Comments by "Arthur Mosel" (@arthurmosel808) on "Asianometry"
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I actually hate these type of videos. They include both good data. To research; however, they include much false or incorrect information. In point of fact, the technology gap between the West was only around 50 years, and has multiple causes including the Dutch annual briefings that did withhold some information. Besides this annual requirement for the Dutch to trade in Japan which continued throughout the period of closure; there were three intelligence gathering rings. One into Korea, one into China out of Okinawa and a third also out of Okinawa. Since Okinawa was technically not mainland Japan and under the Satsuma Han, there was some degree of outside countries (Britain being of note). Additionally, a number of covert foreign visits were undertaken. Starting around 1700, the government began running foreign study groups, and were even able to publish this knowledge as long as it had been purged of anything that hinted foreign origin. In "Abandoning the Gun" the author mentioned a medic al book of Japanese origin; in reality it was the product of one of these study groups which had taken a Western text and purged it of any trace of Western origin. Besides realitively friendly relations with the Dutch during the period, the Japan had diplomatic involvement with Imperial Russia. Including treaties the Russians routinely violated. In maps drawn in the early 1700s, Japan claimed all the islands upto the Kamchetka (Sp?) Peninsula, as well as enclaves on the Siberian Coast, and the entirety of Sakhalin Island. In a series of little bites, Russia despite formal agreements with Japan siezed most of them. By 1875, they were encroaching on the last two island off Hokkaido and Hokkaido itself. To stop this Japan ceded the last half of Sakhalin to Russia for the promise of not siezing the remaining islands and Hokkaido (remember that by this point Britain was starting to back Japan against Russia). My point is that Japan was far from isolated from the world at the governmental level. The shogunate just wanted the populace from upsetting the apple cart; and controlling what the Japanese public knew was how. In point of fact, the Shogunate started considering modernization of defenses in the 1840s after the Dutch king warned them of other European nations interest in forcing things with Japan. Initially, this took the form of the shogunate requiring increased firearms training among the Han. This was followed by obtaining a Dutch infantry manual and weapons for the troops. While the progress was spotting, it was ongoing from this point forward. Remember that through the Dutch and their own spy rings they were well aware of what was happening between the Europeans (particularly the British and French). I suspect that the Japanese shogunate probably was even happy to deal with the US forcing the opening rather than Britain and France. The US had not played a major role in the forcing of China, and by comparison demanded far less in their treaty with Japan. This to some extent helped Japan in its dealings with those powers. Between the changes in Japan by the 1880s, extra territorial rights were essentially a dead issue. Japanese courts were by this point based essentially on the Napoleonic codes (as was most of Europe) removing a major reason for extra teritoriality. In fact, perhaps the cause of the later First Sino-Japanese War can be traced to a Chinese fleet visiting Japan around 1884 whose admiral demanded those rights, and the British had already given them up. Japan refused and began building the fleet that was responsible for defeating Imperial China i 1894/1895. Sorry to be so long winded, but there is so much more than videos like this use.
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