Why did Japan manage to avoid colonization?

The secret of Japan’s success in this matter is hidden in its geographic location. Japan is remote from the mainland, and therefore it was not so easy to get close to it. When Japan was “discovered” by the Americans, it was not as important to them as, for example, China or Southeast Asia. This is due to the fact that they could use Japan as a naval base, a transshipment point, because it did not have a large amount of minerals or large areas of land for agriculture.