To say that humans can never master technology does not mean they have no control over it. It means the extent of their control does not depend on their will.
Several countries have tried to shut out new technology. For a time China gave up ocean-going ships. But the Japanese case is unique in that it involved the deliberate and sustained rejection of a key modern technology. Between 1543 and 1879 Japan gave up the gun and reverted to the sword. From having more guns than any other country in the world it succeeded in eliminating them almost entirely.
At the time it embarked on its unique experiment, Japan had several rare advantages. It was isolated and could hope to remain so. It was a highly cohesive society. It had a subtle and far-seeing ruling class, which included a strategically placed group – the samurai – that stood to gain by a policy of reverting to the sword. Taken together, these conditions enabled Japan to reject guns for several centuries.
During its time of isolation Japan was not stagnant. While shutting out guns, it produced many technical innovations of its own. A new kind of two-bladed plough, a spiked-wheel potato planter and a new kind of weeding machine were developed during the time of Japan’s isolation. In many ways, the country’s development was equal, or superior, to that of Western countries at the time: in cities, public health was better, and its postal service was more developed. There was technical innovation in Japan during the centuries in which it isolated itself, but it was slow and piecemeal, serving a traditional way of life. Noel Perrin writes:
There were armoured knights striding around Tokyo and Kagoshima when the Continental Congress was meeting in Philadelphia – but a letter, or a shipment of lacquer seedlings, travelled many times faster between those two cities than mail did between Philadelphia and Savannah.
Japan’s rulers were able to shut out the modern technologies that threatened its peace because it had the option of isolation. When Commodore Perry arrived with his black ships in 1853, Japan’s rulers knew it had to switch course. By the first decade of the twentieth century it had a modern navy, which destroyed the Russian Imperial Fleet at the Battle of Tsushima – the first time a modern European power was defeated in war by an Asian people.
Any country that renounces technology makes itself the prey of others that do not. At best it will fail to achieve the self-sufficiency at which it aims – at worst it will suffer the fate of the Tasmanians. There is no escape from a world of predatory states.