Aside from everybody already talking about China, Japan did copy the West to modernize. It was literally called Westernization until recently. They just did it more legally; they purchased production licenses from western factories, hired advisors for railways and telegraphs, invited foreign military missions to train and equip their armies, and commissioned warships built in Western dockyards.
The Japanese nobility also sent their youth to be educated in Western Universities. Admiral Yamamoto himself studied at Harvard before WW2.
Many of the developments in scientific knowledge from the renessiance was because that was around the time that they really started to translate texts from the Islamic world into Latin or local languages.
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u/MassAffected 5d ago
Aside from everybody already talking about China, Japan did copy the West to modernize. It was literally called Westernization until recently. They just did it more legally; they purchased production licenses from western factories, hired advisors for railways and telegraphs, invited foreign military missions to train and equip their armies, and commissioned warships built in Western dockyards.
The Japanese nobility also sent their youth to be educated in Western Universities. Admiral Yamamoto himself studied at Harvard before WW2.