Agreed that Japan is difficult (but ultimately at least doesn’t go on modern crusades and genocides anymore).

Personally I see Japan in many ways as a tragic case of sinking to the same levels of barbarism as the west- as a history nerd, Japan could have done such amazing things- but they didn’t, though there were some genuine, well-intentioned pan-Asianists and anti-imperialists, ultimately evil won out time and time again, and then the US took over and ensured they continued on that path.

Reading history, they were in many ways at first a triumph for the non-white, non-western world, even for all that their triumph was seriously compromised- the entire world, even the Chinese and Koreans looked on in admiration when they won the Russo-Japanese war, and the historical testaments of anti-imperialist/anti-western figures across the world- from Sun Yat-sen to Nehru, from Lenin to those in Ethiopia and Egypt and the Ottoman empire, etc… that they sunk to such barbarism is one of history’s greatest tragedies IMO, alongside other such tragedies like the existence of the Brit*sh, Colombus’ “discovery” of the Americas, the founding of the USA, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Honestly IMO, if Japan had been genuinely anti-imperialist, if they had not absorbed western barbarism, if they had worked alongside China, Korea, and perhaps even the Soviets, they could have liberated not only all of Asia, but even eastern Africa (and all of Africa in due time). Japan could have been a bright torch for humanity, but instead they became an example of the worst of it.

I’m saying this all as someone whose family on both sides were in the unfortunate circumstances, of being ethnic Chinese in then-British Malaya during the Japanese occupation- it’s just a complete and utter shame, the path Japan went down. In many ways (for the non-ethnic Chinese) the fact of the matter, when one reads history, is that the Japanese were even welcomed as liberators by many (not all) southeast Asians- but then quickly wore off their welcome and then some. Originally there had been such beautiful hopes for pan-Asian (non-Japanese imperialist) cooperation as well, in China and in Korea- but the Japanese ultimately spat on those hopes and made worse than a mockery of it all.