Quote Originally Posted by Maciamo
I don't see how you can compare French colonialsim with Japanese colonialism. Japan invaded most of Asia with a huge army, plundered it, then left, without giving any administration or building anything lasting (the Bridge of the River Kwai in Thailand maybe ? ). The only Japanese colonies were Korea, Okinawa and Taiwan, but some of them were enslaved and deported to Japan to work in mines and factories during the war.
I was thinking, was it possible that Japan didn't build any significant infrastructure in its Asian colonies simply because it got its butt walloped (during WW II) before having the opportunity to do so?

Also, there was the development of extensive rail lines in Manchuria, where the Japanese had set up a military administration. So, I suppose you might want to consider Manchuria another Japanese colony.

Of course, thinking about Manchuria reminds me that from the early 1930's onward (when Japan began its most aggressive military expansion into Asia), that Japan was in much turmoil, politcally and financially, on the domestic front. Because of failing relations with the West, exports - that ubiquitous driver of the Japanese economy - had fallen off sharply driving down the economy which exacerbated the tensions caused between political struggles between the rising ultra-nationalists and the more liberal and labor-focused political groups. All that to say, I am not even certain that Japan had the ability to establish much in the way of colonial infrastructures, though in Korea, Manchuria, and Taiwan they were able to do so to greater or lesser degrees.

Oh, wasn't there a starter colony in Russia as well, that included not only military servicemen but administrators and whole Japanese families, too? I seem to remember John Dower making reference in Embracing Defeat to the orphaned cihldren returning from failed colonies after the war, including from Russia . . . oh, if only I weren't so darn lazy at the moment I would look that up! Maybe someone else remembers this, too, ne?

This is all, I suppose, just random information and not necessarily directly on the topic . . . of course, how this went from 'Cute Racism' to 'Compartive Colonialism' . . .