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True, the geography has helped a lot, but the fact that the US rode out the troubles of the first half of the 20th century almost unscathed and Japan didn't is not necessarily a variable that is independent from the differences between US and Japanese culture. It is possible that had Japan had a more US-like culture in the 1930s, it would never have become dominated by delusional imperialists who then got the country flattened in a war. Indeed, such a Japan would probably have never become isolationist and fallen behind the West to begin with.
Similarly, it is hard for me to imagine that a China with a more US-like culture would have stagnated under a Qing dynasty for centuries and fallen enormously behind the West in technology, then after a brief period of civil war replaced the Qing dynasty with communists who mismanaged the economy to the point that millions of people died as a result.
Of course this is all highly speculative, the reality is that there is no way to tell for sure one way or another.
If Japan had a more American culture, in just one way, Japan would have seen very different outcomes in WWII. If Japan had simply chosen to be less racist then they would have obtained a different outcome.
The USA in 1941, which was certainly a more racist society than today, nonetheless was able to field a half million Mexican and Hispanic soldiers, and more Native Americans served proportionally than any other group, most famously in the Navajo code talkers who were used specifically against the Japanese.
Where by contrast, the Japanese made enemies even of the anti-European independence movements within the areas they invaded almost instantly. If the Japanese had been capable of articulating and implementing the vision of the Greater East Asian Co Prosperity Sphere, they would have been able to tap the manpower and resources of Korea, Manchukuo, and South East Asia far more effectively. Would that have put them at parity with the United States? Not necessarily, but it also would have allowed a slower pace of war that would not have necessitated involving the USA in the war as quickly.
Of course, such a society would likely be less mono-ethnic, and hence according to most here less high trust etc today.
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Hmm, a lot here.
I think the United States was pretty close to being destined to ride out World War Two unscathed as long as nobody hostile developed a nuclear weapon. I think that's pretty much the only way CONUS gets more than a scratch. It's just very hard to do damage from across the Pacific or Atlantic oceans, and we only managed it on the one hand by taking a bunch of islands within striking range of Japan (and there aren't many of these on the Eastern American seaboard) and on the other hand by having England conveniently right there.
(This isn't the same argument as "the United States was destined to win the war in the Pacific).
Similarly, I'm not sure anything about Japan's technology would have saved it from being stuck between the United States (with 2x its population) and the Soviet Union (with nearly 3x its population).
But I do agree that a slightly different culture would have kept it from getting bombed out of World War Two and made it more competitive in the postwar era - a Japan that doesn't lose World War Two is at a minimum a major regional power.
I also think, FWIW, you probably don't get US culture without US geography. I think crossing the Atlantic and Pacific had a strong filtering effect on Americans that persists to this day.
(Incidentally there is imho a huge underrated and interesting question about long-term space colonization, as imho space colonies are likely to be insanely productive due to founder effects, but may also be prone to regimented thinking.)
On this note, I've always thought that one of the greatest advantages the US had was in being able to construct its constitution with significantly reduced baggage/inertia. Trying to reform the US constitution today seems essentially impossible. My hope is that if space colonization ever works out that a new set of founders with foresight manage to take the chance at a fresh start at put together an even better constitution for the modern era. It would be a fun discussion to hear what people would want explicitly included.
With any luck(??) we'll get Archipelago In Space, which could be very interesting on a lot of different levels. IMHO the US Constitution is very good ("working exactly as intended") but it was a some what unwieldy compromise because it had to accommodate certain geopolitical realities. That may be less true for SPACE COLONIES than any other civilization before (although I am not sure I would place money on it).
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Tens of millions!
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Japan’s culture was more similar to that of, say, Theodore Roosevelt than you think. Like America, they had a sense of Manifest Destiny: that they were a uniquely blessed people with a uniquely excellent culture (which compared to the rest of Asia at the time they really were) and that it was their destiny to civilise their neighbours and then the world.
Two big (relevant) differences are:
In short, I think that a big part of why Imperial Japan didn’t survive the 20th century and America did was out of geopolitics rather than cultural differences.
(Obviously other cultural differences existed, I am not saying that America had its own rape of Nanking or anything silly like that).
The United States was taking "soft" diplomatic action against Japan before they attacked Pearl, both in terms of an oil embargo and in terms of sending mercenaries and weapons (the "Flying Tigers") to China to fight against them. I think that by 1941 they
I am not an expert into Japanese thought, so perhaps there was much more than this. But that seems sufficient to me, if that makes sense. [Edit to add: the Flying Tigers arrived in China before Pearl Harbor but did not see combat until after. It's unclear to me how secret this was/if this played any part in Japan's thinking, but the oil embargo was, of course, no secret.]
I would add (while still oversimplifying; Japanese history is not my strong suit) that there was a strong internal rivalry between the army (who wanted to fight the USSR) and the navy (who wanted to fight the US/UK). The army faction sort of got their wish in 1938-9 but blew it by being defeated by the Soviets (General Zhukov won his first big victory there.) and were in turn discredited in favor of the naval faction.
This scene depicting that battle is hilariously inaccurate in some ways (No, the Japanese weren't using Kamikaze trucks; they had tanks, planes, and artillery of their own.), but the moral of "Oh fuck, the Soviets have more tanks." was true. Unfortunately for Japan, America had just as much overmatch in ship and airplane production as the Soviets did in tank production.
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Japan also never believed they could outright defeat the US. The idea was that Pearl Harbor would give them 6-12 months to build an empire and defensive perimeter around the Japanese home islands, coupled with a mistaken assumption that the US would be willing to negotiate peace with them after seeing how much work it would take to defeat them.
Well, I know Japan had a plan to defeat the US navy in a decisive battle, but I agree that's different from the outright defeat of the sort they ended up receiving.
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Bit of a tangent, but imo the question in your first point is answered by colonialism not being a historical grudge at that point. The US had the Philippines, the UK had India and burma, the Dutch had the islands, France had Indochina, Russia was moving south. China was in pieces and looked like it was ripe for taking.
From a 1930s Japanese perspective it looked like they were getting crushed between the western powers and were going to be deindustrialized into another colony by economic warfare (like the oil embargo). Defending hadn't worked for anyone yet, so... Banzai.
There's an interesting question of how willing the US would have been to let Japan beat the other colonial powers. But US expansion sure looks like the most immediate threat to Japan, so it was probably impossible.
Thailand was never colonized. It was also, weakly, a member of the Axis during WWII.
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