It's insane how effective Japanese propaganda has been at painting this international picture of Japan as a great civilisation when it is the complete opposite. Aside from the fact the Japanese only invented agriculture in the 11th century CE and that they lived in mud and thatch huts for a few centuries more than that, their cultural and artistic "accomplishments" are bland and pale in comparison to every other civilisation in Asia, utterly mogged by the Khmer, Indians, Thai and Chinese.

Japanese history can be summed up as a bunch of Chinese and Korean exiles murdering the natives and becoming stupid, petty samurai killing each other for 1000 years with shitty swords, wood armour and an idiotic honour code that permitted them to kill peasants for looking at them and backstab their allies. The Japanese wasted all of their time fighting over becoming the shogun of a worthless series of islands and making a prostitute culture where you have to pay thousands for a prostitute and you're not even allowed to touch her the first 3 times you hire her. Don't forget the series of military expeditions in Korea and China that accomplished nothing.

The most notable parts of Japanese history are when the British, Portugese and Americans arrived and gave them EVERYTHING. The Japanese were less developed than most of Africa until the Europeans arrived. They then became drunk with Western power and took their inferiority and jealousy out of all of Asia. Now they delude themselves into thinking they're a great country who are literally white. Sick.

It's absurd that anime and manga were this effective at making a historically and culturally bland and uninspired country more well known than the Khmer, Thai or Vietnamese.