Sarah Paine — How Imperial Japan defeated Tsarist Russia & Qing China

**Sarah Paine** (0:00)
So, I'm going to talk to you today about one of the two great generations in modern Japanese history. And they are the Meiji generation named after the Meiji Emperor here. And that generation transformed Japan into the only, and the first and the only non-Western modern power in that period. And the second great generation of modern Japanese is of course the post-war generation that transformed their country into a global powerhouse. And I'm going to ask a question, or try to both ask and answer it, is what caused the reversal of the balance of power in Asia in the period that I'm going to talk to you about it. And it's a really consequential question about why these tectonic changes take place in the international system. Because historically, China had always been the dominant civilization in Asia from time immemorial. And then Upstart Japan winds up doing things, or China winds up doing things, and it reverses and has profound effects. And it's a very relevant question in our own day, when there's an ongoing reversal of the reversal, when China is on the comeback and threatening to put Japan back in its box. So it's really interesting to ask why, how do these things happen? And so that's the background of what I'm talking about. But if you think about China back in the day before Japan trounced China in the first Sino-Japanese War, Chinese believed that there's only one civilization, theirs naturally. And they believed that of course it's the best, because there's only one, that makes it easier to be the best. But in addition, if you think about all levels of human endeavor, Chinese institutions were imitated throughout the East. It's the richest country on the planet for many, many years. Incredible achievements in science, philosophy, you name it. And also there was another assumption that people didn't make a U-turn on the path to civilization. It's always forward towards Chinese civilization. Well, Japan by westernizing is taking a U-turn on the road to civilization. It's dumping Chinese civilization. And so already we got at least two civilizations out there. And then when it trances China in a war, it suggests to the Chinese that they can't be better than the Japanese at the military things at least. And this effect on China was far more devastating than the Opium Wars. So the Chinese could write those off, the losses there, a bunch of crazy Europeans there are relevant to us. But when Japan did this, it basically detonated the Confucian underpinnings of Chinese civilization. And the Chinese have been trying to find a suitable replacement ever since. For a while, they thought it was Communism. Maybe they still do. So I'm going to ask a question. Why did the age and balance of power change? And now, spoiler alert, I give the answer. And I'm going to say, clever decisions in Tokyo. But I'm going to use a particular framework to answer this that I've found really useful. And I learned it from teaching at the Naval War College, where students are required to have a counterargument in papers. And this is what I learned from doing this. So I'm going to have an argument, which is a thesis, and then I'll have some data supporting it. But then I'm not going to quit there. I'm going to find the second best argument, the counterargument, the absolutely best alternate explanation, but not one that I think is the best one. I'm going to give you the best one. That's my thesis. And I'm going to go into that. And it's incredibly valuable, particularly in our own fraught political times where we need to hear each other out. You need to hear out the counterargument of what the other side is saying. And then what you'll often find out in a counterargument is that there are actually some very valid points in it. And it leads you to think, oh, well, maybe I need to adjust my own argument. So changing your mind is a good idea if the data comes in. Also, it gets you away from monocausal explanations where you come up with one cause, you think, that's it, time to quit. And if you're thinking about the counterargument, you might get other causes as well. Also, if you're going to do something like on a job, and you have to recommend a course of action, your thesis, you would better anticipate what the counterargument is going to be. And then the third part of this is the rebuttal. Because you better come into that, meeting your boss with the rebuttal in your back pocket, so that you can deal with people who are saying you're wrong. And the rebuttal cannot be a repetition of the original argument, because you know what? That's annoying. Don't do that. Really annoying. The most effective ones are coming at the problem from a completely different direction from either argument or counterargument that then shores up your argument. And my other direction is I've got a Sino-Japanese problem, and I'm going to come around with a Russian angle. So this is my game plan of what I'm planning to do and the analytical reasons for doing it. Okay. So I have a thesis, which I'm going to give to you. When in emails and written work and lectures like this one, you really help people if you explain exactly what you're up to and you do it succinctly at the very beginning. So here it is. The Japanese leaders westernized their institutions. They integrated multiple instruments of national power into a coherent strategy and then in the Russo-Japanese War, they quit that one exactly at the culminating point of victory for maximum gains and together these three things overturned the balance of power in their favor. That's my thesis. Short, sweet, you got it. Whether you agree with it or not, we will get there. Okay. So now I'm going to go to the first point. First points, you should start with a topic sentence. I'm going to start one. Why am I doing this?