I guess my post was too long, but I will bold the important part where I ask a question.
Tazzy, if you are talking about rise of Imperial Japan after Meiji restoration period then you are correct, there was no EU then, but if we are talking about rise of Japan after World War II, in the 70's and 80's, then EU has already taken shape by then.
Worker productivity and efficiency goes up once hunger, malnutrition is taken care of and then education and training become more important. But no matter how well a country does, it has a limit and when the limit is reached productivity can then go up because of creativity and innovation. If all countries work force grow up with similar level of nutrition, education and training then no country has any particular edge anymore with just worker productivity, in my opinion. Social cohesion and homogeneity becomes important to keep the country united, but Han Chinese is fairly homogeneous since Han Wu di united China some 2100 years ago:
Emperor Wu of Han - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
After 2nd World War, we have a US which funded the rebuilding of its allies in Europe and in Japan, so these economies became very well integrated. S Korea and Taiwan was added when labor in Japan became too expensive, so that helped the rise of S Korea and Taiwan and when labor became expensive in these two then South East Asia was chosen next, but arrival of China kind of ruined it for them, as it had unlimited supply of cheap labor. Now cheap labor industries are again moving towards South and South East Asia, as China moves up in the ladder of value addition towards higher tech industries.
US also has the NATO which includes EU and North America, but it has presence in Oceania (ANZ), Japan and Korea I think. So this is the security architecture now:
NATO - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I guess I am one of these ignorant masses who are worried about China's rise. I think everyone knows that the rise will not be smooth for a country the size of China, as it already has lost the competitive edge in cheap labor and now it has to compete with the developed countries for manufacturing of bigger items such as cars and planes. But it has the advantage of size, so we can see that it can fund the development of 5th gen. fighters, as it can depend on its own Air Force as the biggest captive customer and also it has become the biggest car market in the world, just to use some examples. They have also made their first medium size passenger plane I think, which the Chinese airlines can use domestically.
The worry about China's rise and the security threat it poses, is not just for Japan, it is for all its neighbors who has to deal with it more closely. Some resource rich countries temporarily benefit, such as Central Asia, Russia and Australia, but the security threat for them is not any less, specially the ones that have common borders with China or are nearby like S Korea and Japan.
So what do people think about EU style Unions in Asia and else-where as a way to counter this threat?