What about Japanese possessions acquired during the events of WW2? Outside of brutality committed, did they receive economic development in the short time period?
Googling, I'm guessing that you're referring to this passage:
"Japan had its own colonial system too, incidentally - but its colonies developed, and they developed because Japan didn't treat them the way the Western powers treated their colonies. The Japanese were very brutal colonizers, they weren't nice guys, but they nonetheless developed their colonies economically; the West just robbed theirs. So if you look at the growth rate of Taiwan and Korea during the period of Japanese colonization, it was approximately the same as Japan's own growth rate through the early part of this century-they were getting industrialized, developing infrastructure, educational levels were going up, agricultural production was increasing. In fact, by the 1930s, Formosa (now Taiwan) was one of the commercial centers of Asia. Well, just compare Taiwan with the Philippines, an American colony right next door: the Philippines is a total basket-case, a Latin American-style basket-case. Again, that tells you something."
Okay, so: basically, no.
Let's take the last point first. The Philippines is a poor country today -- but it wasn't always so. At independence in 1946, and for some years afterwards, the Philippines was moderately prosperous. It wasn't a developed country, but by ~1950 standards it was doing okay: some industry, a respectable financial sector, an agricultural export powerhouse. The Philippines' per capita GDP in 1950 was around $1300. By way of comparison, US per capita GDP in 1950 was only about $9,800. South Korea was around $880 and Taiwan was around $920. So in 1950 -- a few years after all three countries had gained independence from colonialism -- per capita income in the Philippines was around 50% higher than in either Taiwan or Korea.
And that wasn't a fluke. The Philippines stayed relatively prosperous through the 1950s. It wasn't until around 1960 that the other two would pass the Philippines. Of course, once they did pass, they simply blasted away -- South Korea and Taiwan both saw dramatic, radical, hothouse growth from the late 1950s onwards, while the Philippines stagnated. There are complex reasons for this that go beyond the scope of this comment, but here's the key takeaway: at independence, and for over a decade afterwards, the Philippines were clearly more prosperous than either Taiwan or South Korea. So, "the Americans looted the Philippines while Japan developed South Korea and Taiwan" takes a big hit right there.
Next, as to the Japanese being "better" colonists: there's basically nothing to support this. The Japanese treated their colonies pretty much exactly the same way Europeans did. Taiwan got a better deal than Korea, for various reasons -- Japanese rule was a lot gentler there, to the point that Taiwanese still have a somewhat positive view of the Japanese period. (This is firmly not the case in Korea.) However, Taiwan's economy and society were organized for the benefit of Japan. Taiwan was set up to be a producer of subtropical products like sugar and cotton, primarily for the Japanese market but also for export. I'm not sure where Chomsky is getting "1930s Taiwan was one of the commercial centers of Asia" from; while colonial Taiwan had a modest financial sector, it was dominated by Japanese firms.
Colonial Korea had a more mixed economy -- agriculture, light industry, mining. But it was still oriented entirely towards the needs of Japan. And, it has to be said, the Japanese occupation of Korea was pretty brutal. Many thousands of people simply starved; tens of thousands more were effectively worked to death. There was a complete suppression of human rights and a great deal of violence.
Chomsky makes the point that the two colonies "had approximately the same growth rate as Japan" during the colonial period. This is more or less true -- but since those colonies started off much poorer than Japan, they /stayed/ much poorer than Japan at all times. There was no convergence. Nor was it intended that there should be. Japan had long-term plans for its colonies, and they didn't include raising the colonies to either economic or political equality with Japan.
Also, let's note that Taiwan and Korea were not Japan's only colonies. Chomsky doesn't mention it, but Japan possessed half a dozen Pacific Island colonies -- the northern Marianas, Palau, the Marshall Islands, and so forth. During World War Two, the US would have to fight its way across those island colonies -- if you're a history buff, names like Tarawa, Saipan, and Peleliu may ring a bell. Today those islands include some of the poorest places on Earth, particularly the Republic of the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia. So, not really strong evidence for a special Japanese model of colonial development.
In all cases, Japanese rule was exploitative and extractive. Like European colonizers, the Japanese justified their rule by investments -- particularly in education and infrastructure -- and by more nebulous alleged benefits like "bringing peace and security" and "raising the level of civilization". However, at the end of the day there was a clear flow of production and resources away from the colonies and into Japan. It was very much the same pattern as contemporary European colonies.
Chomsky is praising Japan in order to draw a contrast to "Western" colonization, which he views as entirely bad and exploitative. But there's not really a contrast to be made. It's true that Korea and Taiwan later launched upon successful trajectories of development, and are now wealthy and advanced economies. That fact has been used by the Japanese themselves as a point of national pride! (At a guess, that's probably where Chomsky got it from.) But (1) that successful development didn't start until over a decade after the Japanese had left, and (2) it was part of a greater regional pattern of rapid East Asian growth after 1960. Hong Kong and Singapore were not Japanese colonies, but they also saw fantastic growth after 1960. After 1980, so did mainland China and Malaysia. None of that had anything to do with being colonized by Japan.
-- The interesting issue is who /didn't/ join the East Asian boom. North Korea, of course. Vietnam has had rapid growth since the 1980s, but it was desperately poor to begin with after 20+ years of massively destructive war. The Philippines are really the great exception, and they're a fascinating / depressing case study in how to fly a moderately prosperous developing economy right into the ground. But, again, that's outside the scope of this comment.
Anyway: HTH!
Okay, so this was a two part question. "What about Japanese possessions acquired during the events of WW2? Outside of brutality committed, did they receive economic development in the short time period?"
If we're talking about possessions acquired from 1940 onwards -- Indochina, Indonesia, Malaya, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and so forth -- then the answer is firmly no. Several reasons.
One, the Japanese weren't really interested in long-term development of these colonies. The "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" was largely mythical; it basically meant that Japan would install selected elites as collaborators to run a puppet state. (This led to some tension between economic exploitation and Japan's political goals, which involved keeping the new "allied" states cooperative and docile. As a general rule, economic exploitation won.) Perhaps their attitude might have evolved over time, but in 1940-44 it was pretty much smash and grab.
Two, even if the Japanese had wanted to -- and they didn't really want to -- there simply wasn't time. Even in Indochina, Japan was only there for five years. If we're talking about (say) Indonesia or the Philippines, then the whole period of Japanese occupation was only about three years.
Three, most of these newly acquired territories were European colonies that were set up by and for particular European powers. They were relying on access to particular European markets and regular infusions of European capital and expertise. So consider -- oh, for example, French Indochina. Indochina was basically a plantation colony; it produced tropical crops like sugar and rubber and coffee, all on plantations run by mostly miserable workers under very unfair labor laws. The French plantation owners paid the workers very little, and took most of the profits for themselves. However, the plantation owners were competing in a market, so they did invest a lot of their profits back: they bought tools, machinery, and inputs such as seeds and fertilizer. They would also sometimes take out loans to clear more land, build warehouses, building rail spurs, and the like.
Now suddenly they're under Japan. The Japanese insist the plantations sell the rubber or sugar to them, and they probably enforce a production quote. In payment they give either Japanese yen or -- more likely -- some sort of occupation scrip. The plantation owners can't use yen to buy much of anything, and the occupation scrips are pretty much worthless paper. They can't easily get loans from a Japanese bank or insure their crop with a Japanese insurance company. So, investment grinds to a halt.
Also, let's note that this is the most benign version of events. The Japanese might also take the plantation owners and throw them in an internment camp, or simply shoot them. Then the plantation might be handed over to a Japanese owner, or it might be given to a "Cooperative" owned by a collaborator. Probably these new owners wouldn't know much about running a plantation. But it wouldn't matter; tither way, it would have production quotas which would have to be met, with grim penalties for failure, and there would still be little or no maintenance or investment.
-- Let's pause here to note that, without exception, the workers were just as badly off as they ever were, and often worse. The Imperial Japanese weren't very enthusiastic about workers' rights generally, and they were violently hostile to labor activism. So, as a general rule, the same old unfair labor laws stayed in force, and the workers went on cutting sugar cane or whatever in exactly the same manner.
Fourth and finally, Japan was in the middle of a war. So, money that theoretically could have gone to development -- building schools, ports, railroads, whatever -- was diverted to the war effort. Large-scale investment, such as infrastructure projects, simply didn't happen unless there was a compelling military justification. Also, in the last 18 months of the year, everything was increasingly disrupted by actual attacks by the Allies -- outright Allied counter-invasions in the case of the Philippines and Indonesia, and the US submarine campaign in the case of everywhere else. By early 1945, well before the war's end, both the Imperial Japanese Navy and the Japanese merchant marine were mostly at the bottom of the sea. Hard to do much foreign direct investment under those circumstances.
-- Having said all this, I have to note that there was one part of Japan's conquered territories that saw real investment and development: Manchuria, aka the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. The Japanese /did/ invest a lot of money, time and effort into Manchukuo. Partly that's because they were there longer; they started investing there way back in the 1890s, and they physically took control of it in the early 1930s. Partly it's because they planned to stay there indefinitely; there was no "Co-Prosperity Sphere" in Manchuria. It was always gong to be a puppet state under firm Japanese control. And partly it was because they were (relatively) starting from scratch; Manchuria was very underdeveloped, even compared to the rest of China. So they had a relatively blank page to write on. They wanted to use Manchuria for mining, land-intensive agriculture like ranching and wheat and timber, and as a secondary center of heavy industry.
Finally, Manchuria was to be a settler colony. Tens of thousands of Japanese moved there, with a long-term goal of creating a new, ethnically defined ruling class. This was a very dubious idea, that probably would have ended very badly -- but in the short and medium term, it meant that Japan was much more willing to invest in Manchuria; after all, it would be a new home for hundreds of thousands of Japanese.
But other than Manchuria, the answer is firmly no.
I do not think that the first answer on this thread is actually a very good answer. It brings up statistics related to the development of these two colonies and their development post-1960s, but does not address the differences in how Japanese and European colonialism set up these countries to surpass the Phillipines in the 1960s, which is entirely Chomskys point.
I should preface this by saying that there's a historiography underpinning this; throughout the 1990s and 2000s, many (most) American historians of Japan were writing against a narrative that overly criticized Japanese colonialism. Most of their works emphasized the differences between Japan and Europe in exactly the way Chomsky described. More recent works have been a bit more critical, arguing that "the idea of Japanese exceptionalism cannot be accepted uncritically" (see BOOTH, ANNE, and KENT DENG. “Japanese Colonialism in Comparative Perspective.” Journal of World History, vol. 28, no. 1, University of Hawai’i Press, 2017, pp. 61–98), but have by no means abandoned the idea that Japanese colonialism was "set it apart from its European counterparts and gave it a character and purpose scarcely duplicated elsewhere."
There was a fundamental difference between European colonialism in Japanese colonialism in Asia - the degree to which it encouraged industrialization and economic development. Yes, at the time, these developments were concentrated into Japanese hands and did not benefit the locals. Yes, the Japanese were brutal colonizers, enacting many forms of exploitation, oppression, injustices, and horrible violence. No, this does not mean that the West never developed any colonies or laid the groundwork for manufacturing. Nor does it mean this case holds true everywhere. But there was a substantially greater amount of economic development in Japanese colonies than equivalent colonies in Africa, Latin America, and Asia.
In Korea, although it had no altruistic motives, Japan "deepened its economic stake in Korea with the construction of railways and a rapid increase in commercial activity throughout the country." This came with cruel exploitation and brave resistance by the Korean people, who were unquestionably morally justified, but it does not change the fact that the result was an improved economic base. In Taiwan, and in most Japanese colonies, the goal was "the creation of a sound economic base for the nation, one which would not only make it economically self-sufficient, but would also provide sufficient growth for the new state to pay for the extraordinary costs of a wide range of modernizing programs and institutions." Tax reforms "provided a strong incentive for new and old landowners to increase the productivity of their land. u/Malaquisto claims that Taiwan was not a commercial center because their financial sector was "dominated by Japanese firms," but this is besides the point. Taiwan was a major industrialized agricultural center by the 1930s. For example, Japan's modernization efforts "laid the foundations for a highly successful sugar industry between 1900 and 1910, heavily subsidized at first, but which, within a decade, became the leading industry of the colony and helped to reduce Japan's dependence on outside sources..." Meanwhile, by contrast, American policy in the Phillipines was precisely the opposite - it "had the long-term effect of discouraging crop and market diversification and the development of manufacturing industries." (Rafael, Vicente C. "Colonial Contractions: The Making of the Modern Phillipines, 1565-1946" Oxford Research Encyclopedia, Asian History, 2019). Again, this doesn't mean Japanese colonialism was good. Just that it did not have the same long-term result as Western colonialism because of a difference in economic policy.
This is not to say that the relationships were not exploitative - they were, in that they mainly benefitted the colonizers - nor that it was moral, or "worth it," or anything like that. It is simply to say that it was different, in that it did not neglect the industrial development of the area as much as European colonialism did. It exploited its colonies through a different set of policies, ones which encouraged industrialization in the colonies to a degree greater than the U.S or European empires had. It's easy to see why - Japan had pretensions to make these areas effectively an extension of Japan (famously having Korean citizens take Japanse names, for example), one of the ways they viewed their colonies that Europe did not.
This is by no means a settled debate, nor is it an easy one. To quote Peattie, "How does one balance the creation of a modern educational system in Korea with the attempt to eradicate the Korean language and culture?" But Chomsky's fundamental point does hold true - that the type of economic exploitation carried out by European Imperialism did not encourage the same kind of industrial development.
I think it's also worth pointing out that the book in question was a collection of quotes from Chomsky between 1989-1999, at a time when the general consensus of newer revisionist Japanese historians was exactly what Chomsky is arguing. More recent works have been more critical of this concept, but as I said, they have not thrown out the baby with the bathwater. I feel compelled to defend Chomsky here - even if his description overemphasized the degree to which Japanese colonialism was different, he was echoing scholarly research. Something that many answers on here frequently do not reference. And clearly, the scholarly research here at least partially supports his argument.
Sources:
Gann, Lewis H. Western and Japanese Colonialism: Princeton, N.J. :: Princeton University Press,, 2020.
Rafael, Vicente C. "Colonial Contractions: The Making of the Modern Phillipines, 1565-1946" Oxford Research Encyclopedia, Asian History, 2019
BOOTH, ANNE, and KENT DENG. “Japanese Colonialism in Comparative Perspective.” Journal of World History, vol. 28, no. 1, University of Hawai’i Press, 2017, pp. 61–98
General follow-up here.
The historiography has been going back and forth for a while. The first article I read on this was "Japanese colonialism and Korean development: A critique" which came out in [googles] 1997. So the debate is not a new one.
That said, the "Japanese colonialism -> infrastructure -> economic development!" school ignores that almost /all/ colonizers built infrastructure. Almost everyone built roads and ports and railroads and at least some factories. To give an extreme example, the Belgian Congo, in the 1950s, was generating over 20% of its GDP from industry; it had rail lines and paved roads all across the country, and all the large towns were electrified with hydropower. Meanwhile Namibia, a bit to the south, was an arid scrubland with virtually no infrastructure investment. Yet today, Namibia's per capita GDP is around 15x greater than the DRC's. The point here is that infrastructure investment during the colonial period correlates only weakly with post-colonial success.
An issue that's been entirely neglected: Korea had already laid a strong foundation for economic development before the 1910 Japanese takeover. The population was growing rapidly thanks to agricultural reforms and improvements in public health, including universal smallpox vaccination. The first railroads were built in the 1890s. By 1910 the major cities were all connected by rail lines, and Seoul and Pyongyang had electric powered tram lines as well. Coal mining had been going on for decades, and electrification was proceeding rapidly. Slavery, torture, child marriage and the caste system had been abolished by the Gabo Reforms in the 1890s. Literacy rates were still very low, but by 1910 the country had two universities and a rapidly proliferating system of primary and secondary schools. Industrialization had already begun; in particular, there was a small but rapidly growing textile industry. After stagnating for decades, real wages started rising in the middle 1890s, and by 1910 were almost 50% higher than they had been 15 years earlier.
Very broadly speaking, Korea c. 1910 looked a lot like Japan a generation or two earlier -- an insular, primarily agricultural premodern economy that was suddenly embarking upon modernization. Left alone, Korea would very probably have embarked upon a trajectory similar to Japan's. Whether they would have gone as far or as fast gets into alternate history and is beyond the scope of this comment, but the key point here is that the Koreans were already clearly on a developmental path before the Japanese annexation.
It's worth noting here that the Japanese occupation of Korea was pretty short: just 35 years. By way of comparison, the French were in Indochina for around a century, the British were in Hong Kong for 150 years, and the Dutch were in Indonesia basically forever. If you believe that the Japanese were better at promoting long-term economic development than the European colonizers, you also have to believe that they were able to produce very long-lasting effects very, very quickly.
Nobody's addressed this, but I'll repeat it: Japan had a bunch of Pacific Island colonies, and most of those former Japanese Pacific island colonies are quite poor today. And that's not a Pacific island thing; Hawaii and Guam are wealthy, Fiji and Samoa are doing okay, while former Japanese possessions Chuuk and Pohnpei are poor and struggling. (In fact, there's a steady flow of Micronesian immigrants to Guam and Hawaii.) Singling out Korea and Taiwan while ignoring Micronesia and the Marshall Islands is cherry-picking.
Finally, an issue that's been neglected: there were large numbers of Japanese settlers in both Taiwan and Korea. In the case of Taiwan, by the 1940s Japanese settlers, known as "naichijin", were about 12% of the population: around 400,000 out of 3 million. In Korea, there were more Japanese settlers in absolute terms -- about 600,000 -- but since 1940s Korea had over 20 million people, they were only about 3% of the population. But they punched far above their weight, socially, politically and economically. They were an elite, and they restructured the Korean economy and Korean spaces to serve their needs. (A good article on this is Cultivating Settler Colonial Space in Korea: Public Works and the Urban Environment under Japanese Rule" by Tristan Grunow.) Also, their numbers were growing; Japan's long-term plan was to have ever larger settler populations in Korea and Manchuria, and to have an eventual Japanese majority in Taiwan.
So in this sense, Korea and Taiwan were more like Ireland or South Africa or Russian/Soviet Central Asia than they were like Vietnam or Hong Kong or the Philippines. Vietnam and the Philippines had only tiny numbers of colonial settlers, mostly merchants and administrators, and mostly temporary. Korea and Taiwan, like Ireland and South Africa, were colonial possessions with large numbers of long-settlers from the colonizer. The settlers dominated politics and the economy and had every intention of staying there forever.
(One other slightly creepy parallel: Korea under Japan saw widespread famine, as the Japanese very deliberately exported calories from villages to cities and from Korea as a whole to Japan. The Koreans are sometimes called "the Irish of Asia", and there's more than one reason for that.)
The point here being, settler colonies are different animals. So comparing colonial Korea and Taiwan to the colonial Philippines and Vietnam is rather apples and oranges. The US didn't move a half million American settlers to the Philippines. (It basically didn't move any at all.) If instead you compare Korea and Taiwan to settler-elite colonies like Ireland or South Africa or Kazakhstan, things look rather different.