Conjecture

A society that reads a transition early and adopts it by its own decision can join the leaders instead of being absorbed, though what it becomes is not thereby chosen. Ansary's ch. 27: "Japan had seen the machine age coming, had understood its significance, and had put itself through a crash course of industrialization," and in 1904 "flabbergasted Western observers by dealing the Russians one defeat after another." "Europe received the message." Contrast the same chapter's opening: "When these societies encountered China, China went down. When they encountered the Islamic and Hindu worlds, they seeped in and took over from within." The cost: "a militant, totalitarian nationalism had metastasized within Japan." Clay's step: nobody directed the machine age, but Japan chose its own adoption, which is the lever the receiving story leaves; seeing it coming decided whether Japan was absorbed, not whether its story turned dark.

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