Pre-Reading Notes

Hello and welcome to Chapter 9: East and Southeast Asia! This region consists of both mainland areas, such as China and Vietnam, as well as the island countries of Japan and Indonesia. Let’s jump right in!

The core focus of this chapter is economic development. Economic geography is the study of economic systems and development from a spatial perspective.

The learning objectives for Chapter 9, and questions you might consider, are:

• Identify the key geographic features of East and Southeast Asia
  • How would you describe the physiography of this region?
  • What are the primary natural hazards found in East and Southeast Asia?
• Explain how East and Southeast Asia’s history has affected its geographic landscape
  • How was Southeast Asia settled?
  • What were some of the key historical events and empires that shaped this region?
  • How did communism change the landscape of this region?
• Describe the patterns of economic development in East and Southeast Asia
  • What are some of the main economic systems found in this region (such as special economic zones and trade organizations)?
• Analyze how East and Southeast Asia interacts within the global economic system
  • How has globalization shaped the modern patterns of economic development found in this region?

Don’t forget to add your own review questions to this list as you read the chapter!

Now head over to Chapter 9 in the textbook! See you soon!

Notes After Reading

Welcome! I’m so glad you’re here and have made it this far! There’s a lot of history in this chapter, and it’s this history that has shaped the patterns of economic development found here. I find students increasingly know about development in South Korea and North Korea, since the latter often makes news headlines, but they struggle with understanding the Meiji Restoration and Japan’s transformation both before and after World War II, so let’s make that our focus.

So, here’s Japan, if you didn’t know:

Hey there, Japan! Good to see you! My brother is actually in the Air Force and was stationed in Okinawa, Japan, which is at the bottom left of this map.

Okay, so early 1800s Japan was run by a shogunate, essentially a military dictatorship, and was essentially a feudal, pre-industrial society. This ended in 1868 with the Japanese Emperor Meiji, who sought a variety of reforms from the dismantling of the samurai class to a reformation of the military to standardizing the Japanese language.

There was a push to accelerate industrialization and as I discuss in the book, essentially the Japanese leaders under Meiji engaged in a systematic study of the world – basically doing geography to see why some countries succeeded and others failed. So imagine you’re in 1860s Japan and you’re researching the world. Who’s doing well? What country kind of looks like Japan and similarly is an island nation with not a ton of resources? Britain, right? So if you asked yourself what were the keys to British success, I’d think we’d agree it was their industrial might and their global imperialism. (That’s of course not to say that British imperialism was good for other countries, just that it was good for Britain.) So Japan set out on the same course, and by the start of World War II, had colonized much of East Asia (go back to the map in Figure 9.8).

World War II happens, Japan loses, and this enabled several former colonies to get independence, like the Philippines and Burma. Other countries were divided up by allied forces, which is what happened in the Korean peninsula. (This always seems like such a strange thing to do post-war. I mean, these areas were colonized and then the war’s over and you’d think, “Nice! We get our country back!” Nope. Just given to somebody else to administer.)

Now, what I find very interesting about Japan is how well the country has been able to recover post-World War II. I remember when my brother was going to be stationed in Japan, my parents were a bit concerned and I was like, “Guys, they’re a super industrial country with a higher life expectancy than we have. I think he’s going to be okay.” (And he was and lived there happily for over a decade before moving back to the US.) Certainly Japan had significant losses to recover from, to include the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the Japanese worked quickly to continue industrialization and drive recovery. Women were encouraged to enter the workforce. The United States also partnered with Japan to develop supplies for the Korean War, further driving economic development.

Today, the Japanese economy is one of the largest in the world, behind only the United States and China, and its primary trading partner remains the United States.

Hopefully this helps shed some light on the economic development in Japan and how they were able to become one of the world’s biggest economies today.

Nice work on Chapter 9! Don’t forget to go back to the chapter questions and test yourself!