It's crazy how much Japan and Britain are mirror images of each other.
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Archipelago countries dominated by a single large island at opposite ends if the same continent
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Settler colonized the second largest island in the archipelago
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Genocidal imperialists who love killing
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Creaky-ass stupid monarchy
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Top-down transition from late feudal systems to bourgeois liberalism in the 1800s
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At times global industrial powers but now degraded through decades of neoliberalism and submission to the US
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Current ethnic group settled the main island under murky circumstances in the first millennium CE (very unclear how much the natives were integrated or eradicated, timelines, etc)
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Extremely decrepit right-wing social democracies
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Politically obsessed with farmers despite not being remotely food self-sufficient
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Extremely disproportionately centralized around the massive capital city in the southeast of the main island, which is not just dominant to the home country but a globally leading financial center
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Historical tradition obsessed with feudal class of heavily armored, violent, horseback warrior thugs/landowners (knights/samurai) who transitioned to fancy lads and project backwards a cultural refinement of honor and courage (chivalry/bushido)
The only real differences are that 1) the English eradicated their own ecology more than any country has ever done and Japan has maintained it shockingly well given population density and level of development and 2) the British Empire lasted so much longer and was so much better established than the Japanese that the metropole absorbed tons of colonized peoples, while Japan remains a de facto ethnostate with extremely low non-native population.