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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ydars" data-source="post: 4654613" data-attributes="member: 62992">SkyOdin; not sure we really disagree at all. I love Japan and its culture so much that I have studied Japanese in my spare time for years and go there whenever I can find an excuse; it is literally one of my favourite places on earth. I also agree that their cultural resilence is INCREDIBLE and that transformation that Japan underwent after Perry was literally staggering. But this doesn't change my initial assertion; that Chinese/Japanese technology, at this particular point in history after a long period of cultural isolation, was almost stagnate when compared with the west. The steam-engine is only one piece of technology, but the Americans also had gatling guns and accurate artillery pieces with rifled shells and repeating rifles for infantry. Their ships were also made of iron and their agriculture and machinery were in every way superior to the Japanese at that time. This is indeed why Japan threw out all the old traditions and copied a large number of western ways, as did the Chinese. Indeed, the gap would have been even more enormous if Perry had not contacted Japan just then; imagine if Japan was still isolated after the first world war. Then the west would have had submarines, machines guns, planes, tanks etc and Japan would most likely not have advanced at all in 70 years in terms of technology. I only used Japan/China as a recent example of isolation preventing technological innovation and in no way meant to imply that the west is in any way superior to China or Japan now; far from it!</blockquote>

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