It makes playing while using the bathroom feasible!

In the 1600s, some foreign sailors showed up in Japan with guns and fancy ships and all kinds of stuff. Before long, all foreigners were banned.

200 years later, to create some easier trade routes to Asia or something, the American navy showed up again with big warships and said “you’re going to open your ports to us”. Japan then opened up to the world again and this time they tried to learn as much about the west as possible, to try to bring their society to that level, and probably also so that they would be able to have warships and such of their own.

So in like 50 years Japan learned and copied stuff that took the west centuries to figure out. There was always the feeling of “we can be like you guys too” as the whole country modernized and assimilated stuff like crazy. After 100+ years, they already surpass us in lots of things, so that’s probably one reason behind the phenomenon Itoi was talking about.

(I’m sure I super-glossed over everything and maybe got some stuff wrong, but that’s the basic flow of things as I remember)

Kurowoof: I know for sure Itoi talked about it when the author died a few years back, but I think he might’ve also mentioned it during all the MOTHER 1+2 interviews and such.

Could you clarify this a bit? I’m a bit fascinated by countries that want to be more highly praised by the Western world—the main instance I’m familiar with was Russia in the 1800s, where there was a certain frustration with the fact that they weren’t really considered European, which had certain effects on their culture (although I haven’t read nearly enough history to qualify this, it was almost as though the 1917 revolution was their attempt to finally show everyone up).