Sarah Paine

It doesn't have any allies.

It has itself.

And it likes to have bilateral relations.

But actually, these international institutions, for those who actually are serious about them, it's a de facto.

NATO is most certainly an alliance system.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's important.

It's just the Chinese also come with this little piece of baggage that we're big, you're small, so we get to tell you what to do.

Oh, they've literally said it over and over again.

They'll tell it to their neighbors like the Vietnamese, just basically shut up and color because we're a big country and you're little.

Vietnamese don't like it.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We've been really intrusive in other people's domestic politics, without a doubt.

Right.

And that is the American busybody gene that's gotten us into a lot of trouble.

So, oh yeah, no one's perfect in this world.

Far from it.

We all make horrendous errors and then do things we shouldn't do.

So I'm going to talk to you today about one of the two great generations in modern Japanese history.

And they are the Meiji generation, named after the Meiji emperor here.