What made Japan so economically and culturally successful that

>>2933382
Japan never threatened the United States. The whole reason the United States came down on Japan was that Japan refused to recognize the Open-Door Note. They never were any actual threat. The Pacific War was just a matter of time.

>>2933411
Im sure the people of the Philippines and the Americans who lived there appreciated Japan being a non-threat to the US.

>>2933413
Not an argument. Even the Japanese recognized they weren't any threat to the United States.

>>2933382
I wouldn't say they were a threat to the US, nor did the US see them as a threat, but China can be debated.

>>2933417
>>2933640
Americans got their ass kicked in the first half of their war with them.

>>2933861
First 6 months at best. The japanese high command wasn't stupid. They knew they couldn't stand toe to toe with the US, so it was a matter of delaying the rape train until they could find an opening to make them sue for peace. Might have worked if they hadn't invested so much into China, but that's a big if.

>>2933382
Industrialization to the point were they outclassed everyone else in the area. It begun during the Sengoku period, halted during the Edo period and was jumpstarted again when Perry went over and bullied them into trading with the west. Afterwards, the Meiji restoration (with it's project of westernization, new constitution, regular western national army and new access to technologies) made Japan the local power it became in East Asia.
tl:dr
Japan became a local power through western influence, while everyone else around them stayed plebs.

>>2935098
Howd they beat Russia then?

>>2935192
Due to a combination of Russia being incompetent and underestimating them + playing in their field. The Russian fleet had to sail all the way to the pacific and soldiers and resources had to be carried by train across Asia, while the Japanese were fighting in their backyard.

>>2935192
The Russo-Japanese war was under Nicholas II. That's all that needs to be said.

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>>2933861
America wasn't the one that had their entire navy and airforce destroyed, their cities firebombed, or completely annihilated with nuclear weapons
America didn't lose millions of soldiers either.

>>2933382
USA helped Japan to avoid European colonisation (breakup of "isolation" and destroying remnants of British-French puppet shogunat during civil war).
Then Yellows showed their power. Japan - true state of Chinese.

>>2933861
Five months. The Japanese apogee against the United States was the Battle of Coral Sea.

>>2933861
Overrunning isolated, almost completely unmanned islands is hardly an "ass kicking." Arguably their greatest achievement - taking the Philippines - was still going after an under-manned and under-supplied backwater that the US had never really planned on defending.

>Japan
REMOVE WHITE IMPERIALISM
>never
LYL ASIA FOR ASIANS :D
>threatened
EUQALITY FOR ALL ASIANS XDDD
>the United States.
BUT JAPAN IS MORE EQUALLER XDDDD