All in all, Japan's national conditions were inherently deficient. If it relied solely on the resources of its homeland for development, the level it could reach would be quite limited.
However, that was not absolute. A nation's development had much to do with its own resource endowments, but in the end, national governance still depended on how people were governed.
Japan happened to have great potential in that regard. For one thing, it knew shame and then strove for courage, excelling at learning from the strong. For another, Japan had a sufficiently large population. A large population naturally had its advantages—it depended on how those advantages were transformed, turning people from a burden into wealth.
Take Japan's raw silk industry, for instance. Why was it so competitive internationally? Its labor costs were simply too low, and the Japanese could endure hardship and worked diligently. The government did not drag them down either, instead strongly supporting industrial and commercial development. Naturally, Britain and the United States were willing to invest in such a country, while incidentally using it to check the Far East Empire.
Likewise, large numbers of Japanese went abroad for work, bringing substantial remittances back to Japan.
Remittances were an important source of national income for a country's development, especially for nations with an extreme population surplus. For countries like Egypt, the Philippines, and Bengal in his previous life, remittances were one of their major sources of income. If they relied only on their own countries to provide jobs, vast numbers of displaced people would inevitably emerge.
Beyond its innate advantages in low-end industries, especially labor-intensive ones, Japan also valued education and science, something exceedingly rare in this era. This laid the foundation for Japan's future industrial upgrading. Thus, Japan's rise into Asia's only great power several decades later