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Mar 11 • 14 tweets • 6 min read

Shogun & his officialdom knew & most intellectuals of significance knew, some commoners too
How could they not have known? Japanese sailed to Mexico in early 1600's itself en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasekura_…
Tokugawa era Japanese elite weren't braindead kangers
The
observations of these visitors to Europe, Goa, New Spain,& Philippines would play a role in Shogunate's decision to extirpate Xtians & close Japan because those who went saw Japanese slaves being sold in Goa by Xtians, colonization of Philippines, New Spain helped along by padres
Here is the man tasked with extirpating Xtians from Japan:

"Mexico, Lucon, and many other countries he has thus got into his power. Since Japan is hard to conquer in war, he sends his padres"

Lucon is Luzon island in Philippines Image
By early 1800's not only were Tokugawa intellectuals aware of the America's, they knew about Washington, Napoleon, & Peter the Great. They wrote bio's on all 3 of them. The 1st Japanese bio of Peter the Great was published in 1805 by Yamamura Saisuke. Aizawa Seishisai in his
Shinron cited Peter the Great as a role model worthy of emulation to keep the Russians & other Western powers at bay by making Japan into a great power

Attached is from the Russian Golovnin's memoirs, he was a prisoner in Japan in early 1800's for 3 yrs who noted the high Image
literacy & common knowledge of average Japanese. He also noted that even by early 1810's the Tokugawa elite knew of the ascendance of British power in the subcontinent & were worried about its implications for Japan, this was before 3rd Anglpo-Maratha war

Ridiculous comparison as in the New World the Portuguese were facing people with no immunity to newly introduced diseases & divided into numerous tribes with little in common. It is not like Spanish & Portuguese didn't internally discuss the prospects of
colonizing Japan before admitting it was hopeless militarily, only way to colonize Japan was to convert enuf Japanese & use them to gain influence. Once Japan was subjugated thru Xtianity, J in turn were to be used as cannon fodder to conquer Korea & China
Image

The strength and courage of the Japanese in arms is such that there is no nation whatsoever which would dare to invade Japan; likewise their self-confidence and pride is greater than that of any other people yet discovered.

- António Bocarro, 1635 Image

Correct, here is a passage from Samidare-sho (Rainy Season Talks) by Miura Baien, dated to 1784

Japanese who visited Qing empire in 1850's on the Senzaimaru compared Opium & Xtianity as twin evils destroying China & paving the way for its colonization Image
On the observations of the Japanese visitors about the activities of Westerners, & Xtian missionaries in the Qing empire of 1850's, you can go through:
Stop being a buffoon, I gave u direct contemporary sources from the Spanish. Who knew more about prospects of conquering Japan? Vivero de Velasco the governor of Spanish Philippines then or some Brazilian larper 500 yrs later?

If the Portuguese had such great prospects? Then why didn't they do fuck all when Iemitsu beheaded their mission to resume trade relations & sent Xtians into the funny pits during tsurushi
books.google.com/books?id=gjdDP… ImageImage

Righttttttttttt it couldn't be because Hideyoshi was able to mount the largest pre modern naval invasion before D-Day
Why r u linking me unrelated stuff? That slave trade carried out by padres & Xtian daimyo was 1 of the reasons y Xtians were exterminated

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More from @Rjrasva

Spatel Profile picture
Mar 14

JAPAN AND THE WORLD IN TOKUGAWA MAPS
by Karen Wigen

it might have surprised Perry to learn that the “hermit Empire” was awash with information about the rest of the world. In the decades before his arrival, Japanese cartographers had designed dozens of Image
In fact, in 1810, a Japanese official made a map that was arguably the most comprehensive available at the time anywhere in the world... How can we account for this state of affairs? How did a relatively reclusive polity gather sufficient information about the world Image
At the time of his arrival in Edo Bay, the Japanese elite knew more about America than Americans knew about Japan. Indeed, despite their relative isolation, the Japanese knew more about the West than most other Asians did, including the Chinese

- Ian Buruma Image
Read 8 tweets
Spatel Profile picture
Feb 27

Reach for ur gun when any vishwaguru gives wisdom on "free markets" South Korea

Not only that, much of it was emulation of wartime Japan & Manchukuo (where Park served) & helped along by postwar Japan. To begin with, he went to World Bank & asked them for
a loan to get into steel making which was denied as SK had no "comparative adv". At the time Japanese gov't compensated several countries for WW2 & their 35 yr rule of Korean peninsula (see attached)
donga.com/en/List/articl…
They proposed compensating any
individual Koreans victimized directly, Park instead said he would take care of that, took the money & put it into infra development like dams etc. Japanese gov't also encouraged J steel industry to do tech transfer to Koreans

Beyond that, he rounded up
Read 8 tweets
Spatel Profile picture
Feb 27

Mishima continued to have sympathy for the New Left and also defended the line of armed struggle... "If you all say one word, 'Emperor,' I will gladly join hands with you.
webronza.asahi.com/politics/artic…

From an article on late Suzuki Kunio, DeepL translation

Born into a family of priests in Fukuoka, Ashizu threw himself into the communist movement as a young man and was well versed in leftist thought.
Morita Hisshatsu, who committed suicide by ritual suicide along with Mishima, was an ardent supporter of Inajiro Asanuma during his junior and senior high school years and denounced Yamaguchi as a "tyrant
Read 7 tweets
Spatel Profile picture
Jan 9

ERNEST LEUNG AUGUST 20, 2021
The School That Built Asia
palladiummag.com/2021/08/20/the… Image
"We are young, and from the viewpoint of Japan, what we are doing must seem naive, but in fact we are acting in the spirit of the men of high purpose [shishi] of the Meiji restoration... we are deeply studying Meiji history"

- Park Chung-hee to Kishi Nobusuke in 1961 on a visit Image
One of Kenkoku’s enduring ideological contributions was its inculcation of a state-led vision of industrialization and economic construction. Manchukuo itself practiced state economic planning from 1937 onward, intent on exporting the Japanese technocratic tradition across Asia Image
Read 4 tweets
Spatel Profile picture
Nov 10, 2022

Proposal is workable if rail had been prioritized 1st over roads which it was in Japan from Meiji era into mid 60's, only then expressways commenced & they have highest tolls in OECD. Rail was initially prioritized as it was fastest, later on for national

security reasons as Japan imports oil, environmental reasons, & rail is just way more efficient at moving people. In PRC expressways were put 1st, so despite extensive HSR network, passenger rail mode share is quiet poor vs Japan, even 2nd place Swiss only

have a rail mode share of 16% or so, around half of Japans. There r lots of 1 or 2 carriage trains running in rural Japan which IR never runs
Switzerland has highest electrification rate of rail network, this was spurred by German blackmail of Swiss in WW1
Read 5 tweets
Spatel Profile picture
Sep 27, 2022

Many of those days could read & write Urdu & not all were of this sort, many Arya Samajis write their polemics & books in Urdu to reach other side, Lala Lajpat Rai knew Urdu. Arya Samaj even brought back some learned Maulanas who would then take part in
public debates with Maulanas & since they knew Koran by heart along with Arabic, Farsi, Urdu they wouldn't be looking like idiots in the debate
That period from 1890s to perhaps the mid 1920s was an era of real revival in all fields from literature to arts

to historiography to comparative study (e. g. "Chinese Religion Through Hindu Eyes: A Study in the Tendencies of Asiatic Mentality" by Benoy Kumar Sarkar published in 1916) before vishwagurus went back to slumber under able guidance of then leaderji Gandhi
Read 4 tweets

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