Japan since 1945-left Asia to join the West?

Résumé du document

In 1639, the rule of Tokugawa Iemitsu officially stated the edict of separation of Japan, establishing a long period of isolationism for the Nippon archipelago. During this period, every contact between Japan and the outside world was forbidden, and "every Japanese who would leave the country would be sentenced to death." Two centuries later, it is all Japan that is actually forced "to leave Asia to join the West", as the expression says. This great shift in the Japanese attitude happened in 1853, when Commodore Matthew Perry came with his fleet into the bay of Edo (Tokyo) and ordered Japan's rulers to drop their barriers and open the country to trade. This incident marked for sure the beginning of a long process where Japan "left Asia to join the West", creating a very original model of development with "Asian spirit, Western technology". Indeed, when Commodore Perry showed up, the Japanese told the Americans to go to Nagasaki because it was the only island where exchanges with the West were allowed. But Commodore Perry refused, and Japan concluded that the only way to "expel the barbarians" in the forthcoming times would be to embrace their technology and grow stronger and take the decision to join the West. Afterwards, in the next twenty years, the Japanese eager to access "western things" grew with unlimited bounds: just after the opening to trade were settled and built unusual and never-seen-before Western things in Japan such as the country's first bakery (1860), the first photo shop (1862), the establishment of telephone (1869), the brewery of beer (1869), the development of contemporary cinema (1870), the printing of daily newspapers (1870), and the creation of public lavatories (1871). Following this same strategy over the next century and a half, Japan emerged as one of history's great economic success stories. This development strategy seems to have been a very successful one, allowing Japan to face an "economic miracle" that enabled the archipelago to position itself as one of the strongest economic power of the worlds.

Extraits

[...] East Asia's economies have actually achieved impressive growth, mainly because of the Japanese role as a motor for regionalism. The main driving force behind this growth has been intra-regional trade. In the late 1980s of ASEAN plus Three's trade was intra-regional. Compare this to for NAFTA and for the EU. The high intra-regional trade figure for ASEAN plus Three shows that East Asia has been moving towards integration. More than common outsourcing process towards East Asia, the main reason for the economic creation of trade relationships and the building of Japanese firms abroad is demographic. [...]

[...] The reasons for the earlier rapid growth are still there. On the other hand, it may have moderated ideas of East Asia as the ideal type of economy, which others ought to learn from in all respects. In the aftermath of this crisis, Japan is now taking part in the effort to launch an East Asian Community, bringing together South-East Asia with themselves and China and South Korea. They share an interest in preventing the dollar from declining rapidly and in keeping the exchange rate between the Yuan and the yen fairly stable. [...]

[...] When asked about their identity, Japanese themselves like to think of their country as one that is closer to the United States or to Europe than to closer Asiatic countries such as Korea or China. The aim of this paper is then to ask ourselves to what extent Japan really decided to join the West, and especially how did this decision changed through the years, how has this model changed during the last decades, and how did it try to adapt to the new international context? [...]

[...] Japan has been China's biggest trading partner in three of the past four years. Trade rows, common in the 1990s as Japanese producers grew afraid of Chinese competition, have virtually disappeared. The two economies are increasingly integrated, with cheap Chinese goods delighting Japanese shoppers and sophisticated Japanese equipment humming away in Chinese factories. But that does not mean the rivalry between the two countries has disappeared. Even though diplomatic relations between China and Japan were settled again in 1972, the events of the 1920s when Japan invaded China (Nanjing massacre), and Japan's unwillingness to show contrition about them in the manner demanded by China make it roughly difficult for the two countries to completely normalize their relations completely with community- building under way in East Asia. [...]

[...] By this way, Japan had helped in creating a spirit of an Asian culture that defines its own way of development, a new one, during and after the oil crisis. In this matter, one of the most noticeable forms of Japan's success story is that, even while reaping only half the potential gains from free trade and investment, it has still managed to do East Asia good after the 1970s, putting a huge dent in global poverty and transforming much of East Asia into a thriving economic region. [...]