10:52: Today I will be around Tokyo Bay.
18:21: Today I was around Tokyo Bay.
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CHINA IN 1900 (La Chine en 1900)
In 1900, the Boxer Rebellion was launched in China by local Chinese who joined the secretive anti-foreigner society.
The Manchuria-origin Qing court that long governed China also joined this violent movement attacking Westerners and Japanese. However, rebellions were suppressed by Western powers and the Empire of Japan and eventually the Qing court lost face.
Yet, the Russian Empire would not withdraw its troops after the incident. Rather, they had its troops advance from Manchuria to the border to Korea. This movement alarmed not only the Empire of Japan but also the U.K. that had a plan to build a railway from Beijing to Mukden (in Manchuria).
Accordingly, the first Anglo-Japanese Alliance was signed in 1902. The Russian Empire, competing with the British Empire for the hegemony over Afghanistan, was also faced with the British pressure through the Empire of Japan at the border between Manchuria and Korea while China or the Qing dynasty was making wider concession to Russians.
The Russian Empire boldly occupied Manchuria in 1903. The Empire of Japan proposed that it would accept Russia's hegemony and presence in Manchuria provided that the Russian Empire accepted Japanese hegemony and presence in the Korean Peninsula. But, Moscow responded that the Russian Empire would take Manchuria as a matter of course and requested the same right in Korea as the Empire of Japan's.
So inevitably, it resulted in an outbreak of war between the Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire around Manchuria. China or the Qing dynasty was not directly involved in this war, though the war was fought mostly in its legitimate land territory of the Qing dynasty. Facing the Russian military power, the Qing dynasty of China and the Rhee dynasty of Korea had no chance to stand as a true independent country like the Empire of Japan.
On the sea, the Empire of Japan was equipped with then modern six steel-hulled battle ships purchased from the British Empire before the start of the war against the Russian Empire. So, the Battle of Tsushima (the Great Naval Combat in the Sea of Japan) was fought as the world first full-scale naval battle by two countries using steel-hulled battle ships. In this war, the Empire of Japan mobilized 76 warships, including those purchased from the British Empire and those built in Japan, and 76 torpedo motorboats. (After this war the Empire of Japan for real started to build then advanced steel-hulled battle ships by itself.) In addition, the Imperial Army of Japan used rifles that were all made in Japan and domestically-made and imported artillery in the Japanese-Russo War. (China and Korea had then no such industrial power.)
(Orange lines and arrows indicate deployment and advance of the Imperial Japan's troops and fleets against those of the Russian Empire. Black lines indicate railroads built by Russians and Japanese, respectively.)
The victory of the Empire of Japan over the Russian Empire was resulted from a series of neck-and-neck battles. But, its aftermath was great. Without this victory on the Japanese side, the Far East and East Asia should have been fully colonized by Russians and eventually other West Europeans and Americans like in the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia, and South East Asia. It proved that to be a power of the world you did not have to be a European and Christian country.
Indeed, it was the first major victory of an Asian nation over a European great power since the era of Genghis Khan. But, it made even the U.S. nervous about a potential collision with the Empire over the Pacific Ocean.
Truly, even today most of Afghans know the Japanese-Russo War and the victory of the Empire of Japan. Truly Japan and Afghanistan are the two countries that once defeated invading Russians.
But, as later the Empire of Japan made war against the U.S., Islamic fighters entered a state of war with the U.S. There lies something that has to be reviewed from a historical context of a wider span of time. At least, a futile war must not happen. But, how meaningful are the wars past and ongoing?
Anyway, the state of Asia in 1910 had come to be as follows:
Eventually, the Empire of Japan saved Korean people and Taiwan people from being dominated or enslaved by Russians and other Westerners. Though it is true that the Japanese people had a sense of superiority over Koreans and the Taiwanese at the time, the Japanese way of occupation of Korea and Taiwan was not cruel at all compared with Western rule over their colonies. Modernization and Westernization were first introduced into Korea and Taiwan by Japanese in this period. Even, modernization and westernization were more effectively introduced into part of China by Japanese than the Qing court in Beijing could do at the time.
To make sure, the literacy rate of the Chinese people around 1900 is estimated to be 5% to 30% while the rate in the Empire of Japan around 1900 is estimated to be 90%.
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It was an old wooden white fishing boat attacked by radiation from a US nuclear weapon test in 1954.
(A song having passed by some time...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siNF2I3R4xA&feature=related)