In 1940, Japan celebrated 2,600 years of arrival of Jimmu, the God/son of heaven. In other words, the arrival of Jimmu was around the time of Confucius in China. It is less clear if Japan had interactions with India or the rest of the world 2,680 years ago.
Moral Innovators know that, especially during the Tang Dynasty 1,400 years ago, Japan sent tens of thousands of scholars over hundreds of years to learn the Chinese culture. China was the world’s largest economy and freely exported Chinese writing, culture, sciences and technology to Japan.
Today, any Chinese person can travel within Japan and recognize about 50% of the road signs and directions to reach different locations in Japan, without speaking Japanese.
200 years ago, European Christians could not produce enough products that China wanted to buy in exchange for the silk, porcelain, tea, and other products Chinese produced and sold worldwide. The British government immorally decided to give monopoly power to trade the illicit drug opium to the British East India Company in 1773 when Britain was about to lose their North Amerian terriority to the United States. Through two opium wars that ended in the year 1860, European and Russian Christians ravaged China by pushing illegal opium to Chinese citizens. This is relevant to Japan in the context that when Commodore Perry reached Japan in 1853, in the middle of the second opium war, Japan already knew the devastation in China that could not defend China. What Japan saw was – Japan could be next.
Quick to react to the US offer to trade, Japan accepted the US demands to trade, and within 15 years, abandoned the Shogun/Sumarai tradition and implemented Meiji Restoration in 1868. This was a direct impact of the violent destruction of China that Japan observed due the illegally imported opium.
Using Tordesillas and Zaragoza Treaties where Portugal and Spain claimed the world as a reference, Japan and USA signed agreements where Japan recognized Hawaii as US territory, and US recognized Ryukyu as Japanese territory. Further, Japan received compensation for hosting the largest US military base in Asia, located on Ryukyu after it was renamed Okinawa by the Japanese government. Japanese value obedience over morality, as illustrated when the Japanese Prime Minister went out of his way to please the racist Donald Trump by nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Part 3 introduces the Japanese values through Shintoism, the polytheistic religion that united the Japanese to blindly obey their emperor, the only recognized son of heaven in Japan.
Moral Innovator 