askchapo

Answers will be at different stages of Japan's history.

Japan was considered isolationist by Western colonists for quite some time and succeeded in delaying all forms of colonization until basically the mid-1800s approximately around the beginning of the Meiji Restoration. The same playbook was followed in Japan as towards other colonized countries: forced to abandon tariffs and sell off lands and companies to foreign powers or we will destroy you with our Navy (this time, the US Navy). The Meiji Restoration was in many ways a reaction to this and bolstered Japan's own military power to reject much of the colonial policies that had been forced upon them. There is of course more to it than this, and much about their economic base, but their military power and deciding to use it to secure their own trade positions is what guarded them against the extraction and travesties that their neighbors suffered at the hands of European powers.

Japan fully reoriented around becoming its own imperial power beyond the borders of Japan. It was carving out its own sphere of influence and this was so fully at odds with US imperialist interests that Lenin famously predicted a war between them. Japan set out and did its own version of imperialism on its neighbors, famously in Manchuria and Korea and then eventually carrying out the full-scale assault and expansion during WWII.

You might then wonder why Japan kept a high economic status after the war given that it was the US' rival and that a "strong Japan" had been directly against its interests. The answer to this question is anticommunism. The US took every foothold they could to maintain forward bases against (first) the USSR (who actually forced Japan's surrender), (second) China, and later Korea. That included maintaining sea and air power throughout the Pacific, in Japan, in Taiwan, and taking over European colonial outposts in places like Singapore and Indonesia. Japan in particular got the Marshall Plan treatment of getting built up to act as a counterbalance to the neighboring communist countries, receiving a steady stream of stimulus from the imperialists and hosting US military bases and personnel.

This is, more or less, why Japan has kept its economic status. It's no guarantee, of course. The US deliberately crashed their economy in the 90s because they were outcompeting them on key industries.

I have never seen anybody call Japan -- as in Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu -- a former colony. Ainu Mosir and Ruuchuu are areas which are continually being colonized by Japan and the United States, but Japan itself is better described as a vassal of the United States.

As I understand it (I could be wrong), the reason why basically boils down to that Japan itself was a fascistic genocidal empire, and so as their empire crumbled, they could be groomed into a useful bulwark against the USSR and Japan's own recently-liberated colonies, using the same methods of treat-giving that also worked in Europe.

The colonizer mindset itself remains alive and well in Japan.

Japan was economically colonized but not settler-colonized. The main reason material conditions are relatively good there compared to the global south is that the west found them useful against Russia and China in the cold war.

It was in America's best interest to flood Japan (and Germany) with resources for reconstruction to make capitalism look better than communist countries reconstructing with limited resources

The US controls the military of Japan and South Korea. I can't think of any sane world in which this is considered independent lol

We're going to nuke you just to scare the Ruskies.....twice......

You're now our cheap labor.

You will now buy our debt - Japan is the largest foreign holder of public U.S. government debt, owning $1.1 trillion in debt as of October 2023.

You will also be party to our hosilte imperalism by hosting our bases.

You will now develop a proxy army for us.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Next_100_Years:_A_Forecast_for_the_21st_Century

Japan will expand its economic influence to regions of coastal China, the Russian Far East, and many Pacific Islands. Friedman predicts that Japan will change its foreign policy during this time period, becoming more geopolitically aggressive, beginning a major military buildup. Friedman predicts that Japan will build military strength capable of regionally projecting power across East Asia during this time.

Finally, Poland will continue to lead its military alliance, the "Polish Bloc." Poland and its allies will be a major power, much like the time of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Now possessing substantial military strength, Poland will expand its economic influence into what was formerly European Russia, and will begin to compete with Turkey for influence in the important economic region of the Volga River Valley. Around this time, space programs for military use will begin to emerge, and Japan and Turkey will increasingly begin to develop military capabilities in space

pulling these from my ass:

1. islands, harder to threaten with violence, and by extension, harder to colonize, or even impose more unequal trade agreements
2. the Meiji Restoration, the stars aligned to create rapid industrialization
3. useful ally against China and Russia, acts sort of like Israel, a giant NATO aircraft carrier with a country awkwardly crammed into it