Does Environmental Threat Preclude Choice?
To be fair, Japan has always been threatened by powerful neighbors. Still, Japan is not a small country. It is larger and more populous than most European nations. Not all islands – whether the literal kind or the geographically, politically or economically figurative kind have the same proclivity for control and singularity. Hawaii, Scotland and Israel provide divergent models.
Resistance to aggression takes many forms. It is dimensional.
If anything about Japan is unique in the world, it is its consistency in designing staunch systems of racial and internal exclusion, while managing technological advancement. This proclivity cannot be explained away by any one element in the social topology. Japan’s resistance to aggression by maintaining rigid internal controls is dimensional.
