[Torplexed]

It certainly would have benefited the Incas, Aztecs and other native American peoples to have had the luxury of a wider ocean. Japan escaped the same fate because geographically she was at the extreme edge of imperial reach. Western powers at this time, venturing into Japanese waters, were at the outer limits of their respective capacities. Russia, even after beginning construction of the Trans-Siberian railway in 1891, was able to do no more that extend it's fingertips into Manchuria and China proper. The European maritime powers possessed neither the regional naval base facilities or expendable land power to plant more than outposts in peripheral areas like China and Indonesia. The US after Admiral Perry's famous visit was too occupied with the Civil War and western expansion. The result of this slow march east was that by the 1860s the example of what was happening in next-door China suggested to Japan that it would be well advised to take control of it's fate and begin modernizing on it's own terms.