Is Meiji inevitable?

Ok, so I've been wikipediaing it up and I found this. I think its interesting that probably opening up japan up to foriegn contact earlier would've been worse for the nation. According to this it seems thier success in the Meiji reforms was to continue isolation but beginning in 1720 copy and learn from the latest european tech advances.

So as much as people harp on Japan Wanks occuring in a TL with a rediculously early POD, a Meiji could happen in Japan with a POD even in the 1650's?

And did this happen anywhere else and could it cocktail into a Meiji?
 

yourworstnightmare

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I don't think an earlier Meiji would be possible. Japan opening up earlier would mean it would be dominated by the European trade powers.
 
WOW! acording to that, the first japanese steam engine was made one year before japan was opened. :D
 
Meiji was pretty ASB as it was.
The popular view is that Japan was the only non-western country that tried to develop and it was as easy as trying to do so. You always see this kind of crap coming from Indian nationalists and the ilk.
In actual fact though most nations tried to modernise. China in particular put in massive efforts. For various reasons though they failed.

IMO part of the reason Japan suceeded is that it started so late.
Carving out a empire from a civilized (Japan was seen as civilized, hilariously primitive but certainly civilized) country was no longer quite the done thing. You couldn't use the whole 'they're pagans who must see the light' angle anymore and news travelled fast.
There were just so many competing foreign interests in Japan. Practically every western nation could have some part in it. So Japan developed quick but much of the European influence cancelled each other out. A decent profit was made out of Japan but no one managed to take it into their direct empire or even entirely their indirect empire.

Given Japan starting in 1720...Well Adam Smith had yet to even be born. They invite European powers into help their country and it would become a smaller version of India. The British and French would start shooting at each other to decide who gets to own Japan.
Though its ASB that they would (COULD) even do that...Europe wasn't even industrialised let alone Japan. Japan was just as modernised as Poland or wherever.
 
I don't think an earlier Meiji would be possible. Japan opening up earlier would mean it would be dominated by the European trade powers.

Why?

Meiji was pretty ASB as it was.
The popular view is that Japan was the only non-western country that tried to develop and it was as easy as trying to do so. You always see this kind of crap coming from Indian nationalists and the ilk.

Japan's literacy rate in the 19th century was at least as high as Britain in the 1790s, with a sophisticated economy, including the concept of a futures market; a well developed state authority, and a technological base that had been studying European technology for years, with Dutch learning having an intense following.

Given Japan starting in 1720...Well Adam Smith had yet to even be born. They invite European powers into help their country and it would become a smaller version of India. The British and French would start shooting at each other to decide who gets to own Japan.

One would think the Japanese would have a say in it...


Anyway, I think it's an option. The details, though...
 
One would think the Japanese would have a say in it...

OK, let me rephrase.
The (British friendly) Japanese and the (French friendly) Japanese would start shooting at each other to decide who gets to own Japan.
 
But Japan is a thoroughly unified state at this point.

No - it's medieval France-unified. The Meiji-types had to crack a lot of feudal heads to get the whole country behind them. I have no doubt the Europeans could find suitable locals to back them up.
 
No - it's medieval France-unified. The Meiji-types had to crack a lot of feudal heads to get the whole country behind them. I have no doubt the Europeans could find suitable locals to back them up.

The Meiji did in the 16th century. By 1750 they ran a well-oiled police state.
 
The Meiji did in the 16th century. By 1750 they ran a well-oiled police state.

What the living hell are you talking about? the Meiji were in the mid 19th century. Posibly you meen the Tokugawa?

And the fremch were capable of finding feudal lords to prop up against the central government as late as 1877.
 
Tokugawa did try, in 1850-s to 1860-s, to take the lead in opening and modernizing Japan. They failed.

Qing China, in 1757-1839, was also isolationist. But China was keeping a slightly wider door ajar: Japanese permitted only Dutch and Chinese in Nagasaki (plus connection to Korea over Tsushima) while Qing allowed various Western countries like England, France, USA etc, to use the port of Guangzhou.

Suppose that Tokugawa decide to allow more foreign contact earlier, but still under strict Tokugawa control - what then?
 
I don't have enough Japanese history but I suspect Meiji is fairly contingent. The thing is though, Japan was under going proto-industrialization and the like (as noted above). I've read some interesting stuff about how it is civilizations more on the fringes that tend to, out of necessity, be more open to innovation and risk. Japan and Europe are held up as the prime examples (compare to China and Islam, respectively). As a result it seems likely Japanese response to earlier contact and forced opening would be unique and may lead to "Meijiesque" results. More important--what's the earliest Japan could be forced open? The European tech gap didn't start to really yawn until the 19th, arguably not until the mid-19th century. Before that places like Japan and China could ignore modernization as they wished because it really didn't get started. The problem as I understand it is that Japan had similar institutional pressures to Europe (in the macro-sense), making modernization seem appropriate to them. In China and elsewhere modernization was deemed too disruptive by important groups, who didn't realize until far too late the alternatives were substantially more disruptive.
 
I don't have enough Japanese history but I suspect Meiji is fairly contingent. The thing is though, Japan was under going proto-industrialization and the like (as noted above). I've read some interesting stuff about how it is civilizations more on the fringes that tend to, out of necessity, be more open to innovation and risk. Japan and Europe are held up as the prime examples (compare to China and Islam, respectively). As a result it seems likely Japanese response to earlier contact and forced opening would be unique and may lead to "Meijiesque" results. More important--what's the earliest Japan could be forced open? The European tech gap didn't start to really yawn until the 19th, arguably not until the mid-19th century. Before that places like Japan and China could ignore modernization as they wished because it really didn't get started. The problem as I understand it is that Japan had similar institutional pressures to Europe (in the macro-sense), making modernization seem appropriate to them. In China and elsewhere modernization was deemed too disruptive by important groups, who didn't realize until far too late the alternatives were substantially more disruptive.

Yes, but Russia started modernization already with Peter I in 1690-s.

Was there a tech gap then?
 
And there is a historiographical division as I understand it (I have only slightly more Russian then Japanese history under my belt) about the nature of Russian modernization/Industrialization prior to the Soviet experiment/catastrophe.
 
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