Why was Japan whole now, instead of a world of its own? Well, this is a predictable take coming from me, but: 



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The railway tied together Japan in ways that military conquest could never hope to--it was a *physical manifestation* of the ties that unify
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For a while, Japan set about trying to unify the entire Pacific Rim the way it had once been unified: needless to say, this didn't work outpic.twitter.com/wiaAaJEQB4
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The other major development of the Imperial era was that Japan switched from LARPing as China to LARPing as a Western great colonial power
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Not a wholesale switch, really, but a sort of unique synthesis: more than just a combination of the two.
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Establishing itself on the world stage in terms the rest of the world readily understood. Kinda like what they did w kanji centuries earlier
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...and kinda like what they did w American cartoons in 20th century! What appears to be copying at first turns out to be a wholly new thing
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the railway is the physical embodiment of that yearning to be together, to overcome the distance between us, to communicate clearly...
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...but the artform which really encapsulates this feeling, which inspires the rest of the world to take note, is in anime
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anyway, enough unverifiable rambling--I need to give this more time
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bear in mind, if this theory has any merit, is that we're still in the Springtime phase--VERY early in the development of this spirit!
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