continued to do it.
On the flip side, you have countries that have it all, in particular Asian and American countries, that never developed such a need because resources were abundant.
Pretty much. Look at how India and China have people who overwork and overstudy. Meanwhile many western countries have a good work life balance and have a lower / easier standard in education because they don’t need to do much to survive.
Guess it has to do with the fact that Europeans, primarily, have been fucking India and China over the past 100-200-ish years. Resulting in many Indians and Chinese not having access to their own reaources and so creating that whole overwork/study culture thing.
Modern China started late bc of civil wars but chinese culture including confucius was always about educating until you can do well in imperial exams, so you can serve the country.
India isn’t, it’s a 3 trillion economy for a billion plus people. Per capita that’s very low. India recently did a lot of expeditions to try and find oil but had no luck. There are a lot of spices (which were just stolen for years by colonial powers) but the value of those has reduced compared to newer technologies like semiconductors.
China has just become rich recently, there should be a decline / easing of pressure on people in the next few years / decades.
That’s not my point. Japan is a rich country nowadays but it does not have a lot of natural resources ancient people could use, which is what I’m talking about. As the theory goes, a resource-less country should give rise to an expansionist, aggressive society in search of said resources whereas countries like India and China, with plenty of water, fertile land and valuable minerals should give rise to more laidback societies, which is the opposite of what you’re claiming.
They’re talking about right now. Historically India and China were relatively wealthy (by the standards of the time), and so were usually on the receiving end of invasions.
I think you’re missing a bit here: The Japanese were historically hunter-gatherer societies far longer than their mainland neighbours. The reason appears to be a large abundance of food and resources, to the point that the Japanese hunter-gatherer societies are believed to be some of (if not the) only hunter-gatherer societies that formed year-round stationary settlements, because they had enough resources to not be reliant on wandering, as other, nomadic societies had to.
Historians believe that the Japanese only converted to agriculture once rice strains and agricultural methods that were suitable for their climate had been developed in Korea for over a thousand years, because thats how long it took to make agriculture able to compete against the hunter-gatherer lifestyle in Japan, due to the vast amount of resources.
If memory serves me right, I’m talking about the Jomon period, which is the periode from about 10 000 years ago, up until about 2500 years ago, when the Yayoi period started. I believe the start of the Yayoi period is marked (among other things) by the spread of agriculture throughout Japan.
Checked it out and no, the jomon period ended around 300 BC. So while Alexander’s successors were fighting each other Japan had barely discovered agriculture
Yes: 300 BC is about 2500 years ago, which is roughly when the Jomon period ended.
My point was that the reason agriculture had not spread to japan yet wasn’t because they weren’t aware of it, but because Japan was so resource rich that it wasn’t able to compete as a lifestyle.
It’s well documented that the jomon culture traded with Korean farmers for centuries or even millennia before adopting agriculture themselves. This is an important reason for why they weren’t wiped out by disease when they came into contact with agricultural societies. Historical evidence also suggests that they were better fed than their agricultural neighbours in Korea and northern China in that period.
In short: The reason Japan started developing e.g. metalworking much later than their neighbours wasn’t a lack of resources, but an abundance of them. Which led them to not adopt agriculture before neighbouring societies had developed it sufficiently far to become competitive. Technology and social stratification typically follow once agriculture is adopted.
Yes and no: the resources that made Japan very viable for hunter-gatherer societies are very different from the resources that make an area viable for agricultural societies.
Whereas agricultural societies value open areas and metal ore a lot, the jomon societies lived primarily off foraging and hunting in wooded areas. With the rise of agriculture, those areas largely disappeared, to the point where Japan was almost deforested.
Seafood is also something Japan had a huge abundance of, but like most of the world, they overfished their stocks.
For the “no” part: Resources like metal ore, coal, oil, waterfalls for hydropower, etc. do not make a hunter-gatherer society less viable, but can serve to make an already highly technologically developed society even more viable. The point being that although Japan had an abundance of resources making hunter-gatherer lifestyles much more viable than in most of the world, they can still lack in resources that are valuable to Iron Age and later societies.
The result is that
1: It took longer for agriculture to become a viable competitor against hunting/gathering in Japan.
2: Once agriculture was adopted, the resources in demand were not in high supply (as they weren’t there in there in the first place).
That’s not saying much considering that their neighbors included the Chinese, which has some of the oldest history of farming in the world. The Loess plateau was farmed 10,000 years ago!
Also, guns germs and steel has been thoroughly discredited by historians and archaeologist who consider the authors work bullshit.
“I argue that although Diamond makes interesting points, his work from Guns Germs and Steel to Collapse is a distorting disservice to the real historical record.”
Even if you choose to discredit the book, I’m making the argument that Japan had a lot of resources that made hunter-gatherer societies viable enough that they actually formed year-round settlements. That’s a claim I have yet to see someone dispute, as there is a bunch of archeological evidence backing it up.
I totally disagree. If you actually read that Wikipedia article, the praise comes from people who are in totally unrelated fields like international relations. By and large, archaeologist and historians have discredited that that book and consider it a work of fiction.
Any case, I don’t know enough about Japanese prehistory to really comment one way or the other regarding your claim. I believe it’s probably pretty plausible that Japanese had made permanent settlements, probably based on hunting gathering and fishing. Fishing of course is and has been one of the main staples of food for Japanese as evidenced by their current consumption of something like 40% of the world’s seafood.
Glad I’m not the only one who thought this. There are definitely big differences, but in some surprising ways, Japan always struck me as being like the England of the east.
I always think it kind of is! Island culture with antagonistic relationship with the mainlanders. Weird tea-based rituals. Imperialism. Longbows. Northerners considered hairy savages.
A lot of that is because in an attempt to rapidly modernise and prevent itself from being colonised, Japan imported a ton of ideas from all over Europe, including imperialism.
Tbh it’s surprising that Japan is as strong as it is with the shitty spawnpoint they had (basically no or shitty resources)
In a way, it’s kind of like bri’ain, innit?
Honestly though, they were kinda shit for most of their history. Japan didn’t really become a major world player until after the late 19th century, when they realised just how far behind they were.
Well, they had their presence in the late 16th-early 17th century
Japan basically got the chance to be something bc Qing Dynasty refused to work with Imperialists colonists. The americans and portugues would have loved to be on China instead of the shitty Japan. Even thailand would have been mlre interesting to colonialists.
A major mistake that haunts the entire region to this day.
What?
There’s this whole anthropological theory that people’s from regions that have less resources resort to pillaging as means to survive; after many generations they become so good at it that they just simply continued to do it.
On the flip side, you have countries that have it all, in particular Asian and American countries, that never developed such a need because resources were abundant.
Oh shit, it’s the “hard times create strong men” thing
Pretty much. Look at how India and China have people who overwork and overstudy. Meanwhile many western countries have a good work life balance and have a lower / easier standard in education because they don’t need to do much to survive.
India and China are rich as hell though, they have a ton of resources. Shouldn’t they have more laidback populations then?
Guess it has to do with the fact that Europeans, primarily, have been fucking India and China over the past 100-200-ish years. Resulting in many Indians and Chinese not having access to their own reaources and so creating that whole overwork/study culture thing.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Modern China started late bc of civil wars but chinese culture including confucius was always about educating until you can do well in imperial exams, so you can serve the country.
India isn’t, it’s a 3 trillion economy for a billion plus people. Per capita that’s very low. India recently did a lot of expeditions to try and find oil but had no luck. There are a lot of spices (which were just stolen for years by colonial powers) but the value of those has reduced compared to newer technologies like semiconductors.
China has just become rich recently, there should be a decline / easing of pressure on people in the next few years / decades.
That’s not my point. Japan is a rich country nowadays but it does not have a lot of natural resources ancient people could use, which is what I’m talking about. As the theory goes, a resource-less country should give rise to an expansionist, aggressive society in search of said resources whereas countries like India and China, with plenty of water, fertile land and valuable minerals should give rise to more laidback societies, which is the opposite of what you’re claiming.
They’re talking about right now. Historically India and China were relatively wealthy (by the standards of the time), and so were usually on the receiving end of invasions.
China is pretty poor individually. Its the sum. India is simply poor entirely outside of some billionaires
Damn, the storm’s coming then
They’re min-maxing for an island nation playstyle. High focus of fishery, invasion defense +10, special perks to survive natural disasters…
Special perks to use natural distasters for defence.
You made a mongol cry with that comment
I think you’re missing a bit here: The Japanese were historically hunter-gatherer societies far longer than their mainland neighbours. The reason appears to be a large abundance of food and resources, to the point that the Japanese hunter-gatherer societies are believed to be some of (if not the) only hunter-gatherer societies that formed year-round stationary settlements, because they had enough resources to not be reliant on wandering, as other, nomadic societies had to.
Historians believe that the Japanese only converted to agriculture once rice strains and agricultural methods that were suitable for their climate had been developed in Korea for over a thousand years, because thats how long it took to make agriculture able to compete against the hunter-gatherer lifestyle in Japan, due to the vast amount of resources.
Source: Guns, Germs and Steel (Jared Diamond)
Was this before or after the yayoi period?
If memory serves me right, I’m talking about the Jomon period, which is the periode from about 10 000 years ago, up until about 2500 years ago, when the Yayoi period started. I believe the start of the Yayoi period is marked (among other things) by the spread of agriculture throughout Japan.
Checked it out and no, the jomon period ended around 300 BC. So while Alexander’s successors were fighting each other Japan had barely discovered agriculture
Yes: 300 BC is about 2500 years ago, which is roughly when the Jomon period ended.
My point was that the reason agriculture had not spread to japan yet wasn’t because they weren’t aware of it, but because Japan was so resource rich that it wasn’t able to compete as a lifestyle.
It’s well documented that the jomon culture traded with Korean farmers for centuries or even millennia before adopting agriculture themselves. This is an important reason for why they weren’t wiped out by disease when they came into contact with agricultural societies. Historical evidence also suggests that they were better fed than their agricultural neighbours in Korea and northern China in that period.
In short: The reason Japan started developing e.g. metalworking much later than their neighbours wasn’t a lack of resources, but an abundance of them. Which led them to not adopt agriculture before neighbouring societies had developed it sufficiently far to become competitive. Technology and social stratification typically follow once agriculture is adopted.
Then why are all their resources either inexistent or scarce? Did they use them all while still being in a voluntary state of prehistory?
Yes and no: the resources that made Japan very viable for hunter-gatherer societies are very different from the resources that make an area viable for agricultural societies.
Whereas agricultural societies value open areas and metal ore a lot, the jomon societies lived primarily off foraging and hunting in wooded areas. With the rise of agriculture, those areas largely disappeared, to the point where Japan was almost deforested.
Seafood is also something Japan had a huge abundance of, but like most of the world, they overfished their stocks.
For the “no” part: Resources like metal ore, coal, oil, waterfalls for hydropower, etc. do not make a hunter-gatherer society less viable, but can serve to make an already highly technologically developed society even more viable. The point being that although Japan had an abundance of resources making hunter-gatherer lifestyles much more viable than in most of the world, they can still lack in resources that are valuable to Iron Age and later societies.
The result is that
1: It took longer for agriculture to become a viable competitor against hunting/gathering in Japan.
2: Once agriculture was adopted, the resources in demand were not in high supply (as they weren’t there in there in the first place).
That’s not saying much considering that their neighbors included the Chinese, which has some of the oldest history of farming in the world. The Loess plateau was farmed 10,000 years ago!
Also, guns germs and steel has been thoroughly discredited by historians and archaeologist who consider the authors work bullshit.
https://www.livinganthropologically.com/archaeology/guns-germs-and-steel-jared-diamond/
https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2013/01/14/169374400/why-does-jared-diamond-make-anthropologists-so-mad
Let’s not be one-sided here: Guns Germs and Steel, like most other works, has shortcomings, but I think it is more fair to say that it has caused a lot of discussion. A long list of experts, as late as this year, back up the book to varying degrees.
Even if you choose to discredit the book, I’m making the argument that Japan had a lot of resources that made hunter-gatherer societies viable enough that they actually formed year-round settlements. That’s a claim I have yet to see someone dispute, as there is a bunch of archeological evidence backing it up.
I totally disagree. If you actually read that Wikipedia article, the praise comes from people who are in totally unrelated fields like international relations. By and large, archaeologist and historians have discredited that that book and consider it a work of fiction.
Any case, I don’t know enough about Japanese prehistory to really comment one way or the other regarding your claim. I believe it’s probably pretty plausible that Japanese had made permanent settlements, probably based on hunting gathering and fishing. Fishing of course is and has been one of the main staples of food for Japanese as evidenced by their current consumption of something like 40% of the world’s seafood.
Glad I’m not the only one who thought this. There are definitely big differences, but in some surprising ways, Japan always struck me as being like the England of the east.
I always think it kind of is! Island culture with antagonistic relationship with the mainlanders. Weird tea-based rituals. Imperialism. Longbows. Northerners considered hairy savages.
A lot of that is because in an attempt to rapidly modernise and prevent itself from being colonised, Japan imported a ton of ideas from all over Europe, including imperialism.