Michael Magoon gets to the heart of a real question about Japan’s development. The usual answers — Meiji institutions, Black Ships, samurai adaptability — start the story in 1868. The more insightful version starts earlier: Osaka's commercial networks, merchant houses with generations of capital, literacy deep into the commoner class, han fiscal systems running on written rules. Meiji reconfigured; it didn't build. Same shock, different substrate — and once the pieces started reinforcing each other, the trajectory held in ways Qing China and the late Ottomans never entered. Dercon's elite-bargain reading catches part of it: the Meiji oligarchs chose accumulation over extraction. The bargain only compounds where the substrate can carry it. See also the parallels in Deirdre McCloskey’s post this week on the Glorious Revolution. mccloskey.substack.com/…