Just love the tracing of roots of current affairs as far down as plate tectonics. But as you touch upon too, culture interacts with land-use.
As one example among many of mind-matter interaction: final Tokugawa unification relied heavily on soroban, the abacus imported from China slightly before. It's not enough to measure rice paddies, central admin must be able to do sums!
Soroban imported from China was revolutionary for accounting largely bc of the incorporation into older Chinese abacus of the zero. Zero, that the Chinese got from Indian traders, largely thanks to... Pax Mongolica.
On the other side, the same Hindu concept of zero was central to building the first modern nation state (Spain, not France), with the Hindu-Arabic numerals brought in by the Umayyads. That combined with the gunpowder brought west by... Pax Mongolica, was to create the European expansion that knocked on Japan's door at the end of Tokugawa. Well, not as a single driving cause, but at least as important as the geology.
I wrote that in the 700s Japan was not ready for centralization, but in 1600 it was. The main reasons were population growth and tech development (including culture as tech). I didn't know about the soroban, but it fits perfectly.
Didn't realize the Pax Mongolica connection. Fascinating! Thx for sharing!
The Mughal parallel is hard to miss. Gunpowder let the Mughals do to the Delhi Sultanate what the Tokugawa did to the daimyo: replace feudal lords with a transferable bureaucracy — the mansabdars, moved around just like daimyo were. And the same reversion followed. Within two centuries the mansabdars became hereditary regional powers, the Marathas reduced the Mughal emperor to a figurehead, the way the shogun had done to Japan's emperor. The divergence is that India's 1857 revolt failed and the Marathas were broken at Panipat in 1761 and finished in 1818, so there was never a Meiji restoration — the British stepped into the vacuum instead.
Thank you for this fascinating article. I particularly enjoyed reading your discussion on Japan’s maritime gateways.
Reading this reminded me of the “Four Gates” framework—Nagasaki, Tsushima, Satsuma, and Matsumae—that historians use to explain Japan’s contact with foreign countries during the Edo period. Since this is an interesting connection, I thought I’d share it with you.
Thank you once again. I’m looking forward to your article on Kyoto as well.
So glad to hear your take on this! If I had had more time, I would have shared a draft with you before sending.
I didn't realize there were four gates by Japanese historians. It sounds like they map pretty well to mine: Satsuma for the Ryukyu, Tsushima for Korea, (Nagasaki for both), Matsumae for the north...
Izu-Bonin was never a gate until the Americans, and if you go farther north in Hokkaido you get the two additional gates of Sakhalin and the Kuril, but that doesn't change the spirit!
My only note is that I think you are putting too much emphasis on the two atomic bombs as a reason Japan surrendered. In reality, the US was destroying a Japanese city almost every night with firebombing, and Japan barely noticed that it was one bomb instead of hundreds.
Japan surrendered the day after the Soviet Union declared war on them. That was the point where they knew they had no leverage.
This is such a fascinating topic, and we need to get into the details of what specific humans did in those days to undersatnd the causality
The 1st bomb was on the 6th
The USSR invaded on the 8th
The 2nd bomb was on the 9th
The intent to surrender submitted on the 10th
The actual surrended 4 days later, on the 14th
The timeline aligns with both USSR and bombs as triggers, which makes sense because they were both connected, as the US rushed the bombs to get a surrender as fast as possible to prevent Soviet progress on the battlefield.
If you think about it, this means the US believed Japan would fight on against the USSR without the bombs, and keep losing ground. If they had thought they would surrender, why bomb?
THe most interesting is the fact that the Tokyo government was at an impasse, with 3-3 split votes both on the 9th and later on. The Emperor had to intervene in both cases to move forward with the peace.
So I'd say it's possible that Japan was going to go on fighting despite the USSR's invasion: although they were surprised by its speed, they knew it was coming, and the USSR would challenge their position in China, but not elsewhere, and certainly not on the islands. The bombs, however, did.
All of this lets me think that both mattered, but the bombs were necessary and sufficient, whereas the USSR's invasion was neither necessary nor sufficient.
Geography writing history is the oldest pattern there is, and Japan may be its cleanest case: an archipelago poor in everything but coastline becomes a trading empire, then an energy importer whose savings funded the world, and now a rearming power whose bond market sets the global price of patience. The map never changed. What changes is how much the world asks of its sea lanes
What I find fascinating is how geography can make certain historical choices look almost inevitable in hindsight. Japan’s island geography, limited resources and proximity to the Asian mainland seem to have shaped not just its borders, but the strategic problems it repeatedly had to solve.
Outsiders look at the geography and believe the main demarcation would be North and South. Far from it. No, nowhere does the article mention the Japanese thinking of their country principally in terms of East & West. The east is Nara, Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe. The west is Nagoya and Tokyo. The reason is because most of the population lives in the corridor plains stretching from east to west. The article does in a roundabout way make this point.
Very cool Tomás.
Just love the tracing of roots of current affairs as far down as plate tectonics. But as you touch upon too, culture interacts with land-use.
As one example among many of mind-matter interaction: final Tokugawa unification relied heavily on soroban, the abacus imported from China slightly before. It's not enough to measure rice paddies, central admin must be able to do sums!
Soroban imported from China was revolutionary for accounting largely bc of the incorporation into older Chinese abacus of the zero. Zero, that the Chinese got from Indian traders, largely thanks to... Pax Mongolica.
On the other side, the same Hindu concept of zero was central to building the first modern nation state (Spain, not France), with the Hindu-Arabic numerals brought in by the Umayyads. That combined with the gunpowder brought west by... Pax Mongolica, was to create the European expansion that knocked on Japan's door at the end of Tokugawa. Well, not as a single driving cause, but at least as important as the geology.
So, mind matters as much as rocks.
Thanks for these cool series.
That makes sense!
I wrote that in the 700s Japan was not ready for centralization, but in 1600 it was. The main reasons were population growth and tech development (including culture as tech). I didn't know about the soroban, but it fits perfectly.
Didn't realize the Pax Mongolica connection. Fascinating! Thx for sharing!
The Mughal parallel is hard to miss. Gunpowder let the Mughals do to the Delhi Sultanate what the Tokugawa did to the daimyo: replace feudal lords with a transferable bureaucracy — the mansabdars, moved around just like daimyo were. And the same reversion followed. Within two centuries the mansabdars became hereditary regional powers, the Marathas reduced the Mughal emperor to a figurehead, the way the shogun had done to Japan's emperor. The divergence is that India's 1857 revolt failed and the Marathas were broken at Panipat in 1761 and finished in 1818, so there was never a Meiji restoration — the British stepped into the vacuum instead.
Fascinating! Thx for sharing!
Thank you for this fascinating article. I particularly enjoyed reading your discussion on Japan’s maritime gateways.
Reading this reminded me of the “Four Gates” framework—Nagasaki, Tsushima, Satsuma, and Matsumae—that historians use to explain Japan’s contact with foreign countries during the Edo period. Since this is an interesting connection, I thought I’d share it with you.
Thank you once again. I’m looking forward to your article on Kyoto as well.
So glad to hear your take on this! If I had had more time, I would have shared a draft with you before sending.
I didn't realize there were four gates by Japanese historians. It sounds like they map pretty well to mine: Satsuma for the Ryukyu, Tsushima for Korea, (Nagasaki for both), Matsumae for the north...
Izu-Bonin was never a gate until the Americans, and if you go farther north in Hokkaido you get the two additional gates of Sakhalin and the Kuril, but that doesn't change the spirit!
Loved this! Can’t wait to read the next chapters ❤️
I really enjoyed reading this Tomas. Well done!
Learned and re-learned a lot from this. What a history Japan has. Do the same series of articles for China one day ?
Yes!
Although China is basically 5000 years of a battle arena, with sometimes people from outside the arena joining in for good fun. Chaos!
thank you for writing this!
Excellent, informative article.
My only note is that I think you are putting too much emphasis on the two atomic bombs as a reason Japan surrendered. In reality, the US was destroying a Japanese city almost every night with firebombing, and Japan barely noticed that it was one bomb instead of hundreds.
Japan surrendered the day after the Soviet Union declared war on them. That was the point where they knew they had no leverage.
This is such a fascinating topic, and we need to get into the details of what specific humans did in those days to undersatnd the causality
The 1st bomb was on the 6th
The USSR invaded on the 8th
The 2nd bomb was on the 9th
The intent to surrender submitted on the 10th
The actual surrended 4 days later, on the 14th
The timeline aligns with both USSR and bombs as triggers, which makes sense because they were both connected, as the US rushed the bombs to get a surrender as fast as possible to prevent Soviet progress on the battlefield.
If you think about it, this means the US believed Japan would fight on against the USSR without the bombs, and keep losing ground. If they had thought they would surrender, why bomb?
THe most interesting is the fact that the Tokyo government was at an impasse, with 3-3 split votes both on the 9th and later on. The Emperor had to intervene in both cases to move forward with the peace.
So I'd say it's possible that Japan was going to go on fighting despite the USSR's invasion: although they were surprised by its speed, they knew it was coming, and the USSR would challenge their position in China, but not elsewhere, and certainly not on the islands. The bombs, however, did.
All of this lets me think that both mattered, but the bombs were necessary and sufficient, whereas the USSR's invasion was neither necessary nor sufficient.
Geography writing history is the oldest pattern there is, and Japan may be its cleanest case: an archipelago poor in everything but coastline becomes a trading empire, then an energy importer whose savings funded the world, and now a rearming power whose bond market sets the global price of patience. The map never changed. What changes is how much the world asks of its sea lanes
Can you made post about Malaysia
Can you mad about Malaysia please
What I find fascinating is how geography can make certain historical choices look almost inevitable in hindsight. Japan’s island geography, limited resources and proximity to the Asian mainland seem to have shaped not just its borders, but the strategic problems it repeatedly had to solve.
Outsiders look at the geography and believe the main demarcation would be North and South. Far from it. No, nowhere does the article mention the Japanese thinking of their country principally in terms of East & West. The east is Nara, Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe. The west is Nagoya and Tokyo. The reason is because most of the population lives in the corridor plains stretching from east to west. The article does in a roundabout way make this point.
There's an entire article about this point
https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/japan-geography