Sarah Paine

Because for Japan, it's a nice fishing ground, but for Russia, it's sovereign Russian territory.

Horror is ceding that sovereign Russian territory to anyone, let alone an Asian power, given the prejudices of the day.

All right, to sum up what Japan got out of this war.

It got its immediate war objective, Russian troop withdrawal from Echaria.

That's what they wanted.

And they get this Japanese sphere of influence in Korea.

That's what they wanted.

But guess, remember at the very beginning, they wanted to trade Japanese predominance in Korea for Russian predominance

in Manchuria, whoa, well, so what they really got, they got the southern half of Sakhalin Island, Russian territory.

They got southern Manchuria, and it's actually arguably the valuable half, the southern half, because that has Port Arthur and Dalmy and all the railways that Russians had invested there.

And then it confirms the outcome of the first Sino-Japanese War, that Japan is indeed the dominant power of Asia.

So I rest my case.

Japan did it.

Smart decisions in Japan is what overturned the balance of power in Asia.

Okay, but I promised you a counter-argument.

What would a smart person say who disagrees with me?

And here's a perfectly good counter-argument, which would say,

Yeah, it's great you think the Japanese are so clever, but actually China faced a perfect storm of catastrophes.

And because China imploded, that's why it leaves Japan on top in Asia.

The primary factor is that China's falling apart.