Through Tolerant Western Eyes ...

defeated Russia in 1905. In fact Japan was already a great imperialist country; is had vast colonies (Korea, Taiwan, Manchuria,..) and had fought great world powers for many years and captured many lands during the Second World War. To suggest that its development occurred only in the last two decades (and by implication that it was another India or China before that period) is thus no more than a great triumph of the modern Goebbelsian information technology. No doubt Japan was devastated during the war, but so was Germany (both East and West) or Russia for that matter; its subsequent reconstruction can no more be considered a de novo development than that of West Europe or Russia. Now, having already been a developed country earlier, Japan's socio-institutional structures were such as to enable it unlike the ex-colonies (or ex-semi colonies), to assert and utilise any assistance for its own advantage rather than for that of the assister. The aid-givers too knew very well that it would be futile and suicidal to try to keep an already developed capitalistic country as a neo- colony (unlike an ex-colony pre-capitalist country like India, where the incipient capitalists in a semi-feudal structure can do no more than agree to profit- sharing as a junior partner). This is the meaning of the well known fact, for example, that Japan, although going in for large-scale foreign collaboration, spent 4 dollars in R and D for any technology for which it spent 1 dollar in technology import. If such a policy is not followed in India, it is not because of lack of money or of wisdom but because the necessary social force is lacking.