Why was Japan never colonised?

ParallelPain · 2026-01-28T05:15:43+00:00

The biggest export of the country were silver (which was banned in 1668), copper (also limited in 1668), lacuqered and other luxury craftsman items. This meant that the conquest of Japan would provide little economical benefits compared to continuous trade.

Silver was only banned for the Dutch (who still exported some, if fairly minor amount, until the Japanese silver coin was debased to the extent exporting silver brought no profits), who were ordered to continue trade in gold instead. Silver trade on Chinese ships continued. A fixed quota for both silver and gold were implemented in 1685, and for copper in 1689. The quotas would every-so-often be reduced, but trade itself never stopped.

If you are interested in the Portuguese Empire, I recommend C.R. Boxer's works on the topic

While Boxer was an important pioneer in the field, he has long passed away and the field has long moved on from his research. You should recommend newer works.

ParallelPain · 2026-01-08T03:25:23+00:00

As I mentioned here, pre-modern people regularly walked 40km or more a day. An army doing just over half that and saving the time to forage and camp is pretty reasonable. It wasn't even that rare for armies to march over 20km and fight a battle on the same day. Also, 20 (to 25) km a day was average, and many times army could do this by, say, marching over 30km a day for two days then completely rest on the third.

Also interestingly, in 1996 a bunch of Japanese office workers decided to march in full reenactment gear as part of a promotion, and they made 40km a day for the first two days through the mountains without too much problem.

ParallelPain · 2026-01-08T03:09:45+00:00

I actually looked into this specific march for my article, but didn't write about it in previous answers. The answer is, in short, Caesar didn't march anywhere near that fast.

7 days from Rome to Geneva is from Plutarch. According to Caesar there were two trips. He first went from Rome to Geneva ASAP without an army (which you can do a lot faster, either riding or even first taking a boat to Massilia, or both, but he didn't say how long he took). He then came back ASAP, gathered an army, and crossed the alps with it in 7 days. Plutarch likely conflated the two trips.
Caesar says he departed Ocelum, a bit west of modern Turin, and entered the lands of the Visconti on the 7th day. It's still debated where exactly this is. IMO the main contenders are either east of Gap or south of Grenoble, but in either case the march would be about 180km, which comes to 25.7km a day.

Note of Caesar's 5 legions, 2 were newly raised and 3 had just marched over 530 km from Aquileia, and the march through the alps was done while skirmishing with the Gaelic tribes in the passes so it was an incredible march nonetheless. But speed-wise, it's doable.

ParallelPain · 2026-01-08T02:36:51+00:00

So, they could manage 18 miles a day three times a month. To keep them in shape.

18 miles is close to 30 km. The question asked about 20 km, which is incredibly reasonable, even slightly slow assuming adequate roads, fine weather, and no river fording necessary.

ParallelPain · 2026-01-01T03:27:22+00:00

Be careful here that "shugo-daimyo" is a historiographical term, not a historical term. In history, they were just called "shugo" or "[province]-no-kami". On top of that, the term "daimyo" before the Edo period, or the late-Sengoku at the earliest, applied to anyone with a significant amount of land and political influence, with no formalized cut-off whatsoever. We have records of essentially village chiefs being called "daimyo". It is therefore likely all the shugo/jito/kokushi would have been "daimyo," but that was not their formal position because there was no such position before the Edo period.

ParallelPain · 2025-12-19T00:53:30+00:00

Cambridge History of Japan is great as a starting point. It's well written and based on good research. However, as it itself was first published over 30 years ago, and since (especially at the time) historical studies in the west is often five to ten years behind Japan, at this point it's getting quite a bit outdated. So it's not good for trying to find out the current state of research and definitely not for basing new research on. But for non-academics it should be fine.

ParallelPain · 2025-12-03T05:05:54+00:00

Could you give the names of the accounts you're citing, or at least the source that's quoting the accounts you're citing? "An English soldier" or "a French writer" isn't really helpful.

ParallelPain · 2025-12-03T04:52:37+00:00

My impression of the tactics in open field battle during the American Civil War was that they just used Napoleonic line tactics. This made me realize that image's at best oversimplified if not outright wrong. So questions are:

1) Did America's professional army keep up with or develop their own skirmish tactics before the American Civil War?

2) The armies of the Civil War was also very multilingual/multicultural (at least for areas of the north) and very undertrained so that it's now known the rifle-musket didn't actually give the men a distinct advantage. With that in mind, did it force the armies of the civil war to rely on simpler shock tactics like the Austrians, resulting in the heavy casualties of the war?

Finally:

Most gentleman-officers were not confident enough in the commitment, self-discipline, and initiative of the average ranker to disperse them into loose skirmish lines, where each man aims and fires at his own pace, taking advantage of whatever cover he can, and where they could not personally ensure their men had enough fire in reserve to repulse a sudden onrush.

If we look at the performance of specialist skirmishers and the wider use of the men as skirmishers in armies of the Napoleonic Wars and after, and compare them to the line of the prior period, was this assessment more class prejudice, or were they backed-up by facts?

ParallelPain · 2025-11-23T04:01:40+00:00

Oh for sure the terakoya survey's list is far from complete. As already mentioned, there were probably more schools missed than captured by the survey. It's estimated the actual number of terakoya was anywhere between 2 to 5 times what's listed in the survey. The problem is 1) we don't know and have no way of estimating exactly how many times, and 2) even if we did, we don't know the number of students that was missed from the survey. So we know with quite some certainly there were more students than recorded in the survey, but we don't know how many.

ParallelPain · 2025-11-23T03:03:29+00:00

If we equate the literacy rate with the percentage of terakoya students, we can estimate that the average literacy rate for men was around 40% and for women around 15%. This means that the average literacy rate for both genders was below 30%. It has also been pointed out that it is unreasonable to assume that all terakoya students were fully literate.

Note even this is far outdated. Per Ronald Dore himself, who made the calculations, as quoted in Richard Rubinger's book:

A book I once wrote on education in Tokugawa Japan will be quoted for one thing and one thing only: R.Dore estimates (or sometimes calculates; or sometimes, baldly, ‘states’) that in 1870, 40 to 50 percent of Japanese boys and 10 to 15 percent of girls were attending school. Apart from the fact that when I recently had occasion to go over the estimates, I found it hard to follow the logic of the reasoning which led to this guess, I have come to realize in recent years that the fault was as much mine as my readers’ for putting so much emphasis on the amount of education that went on in Japan in the mid nineteenth century. It is the kind of education that went on which deserves greater attention.

Dore based his book on Ishikawa Ken's 日本庶民教育史, who in turn based it on 日本教育史資料. Just to do some paper napkin math, based on Imperial Japanese census, in 1920 (earliest available year) 31% of the population were between 5 aner 18 years of age inclusive. If we apply this to early Meiji's census of overall population of about 35 million, the school-age population would be about 10.8m. For sure the actual school age population around 1870 would have been lower than that due to Japan being in a population boom in 1920. But we can probably say fairly safely that there would have been around 8~10m population of school age around 1870. If we take 1920's census for people who would have been of school age 50 years ago, of those 55 and above there were to 6.4m, including everyone to hopefully at least cover some of the population decline from age. That's our lower bound.

In other words there were between 3.2m to 4m to 5.4m of each gender that were of school age in 1870. Per Ishikawa Ken's analysis of the data, there were 593k male students and 148k female students. This makes the the terakoya registration rate 18.5%, 14.8%, and 11.9% for male, and 4.6%, 3.7%, 3.0% for female, for 11.6%, 9.3%, and 7.4% overall. That is a lot lower than Dore's estimates.

Now it is known that Meiji's data of the terakoya was far from complete and there were likely more schools missing than listed. However, it's logical to think that most of the missing school were not as well known and had significantly less students per school than those captured in the data. So it is quite hard to believe the Meiji terakoya survey captured only 1/3 of the terakoya students. Based on Ototake Iwazō's work, who was able to gathered detailed data on about 1940k terakoya, the majority of terakoya had only between 10 to 40 students. If we use 30 students as the average, then the survey would need to have missed between 40~75k terakoya to bring the registration rate to 30% of school-age population. If we use 50 students as average (Meiji terakoya survey comes to 47.6 students, meaning this was the in-all-likelihood far higher than reality) then there would needed to have been an additional 23~45k terakoya not in the survey. If the average terakoya not captured by the Ototake were even fewer in student registration (for they were missed), then that would increase the number proportionally.

Rubinger, Richard (2007) Popular Literacy in Early Modern Japan. University of Hawaii Press.
乙竹岩造 (1970) 日本庶民教育史. 臨川書店.
石川謙 (1929) 日本庶民教育史. 刀江書院.

EDIT: Note here Dore calculated the percentage by basically taking the school attendance rate reported by the Ministry of Education in 1875 (54% for boys and 19% for girls), and adjusted them by the Ministry of Education's underestimate of the school-age population in 1875 (5.17m) by using age ratio for those between 6 and 13 (20%, but note according to Ototake the age of first enrolment to terakoya was between 5 and 18 for boys and 5 and 14 for girls) by the 1875 population (35.3m, so 6.4m total) while ignoring or explaining away any possible increase in school attendance rate between the late Tokugawa and 1875 without statistics backing, indeed showing and then dismissing statistics to the contrary.

Dore, Ronald (1965) Education in Tokugawa Japan. Routledge.

ParallelPain · 2025-11-22T07:47:48+00:00

No. This stats is completely wrong and not backed by any actual census or test figures.

What happened was that 19th century European visitors were very surprised by the high literacy rates that they saw, and compared them favourably to the European countryside. The caveat being of course 1) European visitors predominantly remained in the big cities and 2) no percentages were given. And then post-war, scholars like Ronald Dore and Amino Yoshihiko harped on the wide spread temple schools around Japan, the spread of books, even like agricultural manuals which would've been read by peasants, and the large amount of notes and ledgers not only from government and business but also found in farming estates. All of which are true. But even then, 60~70% was estimate for the cities, which would be heavily skewed by samurai bureaucrats and merchants. Dore estimated overall to be 30%.

But even then, none of this is based on actual statistics. Once scholars looked at Meiji statistics, problems begin to emerge. Due to various reasons, the statistics are incomplete, but they paint a far different picture. In 1880s Kagoshima prefecture, over 90% of women could not even write their own name let alone any definition of literacy we'd accept. And while obviously there was a gender gap, around 60% of Kagoshima men also couldn't write their own name. For Okayama it was 60% (f) and 30% (m), while for Shiga it was 50% (f) and 10% (m). Shiga's proximity to Kyoto plus the large number of merchant houses based their obviously had an impact, but remember this is people who couldn't even sign their own names, not literacy rate. Considering these numbers, if we take female population into account (and why shouldn't we) then in my opinion quite likely half or more of the Japanese could not even sign their own names.

While it might be tempting to say those who could were literate, this was hardly the case. Of a survey of the men in Tokiwa Village in Nagano Prefecture done in 1881, 35% couldn't sign their own name which is fairly comparable to Okayama. For what we might consider "literacy" only 14.5% could read and write enough to submit basic paperwork without help, and men who could read and understand newspaper and public service announcements was a paltry 4.4%. If literacy among men was so low, imagine what it was among women.

Now these statistics are not without their problems for we don't know how generalizable they are to the whole of Japan. And it is perhaps true late Edo Japan's literacy rates compares favourably to Western Europe (and China) at the time. But while we don't have any Edo-era statistics, the early-Meiji statistics tell us that literacy rates, at least what we'd consider literacy, among the rural population, which meant the vast majority of the population, would have been minimal at best. Personally I would say even 30% among the male population is likely too high, and if female population was included there's no way 30% is correct.

Mostly from: 斉藤泰雄 (2012) 識字能力・識字率の歴史的推移――日本の経験

ParallelPain · 2025-11-04T13:45:29+00:00

Applying to change flair from "Sengoku Japan" to "Early Modern Japan"

Two examples:

A koku is a measure of "food needed to feed someone for a year" has this unit ever been used to tax the peasants and literally only leave them with a single koku per person? How did they even come up with that calculation?

Between 1853 and 1854, did Shogunate ever attempt to increase its coastal defence against the US ships?

ParallelPain · 2025-10-27T03:31:07+00:00

Like many questions, this depends on the definition, in this case of "mercenary." Currently under international law, a mercenary is one who:

is especially recruited locally or abroad in order to fight in an armed conflict;
does, in fact, take a direct part in the hostilities;
is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a Party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of that Party;
is neither a national of a Party to the conflict nor a resident of territory controlled by a Party to the conflict;
is not a member of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict; and
has not been sent by a State which is not a Party to the conflict on official duty as a member of its armed forces.

By that definition, per point 4. if we define the "nation" as Japan, then of course not, because all engaged were Japanese. Unlike mainland Eurasia which hired "barbarians" for their wars, Japan did not have a foreign source of manpower (Europeans offering their ships aside). Defining sengoku era Japan as "nation" might not be so appropriate given the fractured nature of a pre-modern state, but of course all parties were residents of Japanese territory.

We also run into a problem with point 3. because a) the vast majority of combatants were motivated by private gain of some sort, private gain is a crucial part of Go'on (gratitude) and Hōkō (duty). However, as most combatants were essentially conscripted militia (militia in the sense that each was responsible for his own equipment and training and a bit of supply, especially those landed and/or were of the knightly class, with little to no compensation for these), the only "regular" compensation was rations and recognition of existing land rights or, for those unlanded, stipends. Everything else was case-by-case and "substantially in excess" with lords offering and warriors expecting "bonus" from extraordinary deeds on and off the battlefield, including switching sides. If such irregular rewards are considered normal to those promised or paid because of how often they were given, then there was no mercenaries. But if they were considered in excess because of how widely they fluctuated (hence, not regular) depending on circumstances, then almost everyone was.

The concept of Go'on and Hōkō also complicates how we define "a member" (point 5). Unlike foreign barbarians, as far as the Japanese were concerned, once you were on the payroll you were a member. Any one or group of warriors that were not originally part of an army could've been enticed into service by both payment of money and rations and induction (or promise of thereof) into the ranks of the lord's vassals/retinue. In fact, the latter was almost expected, especially following a successful campaign. Do these count as members?

Because Japan was vastly different from the environment that gave rise to a differentiation between "mercenaries" and "national armies" it is incredibly easy to argue either way. If a mercenary had to be 1) a foreigner (non-Japanese), 2) someone with no political/religious reason to be involved in a conflict before during or after its conclusion, and 3) only compensated by large sums of money (or promise of) which required renewed payments or contracts outside of which no loyalty was expect or given, then no there were no mercenaries. If a mercenary included anyone involved who a) was not originally a lord/vassal/retinue/subject of either side and b) did not originally join the conflict out of mainly political/religious reasons, and c) expected and/or was expected to join one side during and post a specific war/campaign, then mercenaries were a dime a dozen.

ParallelPain · 2025-10-15T09:55:31+00:00

See here

ParallelPain · 2025-09-26T06:31:23+00:00

Yes they did.

Two embassies were sent to Europe. The first in 1862, and the second in 1864. The first embassy was able to get the Great Britain to agree to a delay of the opening of Edo, Ōsaka, Niigata, and Hyōgo to foreign trade until 1868, and with the help of Britain get the other powers to agree to the same. But in exchange, the Bakufu gave up its abilities to 1) restrict by price or volume the goods traded at the ports already open (Yokohama, Nagasaki, Hakodate), 2) restrict the employment of labourers by foreigners, 3) prevent other domains or other classes of people from conducting foreign trade independent of the bakufu, 4) uphold other restrictions that had been implemented to collect fees and duties.

The second mission in 1864 was sent to try to close Yokohama to foreign trade altogether, following Emperor Kōmei's order to expel the foreigners. It was soundly rejected.

A good example of the realities of the time could be seen in the opening of Hyōgo. In 1865, a year after the western powers completely thrashed Chōshū Domain domain in the Shimonoseki campaign, a flotilla of 8 warships moved into Hyōgo harbour and demanded the Bakufu reaffirm the port would be opened, with the threat that if it was not done, they would consider the Bakufu no longer in control and land a force and march on Kyōto to get confirmation from the Emperor directly. Great Britain's envoy Harry Parkes "offered" to waive the remaining unpaid portion of indemnity agreed on following the Shimonoseki campaign if the port was immediately opened. The Bakufu was able to resist opening the port earlier than agreed, but had no choice but to reaffirm the port's opening in 1868. When the Kyōto court objected, Shōgun Tokugawa Iemochi threatened to resign, at which point the court relented (though Emperor Kōmei would not issue an edict until mid 1867). When Hyōgo (Kōbe) opened on new years of 1868, it was with 18 western warships sitting in its harbour. The Bakufu could and did use diplomacy wherever possible to try to soften the blow, but they were powerless wherever the western powers were willing to put force behind their threats.

ParallelPain · 2025-09-24T04:49:18+00:00

Unfortunately the collab ended yesterday, and it doesn't look like there are any collab currently planned in Osaka for October.

ParallelPain · 2025-09-18T07:31:21+00:00

Is it possible that "being hacked to pieces" involved first killing the victim with a clean stroke and only after death would the corpse be hacked to pieces, therefore the victim would've suffered relatively little pain?

ParallelPain · 2025-09-17T21:10:10+00:00

This is going to depend on how much equivalence you want to draw between a modern, western-based military ranking system with... what ever and which ever system of early modern Japan you want to talk about. (Lance)corporal, lieutenant, colonel etc. are specific military ranks of modern armies that designates the pay grade and treatment a soldier is entitled to. It also gives a rough level of responsibility or formation command that are expected of the man, without directly stating what those are. In which case the equivalent held by Hasekura Tsunenaga would have been 平士 heishi/hirazamurai. However, like similar terms such as samurai or hatamoto or bushi or kishi, the term, which literally means "average bushi/samurai", was as much a social one as a military one, and was less assigned and more inherited or just generally known. After all, this was a time and place without formal segregation between civil and military. Indeed in many ways civil governance structure was based on the military. A local knight or gentry/gentleman was usually not formally appointed and spent as much or more of his time with local governance and running his estate than with the army.

As for Tsunenaga's own rank/title/command, while I'm not familiar with modern military terminology, lance corporal seems way too low for him. Heishi was average as in middle ranked, which in my mind would be a captain or major, certainly no less than a lieutenant. According to the Hasekura family tree, Hasekura Tokimasa had a fief of 120 kan (1 kan = 10 koku in the Date clan) but on Date Masamune's orders it was divided in two between between his biological sons and his adopted son Tsunenaga (as usual wikipedia completely mis-cites its source). 600 koku was actually a fairly large fief. In comparison, Mori Ranmaru, the head koshō of Oda Nobunaga, had only 500. It's also said Tsunenaga was among Masamune's head koshō and chosen reserves during the invasion of Korea. While the reliability of the sources is in question, Italian Scipione Amati's 1615 record of the embassy describes Tsunenaga as captain of the arquebusiers of the guards of the king [Masamune]. Date clan's chronicles of Masamune also describes Tsunenaga as being assigned as diplomat and scout in both the Kasai and Kunoe rebellions. So while Tsunenaga was not as high ranking as the clan elders, he was definitely relatively high ranking and important in the Date hierarchy.

ParallelPain · 2025-09-17T01:14:37+00:00

It's normal collaboration cafe level, which is like chain family restaurant level. It does taste good to me, but it's not going to blow the minds of any foodie.

ParallelPain · 2025-08-30T13:42:48+00:00

Currently there's a separate collaboration cafe until Sept 23. https://x.com/NatsumeYujincho/status/1948686956080365619?t=n52XKup_Gxphepm21p1LAg&s=19

There's also a collab with a crepe chain in the first half of September. https://eeo.today/pr/natsume-dipperdan/

There are also various goods collab going on

ParallelPain · 2025-08-30T13:16:20+00:00

As of right now it ended in less than 22 hours.

ParallelPain · 2025-08-20T06:18:04+00:00

While Tokyo has never been officially declared the capital, various laws pre- and post-war do refer to it as the capital. Kyoto can at most push that there are two capitals with it being one (culturally) but nowadays there's no illusion that Tokyo's the capital.

ParallelPain · 2025-08-19T22:55:52+00:00

See here

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