Your thoughts on the Meiji restoration?

Your thoughts on the Meiji restoration?

honestly really sad the nation threw away it's sense of self, just so they could industrialize and have that advantage over their future korean and chinese victims

Survival goes not to the strongest, smartest, or fastest

But the organisms that can adapt to change

sort of agree

japan is really ugly and all their cities are just bland generic concrete skyscrapers

yet pre-industrial architecture is beautfiul

But japan largely preserved its culture, adapted to modern times. The code of bushido, confucian ethics, loyalty to the ruler et cetera.

>it's sense of self
What is that? having rice farming as your largest industry and being ruled by sword wielding asshats with hereditary privilege?

just gonna post some ugly shit they've built there

The tokugawa bakufu was in its death throes long before the meiji restoration. It had become a completely untenable system for farmers and samurai alike.
Japan's sense of self from 500AD onwards was to always adapt and mould foreign influence to its needs. That foreign influence was usually China. Once China got dicked, the West became its main foreign influence.

The last samurai is pure glorified nationalist fiction

BUSHIDO DIGNIFIED
IT'S THE LAST STAND OF THE SAMURAI
SURROUNDED AND OUTNUMBERED

>By the end of his career, Yoshitoshi was in an almost single-handed struggle against time and technology. As he worked on in the old manner, Japan was adopting Western mass reproduction methods like photography and lithography. Nonetheless, in a Japan that was turning away from its own past, he almost singlehandedly managed to push the traditional Japanese woodblock print to a new level, before it effectively died with him.

looks like any major city in the us

...

>honestly really sad the nation threw away it's sense of self, just so they could industrialize and have that advantage over their future korean and chinese victims
Just so you know: Ken Watanabe's character was based on a guy who wanted to invade Korea.

>mfw the sneaky dishonorable peasants outbred us

>honestly really sad the nation threw away it's sense of self,
How? Meiji restoration is more about conflict of power between the emperor and the shogun rather than abandoning culture, techniques and institutions are reformed, but the spirit is retained, the root of the movement itself is highly conservative in nature, best represented with their slogan "sonno joi": "revere the emperor, expel the barbarians"
They modernise to not be completely subdued by westerners like China after opium war, and it's working

These two look fine. An aesthetic building, but in an out of place foreign architectural style, isn't that bad.

This stripped classicism with the clashing materials is really ugly though.

yes the restoration moving forward for the class system to get abolished was good the rights where also, mainly here im talking about the changes in architecture

the modernizing did abandon cultural aspect tho

very french quarter like

So what does abandoning traditional architecture have to do with cucking Koreans and the Chinese?

Exactly, it was completely unnecessary, it was just a cultural change that occurred, the society became more practical and utilitarian, didn't want to create beautiful things, only focus on function and lose the soul.

That's a Frank Lloyd Wright designed hotel made for mostly foreign visitors
I would argue that the influence is mutual, Japanese design aesthetic and philosophy like wooden sliding doors (later on changed to glass), construction on stilt, and zen minimalism have profound influence on modern architecture (and still do today)

>these justifications for the horrendous ugliness of modern japanese architecture
>"O-oh it's influenced by zen!"

thaats the industrializing part so you would have the muscle to flex on em

Imperialism back then was a White man's game so they were clearly trying to develop the Whitey mindset by turning Westaboo even at a superficial scale. Just like how Western Europe the US imitated ancient Roman architecture to raise this sense of social refinement that they were the heirs of the Roman Empire.

Yeah but back then the West actually built pretty buildings and the culture was strongly religious and valued aesthetics. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries even the skyscrapers were extremely pretty, now all we build is ugly things.