eli5: how did Japan resist and block contact with western colonial powers so successfully compared to other small nations and islands in Asia and the Pacific?

Question

eli5: how did Japan resist and block contact with western colonial powers so successfully compared to other small nations and islands in Asia and the Pacific?

In: 1

Answer 1

By killing them, and then being protected by the US and Britain.

Initially, they killed anybody who left and then came back, or anybody who arrived (except a few portugese a year). Then the US rolled up and forced them to open the country. The US was not interested in having a colony, and wasn’t interested in foreigners blocking their exports to Japan. The British reacted similarly, and both propped up Japan and fended off foreigners while Japan modernized and tried to westernize..