Take Japan as an example, write an essay on how a country should deal with the relationship between traditional and foreign cultures in the process of modernization?

About 150 years ago, Japan, an island nation located on the west coast of the Pacific Ocean, suffered a great existential crisis under the duress of the Western colonizers' strong ships and sharp cannons. Surprisingly, it took this as an opportunity to catch up with the past and eventually became the first country in the Eastern world to break away from the bullying of the Western powers and modernize itself, and the only Asian country to join the ranks of the imperial powers and to establish colonies outside its own borders through aggression and expansion.

Today, this island nation with an area of only 370,000 square kilometers is still the world's second largest economic power.

What has guided the island nation's fortunes, which have risen and fallen like the tides of the sea, from a desire to control its own destiny to a desire to be the world's protagonist?

Historical changes often leave indelible imprints on less visible places.

Yokosuka, at the entrance to Tokyo Bay, is where Japan's modern history began.

In 2003, this small, mountainous and pleasant town held a grand commemoration in honor of an American general named Perry. From these relaxed and friendly smiling faces, it is hard to imagine that 150 years ago, it was this general who forced Japan to open its gates by force, setting the island nation on a course for a history filled with tragedy and wonder, mixed with submission and rigidity.

On July 8, 1853, the U.S., which had just become one of the most powerful nations, sent Admiral Paley, commander of the East India Fleet, to break into Yokosuka Harbor with four large, heavily armed black ships.

In order to open up the Pacific route and seize the Oriental market, Paley on behalf of the U.S. President put forward the request to open the port for trade. The general, who had not long ago won a great victory in the naval battle between the United States and Mexico, was so conceited that he told the Japanese emissaries who came to negotiate that you had better not resist, because once the war started, there would be only one end, and that was that the United States would be victorious.

What choice will the Japanese make in the face of the smoky steamships and the overbearing American general?

At this time, Japan had spent more than two hundred years in seclusion, but it was not ignorant of the outside world. In its only window, Nagasaki, the world's two richest countries, China and the Netherlands, were allowed to trade with each other, and in the 17th century the world's dominant power, the Netherlands, made the island nation, which had been learning from China for 2,000 years, adopt the "Orchidology". The Japanese scholarly class used the Dutch language to study modern European astronomy, geography, medicine, and other emerging disciplines, and thus learned about developments in the Western world.

And what happened to the neighboring Qing Empire, which had been attacked by British warships 13 years earlier in the Opium War, gave Japan's rulers a new signal from another angle.

Interview: Monday Kato, Japanese historian of civilization

For thousands of years, Japan has been learning almost everything from China, and even China lost to its rivals, so such rivals,should be very powerful, and the emergence of such rivals was a shock to Japan.

So when the American black ships pressed in, although there was a debate in Japan about whether to choose to open the country or to go to war, in the end, very practical considerations were made, and the Japanese accepted Peli's request almost with a welcome.

Along with his show of force, General Paley showed the Japanese the fruits of the industrial revolution with telegraphs, clocks, telescopes, steam locomotives and cannons. When a small steam locomotive was set in motion on a specially constructed track, Japanese officials on the sidelines got a real sense of the gap between themselves and that world across the ocean from the spinning wheels.

Interview: Professor Emeritus of Waseda University, Hiei Iida

The Shogunate was quite positive about the opening of the country, believing that Japan could not develop if it closed itself off from the rest of the world, and that it had to enter the international community and develop from there into a world power.

One night, two Japanese youths secretly climbed aboard the American black ship, and with their hands gesturing, told General Perry: they wanted to go with the ship to the United States, to see why the United States was really strong. Doing so would have been punishable by death in Japan at the time.

Their action surprised Paley so much that Paley wrote in his diary, "I am touched by the spirit of these two Japanese men in their quest for learning, and if all Japanese were like them, Japan would surely become as strong as the United States."

The two young men, eager to learn about the world, were eventually sent off the ship. But as the country's doors opened, more and more Japanese paid attention to the outside world, and 14 years later, a young man named Eiichi Shibusawa was given a chance to travel to Europe.

In 1867, at the age of 27, Eiichi Shibusawa traveled to France as part of the Japanese delegation to the Paris Universal Exhibition.

The novelty of industrial products, replacing the machinery and equipment of handmade workshops, and the degree of industrialization in the West astounded Shibusawa Eiichi. He decided to stay and scrutinize the industrial development and economic systems of European countries.

Interview: Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Institute of World Economics and Politics, researcher Zhou see

Shibusawa Eiichi first went to France, and later went to Belgium, Belgium's King (Leopold) II in the reception, said that the country's strength can not be separated from the industry, especially the use of iron and steel is very important, and Japan is welcome to buy and use of Belgian iron and steel, Shibusawa Eiichi. A great emotion, he said a country's king in the meeting with foreign guests, do not forget to promote their own products, can see how important industry and commerce to the Western countries.

Shibusawa Eiichi, who grew up familiar with the Four Books and the Five Classics, and all the traditional Japanese who were y influenced by Confucianism at the time, believed that businessmen were a picture of profit.

The words of the King of Belgium slowly began to change his mindset.

In November 1868, Eiichi Shibusawa returned to Japan with a new mindset. At this time, Japan was not the same country he had left. The country had just undergone a major historical turn.

That year, Emperor Meiji, the 124th emperor in Japanese history, returned to the center of power in the country.

Interview: Liu Xiaofeng, Associate Professor, Department of History, Tsinghua University, China

In Japanese mythology, it is said that Amaterasu Omikami created Japan, and the emperor is claimed to be a direct descendant of Amaterasu Omikami, and so the emperor has the legal right to rule the country. However, in actual history, from the 12th century onwards, the great power has always been passed aside into the hands of shoguns, who possessed the power of the military, and the situation continued for 600 years. 600 years until 1868, the 15th year after the Black Ships knocked on Japan's door.

The arrogance and power of the American Black Ships emphasized the weakness of the shogunate, and the pressure from the outside finally turned into a drive for internal change. In the end, the samurai overthrew the Shogunate in the name of the Restoration of the King's Rule, and established a legitimate new government by supporting the newly crowned Emperor Meiji, who, at the age of 14, became the supreme leader of the nation of Japan. The young emperor was to lead a Japan that was beset by internal and external problems and crises.

The American Black Ship forced Japan to sign its first unequal treaty when it knocked on its door. Soon thereafter, the Netherlands, Russia, Britain and France flocked to follow suit and began to compete for their respective interests on the island nation.

Like many Asian countries at the time, Japan quickly became a dumping ground for Western goods and a supplier of cheap raw materials, and in just six months after the opening of the port, a million taels of gold flowed out of the country, leading to economic depression and public discontent.

How could the new, young government lead Japan out of its perilous situation?

On April 15, 1868, Emperor Meiji promulgated the Five Articles Oath, a general plan to promote national change and open the door to a new way of life. From then on, Japan entered an era known as the Meiji Restoration.

Subtitle: Seeking knowledge from the world, saving the Emperor's foundation

Interview: Hiei Iida, professor emeritus of Waseda University

The Meiji Restoration can be regarded as a starting point of modernization in Japan.

Eiichi Shibusawa, who returned to Japan in November 1868, caught a good time. A year later, he joined the Meiji government's finance department. The experience he had gained from his travels in Europe and his natural ability to manage money made Shibusawa's career smooth sailing. He was directly involved in the conception and formulation of almost all major policies of the new government, such as the reform of the monetary system, the abolition of clans and the establishment of prefectures, and the issuance of public bonds.

Just as Shibusawa was rising through the ranks, the Meiji government took an important step that changed Japan and changed Shibusawa's personal destiny.

In 1871, a government legation of nearly 100 people set out from the port of Yokohama for Europe and America. The mission included 49 high-ranking Meiji officials, a number that was almost half of the total number of government officials at the time. The Meiji government, which had been in existence for just three years, spent 2 percent of its fiscal year's revenue to support the huge trip.

In one year and ten months, they visited 12 countries in Europe and America. The study was written in a hundred volumes. In the history of Japan's and Asia's dealings with the Western world, the Iwakura mission's trip was unprecedented in terms of the government's commitment, the rank of its officials, and the length of the trip.

Interview: Tang Chongnan, president of the Chinese Society for Japanese History

Japan's top leadership, headed by Iwakura, visited Europe and the United States, such a delegation, and finally used the first shock, second drunkenness, and the end of the madness of the three words to sum it up, I think it is very accurate. The first shock is that they went to Europe and the United States, after seeing the developed Western cultural heritage system, the degree of surprise; the second drunk is intoxicated in the West in this advanced material and spiritual civilization; the end of the madness is the determination to learn a series of cultural heritage system of the West like crazy, to make Japan the same as in the West.

It was in Germany that the Japanese mission seemed to find its own model of national development. Bismarck, the iron-blooded chancellor who had just completed the unification of his country, told them at a reception banquet that: today, all countries of the world, although they say they want to befriend each other with etiquette, that is, after all, just a superficial gesture, and behind the scenes they are in fact bullying the small and the strong with the big, and the weak with the strong.

These words struck a chord with the Japanese, who not only agreed with Bismarck's talk of power politics, but were also enamored of Germany's model of development, in which the state dominated industrial development.

Germany was the fastest growing latecomer in Europe at the time. The Japanese, who had been learning from the strongest for thousands of years, found a new teacher for themselves.

It was Toshimichi Okubo, the self-proclaimed "Bismarck of the Orient" and deputy head of the Iwakura mission, who led the process of Japan's industrialization after his return to Japan.

More than 100 years later, the Okubo family still treasures the Western-style red leather chair Toshimichi Okubo brought back from Paris on his trip, as well as the ink stone he used and the Chinese purple sand teapot he cherished.

This small seal was carried by Toshimichi Okubo and was used to issue many of the decrees that shaped Japan's history.

When he returned to Japan, Toshimichi Okubo was promoted to the position of Senator and Secretary of the Interior. This iron fisted figure, who held the real power of the Meiji government, led Japan on an urgent march of modernization.

The reeling factory was one of the first government-run factories in Japan, and the government purchased reeling equipment from France and hired French technicians at great expense. The factory was about to open, but it couldn't recruit workers. That's because many Japanese at the time believed that the roaring machines would suck the essence out of people.

To allay people's fears, the Meiji government came up with a plan: first, it persuaded the daughters of high-ranking government officials to become factory workers. These skilled women workers were later sent all over the country, and silk reeling became Japan's first product to enter the international market.

Interview: Monday Kato, Historian of Japanese Civilization

I think that both Muslim countries and China have the characteristic of being very resistant to the introduction of foreign technology, and that at the time of the Meiji Restoration, many disciplines and many fields of study in the national universities of the Imperial University of Japan were all westernized in a short period of time. The positive side here is that the efficiency was very high. In order to reach the international advanced level as soon as possible, everything was completely westernized from scratch. In fact, it proved to be very efficient.

According to Toshimichi Okubo's colonization plan, the government brought French reeling factories, German mining and smelting factories, and British military factories directly from the West. In addition to purchasing machinery, the government also hired a large number of foreign technicians. At that time, a foreign expert could earn up to 2,000 yen a month, more than three times the salary of a high-ranking official in the Meiji government.

It is estimated that one-fifth of the Meiji government's financial expenditures at that time were invested in the establishment of enterprises.

Along with the opening of state-run factories, Toshimichi Okubo also vigorously supported private enterprises.

Mitsubishi is one of Japan's most famous trademarks. Today there are more than 100 Mitsubishi companies in Japan and hundreds of Mitsubishi branches overseas.

And in 1870, Mitsubishi was just a small, obscure company with three small ships. However, it soon acquired 13 ships commissioned by the Meiji government and the maritime military transportation business; a year later, the government simply gave the 13 ships to Mitsubishi, and allocated annual operating compensation; thereafter, the government purchased 18 ships from the Postal Steamship Co. and gave them to Mitsubishi to operate at no cost.

Interview: Seiichi Narita, Managing Director, Mitsubishi Research Institute for Economic Research

The Japanese government gave these businesses to private enterprises to develop, that is to say, initially by the government to implement, and then sold to the gradual cultivation and maturity of the private sector to continue to develop. Japan has always developed in this way. In this process, not only Mitsubishi, but also Mitsui, Sumitomo and other companies were successively bought from the government to develop government enterprises.

With the government's support, Mitsubishi soon got its wings, and in 1875, Okubo Toshimichi asked Mitsubishi, which had just been established five years earlier, to open a route from Japan to Shanghai. As a result, it took less than a year for the U.S. Pacific Mail Steamship Company and the British Peninsula and Oriental Navigation Company to be expelled from the route, and Mitsubishi monopolized the shipping business from Japan to Shanghai.

In 1873, at the age of 33, Shibusawa Eiichi had already become a major minister in charge of the national budget, and in the eyes of the public, his career could be described as promising. But Eiichi Shibusawa did something that seemed unthinkable at the time: he submitted his resignation, abandoning his post to become a businessman.

Interview: Liu Xiaofeng, Associate Professor, Department of History, Tsinghua University, China

Before the Meiji Restoration, the status of businessmen wasn't very high, and Shibusawa's decision to leave his post and join the business community was the first of a generation, which meant that people realized that business was a very important thing, and that people with a very high status could go into business.

The first thing Shibusawa Eiichi did after resigning from the government was to organize the founding of Japan's first joint-stock company bank, and thus began his own very legendary entrepreneurial career. His entrepreneurial activities gradually expanded to include shipping, shipbuilding, railroads, textiles, beer, chemical fertilizers, mines, and other industrial sectors. By the 1880s, Eiichi Shibusawa had become one of the most prominent figures in Japanese industry and commerce.

Japan, which was rapidly moving toward industrialization, began to imitate the Western way of life while learning advanced technology. The Gregorian calendar replaced the lunar calendar, and New Year's Day replaced the Chinese New Year; the emperor took the lead in eating beef, and officials wore tuxedos; and business began to get busy in the barbershops, where men cut off their hair in buns and trimmed it into short, Western-style haircuts. A limerick describes it as, "Knock on the short-haired, bushy-tailed ceiling, and the sound of civilization's enlightenment rings out."

Like Nara, which was built more than a thousand years ago to emulate China's Tang Dynasty capital, Chang'an, the Japanese are now building a Westernized street in Tokyo's Ginza. Two-story Western-style brick buildings modeled after European and American markets line the streets, where trams run and gas lamps are lit at nightfall.

Japan looked brand new, and the Meiji Restoration seemed to be going well. It was at this time that an unexpected thing happened.

At 8:00 a.m. on the morning of May 14, 1878, Toshimichi Okubo, the man who held the real power in the Meiji government, left his house early as usual to prepare for a meeting at the palace.

A few minutes later, a message reached the palace: 49-year-old Toshimichi Okubo had been assassinated in Shimizuya.

In the early morning hours of the day of his assassination, Toshimichi Okubo had been talking about his vision for Japan's future reforms with a local prefectural magistrate who had come to visit him.

So what were the forces that ended Toshimichi Okubo's dominance of the change, and why did the Meiji Restoration, in its 11th year of advancement, suddenly fling this huge exclamation point on society as a whole?

Interview: Juninosuke Igarimi, Professor Emeritus, Tokyo Metropolitan University, Japan

Toshimichi Okubo was a very determined man, always possessing a resolute attitude, an uncompromising figure.

Interview: Tang Chongnan, President of the Chinese Society for Japanese History

The national opposition to Oukubo Toshimichi was still quite strong, especially after the final put Oukubo, the shikoku assassinated him, and his regime passed quickly.

In order to achieve the three major goals of the Restoration, namely, the enrichment of the country, the colonization of the country and the civilization and enlightenment of the country, the hard-line Toshimichi Okubo adopted a simple fetishistic approach to implement the reforms, but the government's inexperience as well as eagerness to develop industry led to the unsustainable financial situation of the government. And the excesses in the process of civilization and enlightenment made Japan's traditional culture face collapse, and some people even suggested that the Japanese should switch to speaking English and intermarry with Westerners to improve the Japanese race. All this inevitably triggered a fierce conflict between modern civilization and native traditions.

At the same time, the unfairness brought by the reforms intensified the already existing social conflicts. 1881, the government sold the Hokkaido government property to individuals at a low price of less than one-thirtieth of the amount invested. This incident led to extreme public discontent with the corrupt practices of government-business collusion, which almost led to riots. It was only when the Emperor stepped in and dismissed a group of high-ranking officials that the situation was stopped from worsening.

The assassination of Toshimichi Okubo left the challenge of reform to his successor, Hirobumi Ito.

How would Ito Hirobumi, who had been Toshimichi Okubo's right-hand man, face the social conflicts before him? What will he choose to continue the cause of the Meiji Restoration?

Interview: Juninosuke Izumi, professor emeritus at Tokyo Metropolitan University

Ito Hirobumi is probably the most ambitious of all the (Japanese) leaders, with a broad vision and an open mind.

Shortly after taking office, Ito Hirobumi encountered a thorny issue. The Meiji government had explicitly banned sumo, a traditional Japanese sport, on the grounds that near-naked sumo wrestlers were ugly and foolish. But a master sumo wrestler named Takasago set out to challenge the government ban by organizing a public sumo show in Tokyo.

People in favor of Takasago were at loggerheads with the police, who came to intervene. To avoid an escalation of the confrontation, the Emperor had to personally organize and attend a sumo show to revive the sport.

The challenge of the sumo wrestlers and the discontent of the people forced Ito Hirobumi to think carefully about the direction of the country and the way to reform it. In Japan at the time of Ito Hirobumi's administration, the conflicts caused by the reforms were already protruding into the political life of the society. The Japanese people, who had opened their eyes to the world in the west, began to assert their rights. A large-scale and long-lasting liberal civil rights movement was taking place at all levels of Japanese society.

Interview: Hiei Iida, Professor Emeritus, Waseda University, Japan

First of all, it was the free and civil rights movement that was the center of the demand for a constitution from the government. It was the radicalization of the liberal civil rights movement that made the Meiji government realize that it had to enact a constitution to establish a Diet, otherwise the government itself was likely to be overthrown.

Ito Hirobumi, who was accustomed to following the general trend, also realized that the establishment of a constitution for the nation of Japan was a general trend. He began drafting Japan's first constitution.

More than a decade of reform experience has taught him that simple fetishism can no longer drive further change in Japanese society.

By this time, Ito Hirobumi's friend, Eiichi Shibusawa, had already been effectively practicing the fusion of his country's traditions and modern civilization in his own business empire.

Eiichi Shibusawa, who founded more than 500 companies in his lifetime and is known as "the father of modern business in Japan," took the Chinese Confucian classic "The Analects of Confucius" as his guide from the day he started his career in industry. He gave speeches everywhere, calling on Japanese people to be entrepreneurs with the Analects in one hand and an abacus in the other. Eiichi Shibusawa put forward the concept of unity of righteousness and profit in business; and Hirobumi Ito incorporated his country's traditions into the Constitution.

A seemingly inexplicable phenomenon emerged: in the Constitution, which was meant to protect civil rights and in fact did include them, Ito added a clause establishing the absolute power of the emperor. Why was this?

Interview: Yasuhiro Okudaira, Professor Emeritus, University of Tokyo, Japan

For some reason, the emperor-centered ideology has become almost religious, and the majority of the Japanese people believe that Japan would not be Japan if there were no more of this religion, and this is also true of those who were pushing for modernization of Japan at that time, and of course, Ito Hirobumi took advantage of this trend of ideology.

On February 11, 1889, when snow fell on Tokyo, the Constitution of the Empire of Japan, drafted by Ito Hirobumi, was promulgated. While consolidating the achievements of the Meiji Restoration, the Imperial Constitution, with the help of the Japanese tradition of honoring the emperor, legally confirmed the inviolability of the emperor and his power to command the army and declare war on foreign countries.

The Imperial Constitution made it possible for Japan to practise a multi-party system on the surface and an imperial system in practice, thus determining the militaristic direction of Japan's external expansion and internal high-handedness in the early years of its rise to power. Some historians have argued that during the reign of Ito Hirobumi, while national traditions such as sumo wrestling were restored, the dregs of Japan's traditional culture, especially militarism, were recalled and strengthened.

But at the time, Ito used it to defuse increasingly acute social conflicts. After the promulgation of the Constitution, Japan's economy grew rapidly, and the practice of extreme westernization was slowly curbed. As a result, scenes like these emerged in Japanese social life:

While Western clothes became popular, the kimono was preserved as the most gorgeous dress; bars proliferated, and tea rooms remained people's spiritual purgatory; Western operas began to sing, and Noh theatre and Kabuki were going to their extremes; and when oil paintings began to be brilliant, Japanese ukiyo-e became a major genre of painting in the world.

Interview: Tang Chongnan, President of the Chinese Society for Japanese History

Japanese culture is like an onion-head culture, and this kind of image allows us to see very clearly the situation of Japanese culture, which is like an onion-head, peeling off a piece, peeling off a piece, and then finally trying to find the nucleus of the Japanese culture, but there is none. The Japanese culture is a combination of foreign cultural influences and very important components of Japanese culture.

At the same time, Japan, like Germany, adopted a different model of development from the liberal economy, which historians have called the "Unificationist Economic Model", that is, under the premise of retaining the basic nature of capitalism, changing the method of economic operation, so that the state became the dominant force, and thus industrialization took off at a speed beyond the normal. industrialization to take off at a faster-than-usual pace.

By 1910, more than 95 percent of Japanese men and more than 90 percent of Japanese women were educated. The gap in railroad mileage between Japan and Britain had narrowed from 1,000 times at the beginning of the Meiji Restoration to less than four times.

Japan already looked like an industrialized nation, but it clearly had a considerable gap with the Western industrial powers. How to achieve the goal of catching up in the fastest way? Japan has been looking for such a shortcut.

Five years after the establishment of the Meiji government, Japan forced neighboring Korea to open its doors by force and profited from it, less than 20 years after it was opened by the United States.

Interview: Monday Kato, historian of Japanese civilization

The Meiji slogan was "Wealthy nation, strong army", and one of the first things that the Meiji government did after it was established was to create a modern army, and that was the goal (of the Meiji Restoration).

Towards the end of the 19th century, the famous Japanese thinker Fukuzawa Yukichi bluntly pointed out such a convenient road for Japan, "Our country can not be hesitant, rather than wait for the neighboring countries to progress and with the *** with the revival of East Asia, it is better to get rid of its line, and with the Western civilized countries *** advance and retreat."

The so-called "civilized countries" of the West were competing for spheres of influence around the world. Japan, which historically has always chosen to keep company with the strong, this time chose to **** in and out with the Western powers, joining in the forceful plundering. When the Meiji Restoration brought about an increase in national power, Japanese militarism accelerated the pace of foreign expansion.

Interview: Jiang Lifeng, director of the Institute of Japanese Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

The Meiji Restoration ended in 1889, around 1890, and then its whole national strategy changed.

Subtitle: 1894 Sino-Japanese War

1904 Russo-Japanese War

1914 World War I

Successive years of foreign aggression, Japan invaded Korea and China's Taiwan, and a large amount of resources and reparations flowed into Japan. After the Sino-Japanese War alone, the amount of reparations Japan looted from China was equivalent to more than four times its national revenue that year, and more than half of the reparations were used to expand naval and military armaments.

After a few successes, Japan's militaristic ambitions more inflated, and finally developed to the establishment of the "Greater East Asia **** Circle of Glory", the sole domination of the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean to the point. For half a century, Japan expanded its power in one war after another.

Subtitle: Nine? The 18th Incident 1931, when the Japanese invaded Northeast China

Seventh Incident 1937, when the Japanese army picked a fight with the Japanese. The Seven Incidents 1937, the Japanese army provoked the Lugou Bridge Incident

Sneak Attack on Pearl Harbor December 8, 1941, the outbreak of the Pacific War

August 1945 The U.S. Army dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

At the moment of the atomic bomb's explosion mushroom cloud rose into the sky, the Japanese militarism attempted to rely on the force of supremacy of the world's superstitious dream was broken, just as it was before and since then all the countries that superstitiously believe in the power of force to win the world. Just like all the countries that have been superstitious about the supremacy of force since then, the war of aggression brought disaster to other countries and also dealt a devastating blow to Japan. The material achievements accumulated over nearly eighty years since the Meiji Restoration were almost reduced to ashes in the flames of war.

Subtitle: August 15, 1945 The Emperor declares Japan's defeat to the Japanese people (soundtrack)

September 2, 1945 Japan signs its surrender on the U.S.S. Missouri

For the first few years of the war, the U.S., the occupying power, had to finance Japan to the tune of one million dollars a day. In the first years of the war, the U.S., the occupying power, had to provide Japan with $1 million a day in aid, and had to bring in 6,000 tons of rice every day to ensure that as few people as possible starved.

No one would have predicted, however, that on such seemingly destitute ruins it would take Japan just over two decades to realize its economic emergence. Between 1955 and 1964, Japan's GNP consistently grew at an annual rate of more than 9 percent. From 1965 to 1970, this growth rate was even more than 10%. Various explanations have been given for this miraculous rate. And no matter which way one analyzes it, one cannot ignore one of the most fundamental reasons.

Interview: Jin Xide, a researcher at the Institute of Japanese Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

(Japan) was bombed into ruins after its defeat in the war, but it still left behind a hundred years of development since the Meiji Restoration, such as scientific and technological talent, as well as some of the learning of the West, a set of things to engage in industrialization. Soft power, or retained, so this is Japan as soon as possible after the war economic takeoff of a foundation.

Meanwhile, post-war Japan was escorted by the Peace Constitution. This new constitution, which has been in force since May 1947, stipulates that: Japan's sovereignty belongs to the nation, the Emperor exists only as a symbol of the Japanese state; Japan permanently renounces wars waged by the sovereignty of the state, does not maintain land, sea, air force and other war powers, and does not recognize the state's right of belligerency. Under the framework of the Peace Constitution, the foundation laid by the Meiji Restoration came into play.

This was once Japan's first train station, and in 1872, when Japan's first railroad was built by the British, the Emperor Meiji himself came to attend the opening ceremony. Seven years later, the Japanese began designing and building their own railroads. In 1964, the world's first high-speed railroad appeared between Tokyo and Osaka, running at three times the speed of ordinary railroads, which the Japanese called the "Shinkansen". Along with the Shinkansen, a large number of multinational corporations, which had grown up after the war by borrowing the European and American corporate systems, extended their reach around the world. It was they who put Japan on the track to rapid growth.

Four years after the birth of the Shinkansen, in 1968, Japan's gross domestic product (GDP) reached $141.9 billion. That was the year Japan became the world's third largest economic power after the United States and the Soviet Union. And that year was the 100th anniversary of the Meiji Restoration. By any measure, the confident Japanese public has reason to believe that this is one of the most symbolic times to announce Japan's re-emergence.

There are indeed too many things to summarize about Japan's 100-year journey as a great power. But no matter how it is summarized, one thing is certain: in today's world, the rise of any nation can be lauded only for what it means: internally, to bring happiness to its own people; and externally, to bring the world the benefits of peace and security.

This is the entirety of the Rise of the Great Powers of the Century of Restoration Japan, if you change it a little more