eli5 How did Japan become a technology superpower after WW2?
In: Other
The same way Germany did. There wasn’t much left of Japan’s pre-war cities, considering they had all been firebombed, or, in some cases, nuked. Since they had to rebuild their cities from scratch anyway, they used the opportunity for massive modernization. Massively helped, of course, by the fact that the US viewed a strong capitalist Japan as a useful ally against any communist expansion in the region, and so they better get them on their side, and do so now.
Japan’s geography also plays a role here. Japan is relatively poor in natural resources and has little in the way of farmland. This is both a curse and a blessing, however, as, while Japan is naturally import dependent, this also means that those industries take up only a small part of their industry, meaning a larger part of the population can go into industrial and technological jobs.
It should also be noted that, while Japan wasn’t on the forefront of technology pre-WW2, Japan already was an industrialized, highly educated economy. Without WW2, Japan would have likely become a technology giant eventually.
Latest Answers