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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6095068" data-attributes="member: 4937">It's even more unusual of a situation than that.&nbsp; Japan provides the counter example to almost every broad historical observation you can make.&nbsp; The Meiji restoration was probably the most unusual socio-political event in human history, and stands in absolute contrast to every other excession event in history.&nbsp; I think that for Japan you have to consider two things.&nbsp; They aren't merely isolated geographically, with their back to the Pacific ocean and its seemingly empty endless expanse, but they are sandwiched on the other side by what had been for most of human history the world's great economic and military superpower - China.&nbsp; So it wasn't merely that they were isolated and could block foreign influence, they had their back against the wall against the most powerful foreign influence imaginable - a heavily populated, prosperous, literate, advanced, aggressively imperialistic empire.&nbsp; They have no where to expand to, and their culture is pretty much dominated by unrelievable population pressure combined with the overriding need to defend themselves militarily and culturally from being engulfed and absorbed into thier larger neighbor.&nbsp; The musket shows up and the Japanese do their usual thing of taking a foreign design and immediately improving upon it, and just like in Europe (which in some sense is like Japan on a larger scale) there is a backlash among the martial aristocracy about this new plebian weapon.&nbsp; But I don't think that it was merely that that got the musket supressed in Japan, but rather the musket was suppressed as part of the general fear of foreign influence.&nbsp; The Japanese feared losing their identity, and so threw out everything the Portugese had brought with them.&nbsp; They could do that because China was in the middle of its long slow self-inflicted stagnation induced collapse (see the very different choices China and Europe made in the 15th century), and because they were at 'the ends of the Earth'.&nbsp; But even then, it didn't last very long in the whole sweep of history.&nbsp; As soon as the powers that be realized that there was a developing weapons gap that rendered them insecure after all, the firearm came back.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 6095068, member: 4937"] It's even more unusual of a situation than that. Japan provides the counter example to almost every broad historical observation you can make. The Meiji restoration was probably the most unusual socio-political event in human history, and stands in absolute contrast to every other excession event in history. I think that for Japan you have to consider two things. They aren't merely isolated geographically, with their back to the Pacific ocean and its seemingly empty endless expanse, but they are sandwiched on the other side by what had been for most of human history the world's great economic and military superpower - China. So it wasn't merely that they were isolated and could block foreign influence, they had their back against the wall against the most powerful foreign influence imaginable - a heavily populated, prosperous, literate, advanced, aggressively imperialistic empire. They have no where to expand to, and their culture is pretty much dominated by unrelievable population pressure combined with the overriding need to defend themselves militarily and culturally from being engulfed and absorbed into thier larger neighbor. The musket shows up and the Japanese do their usual thing of taking a foreign design and immediately improving upon it, and just like in Europe (which in some sense is like Japan on a larger scale) there is a backlash among the martial aristocracy about this new plebian weapon. But I don't think that it was merely that that got the musket supressed in Japan, but rather the musket was suppressed as part of the general fear of foreign influence. The Japanese feared losing their identity, and so threw out everything the Portugese had brought with them. They could do that because China was in the middle of its long slow self-inflicted stagnation induced collapse (see the very different choices China and Europe made in the 15th century), and because they were at 'the ends of the Earth'. But even then, it didn't last very long in the whole sweep of history. As soon as the powers that be realized that there was a developing weapons gap that rendered them insecure after all, the firearm came back. [/QUOTE]

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