[IW] Still Militarized Japan in the 21st Century

[Apache]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

It's not a question of Japanese culture, and there's no good reason to put that word in scare quotes...

Yes, there certainly is. As odious as Nazi 'culture' was, the 'culture' of Imperial Japan (starting around 1930) was even more so.

There is a reason why Japan is not regarded fondly by its neighbors.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Apache

Yes, there certainly is. As odious as Nazi 'culture' was, the 'culture' of Imperial Japan (starting around 1930) was even more so.
.

So? "Culture" isn't a complement in this context. It just means a society with distinct characteristics.

[D10]

Originally Posted by Apache

Yes, there certainly is. As odious as Nazi 'culture' was, the 'culture' of Imperial Japan (starting around 1930) was even more so.

There is a reason why Japan is not regarded fondly by its neighbors.

To be fair, its hard to find an asian country with fond memories of their neighboors.

[Mr Frost]

If you wish a Japan almost completely free of European influence , you might need to have Hiroshima and Nagasaki destroyed ; apparantly they were the major centres of Christianity in Japan at the time and Catholic {thus influenced by the Vatican} .

You could have the cities nuked at the same time as those Japanese airships you mention nuke Pearl Harbour and the San Francisco Navy Base from altitudes too high for the interceptors of the time to reach then threatening to drop some in the San Andreas fault and Yellowstone Caldera along with suitable research data to convince America that a peace treaty with the conditions you state was preferable to betting the researchers' dire theories were wrong .
A nuke on Vladivostok could have convinced Russia to sign also {given they had no nukes at all} .

The Cold War might have been three way and China might have been a much bigger and nastier Korean War like affair with USSR backed Mao in the North {which fares far better into the 21st century than North Korea did in our timeline} and a Japanese backed Chang in the South and if you introduce a third serious contender from the East {probably thus largely Turkic} you could have American and European input {suppilied through then British controlled India/Pakistan and Iran} if you wish to keep that Korean War like aspect to that timelines' American {and British etc} History .







Modern conspiracy theories could speculate on if Japan and America came to an agreement before the nuclear exchange and that the American Government gave Russia nuclear weapons technology etc .

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Apache

... either Japan developing atomic weapons virtually at the same time as the US, or (more believable, given real history), Japan developed a bioweapon and threatened to use it on the US if the US continued to attack.

The bioweapon is much more believable. WWII Japan simply lacked the industrial resources to build the plant for producing enriched uranium or plutonium.

It rather stretches credibility for an undefeated Imperial Japan to survive into the 2000s without some kind of social collapse. The repression of the civilian population is likely to go too far, and while an armed revolution is quite unlikely to succeed, something else will go bad:

Originally Posted by Ken Hite

The “Imperial bushido” code, however, is a deliberate, artificial construction designed to paper over culture shock during Japan’s overwhelming modernization in the 1890s, maniacally enforced by the 1930s as the totalitarian ideology of Japan’s military government.

That's from G: Weird War II, but it's very accurate.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by johndallman

The bioweapon is much more believable. WWII Japan simply lacked the industrial resources to build the plant for producing enriched uranium or plutonium.

It rather stretches credibility for an undefeated Imperial Japan to survive into the 2000s without some kind of social collapse. The repression of the civilian population is likely to go too far, and while an armed revolution is quite unlikely to succeed, something else will go bad:

That's from G: Weird War II, but it's very accurate.

But then most IW worlds are scattered somewhere in the past. I'd go with the 80s myself.

[D10]

Maybe the POD was inside the japanese internal government, maybe some american backed faction inside the japanese military did a perfect coup, seized power and ended the hostilities, only to later prove to be much more intelligent and efficient and preserve their "empire" on a new format.

Japan ends WWII militarized and "allied" but as cold war escalates it would be just another polar power, probably struggling against russia to control china.

And its interesting to think what would happen if you have.

Commonwealth x USSR x Japan

Capitalism x Communism? x Facism

[robkelk]

Originally Posted by johndallman

It rather stretches credibility for an undefeated Imperial Japan to survive into the 2000s without some kind of social collapse. The repression of the civilian population is likely to go too far, and while an armed revolution is quite unlikely to succeed, something else will go bad:

Why would an armed revolution be unlikely to succeed? Instead of our timeline's Arab Spring, this timeline could have an Asian Spring...

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by robkelk

Why would an armed revolution be unlikely to succeed?

Because military dictatorships have the edge in arms. When they are overthrown it's by unarmed revolutions because it's easier to shoot down crowds when they are crowds with guns.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Dustin

Without ready access to oil, and heavily reliant on shipping for its economy, the Japanese navy is likely to embrace fission plants even more than the US Navy, possibly down to ships as small as destroyers.

On the same tack, lacking the US as an ally, expect Japan to be heavily involved in global oil politics. The USSR may be of importance here - indexmundi.com suggests that Russian oil exports and Japanese oil imports are very roughly equivalent, so an alliance there could work well economically. The Japanese are likely to hedge their bets by courting the Saudis and Iran as a counterweight, to limit Soviet leverage on their economy.

The biggest difference within Japanese society would probably be the continued inclusion of Korea within the empire. In the late 20th century, issues of Korean self-determination, cultural expression, and civil rights may roughly mirror the Irish experience in the UK in the early 20th century, South Africa, or the US civil rights movement of the 1960s. (As a GM, I'd be tempted to have Seoul 1968 be as resonant there, as the year was for Paris and Chicago.)

A militarized Japan in the world war two fashion is allowed to use protestors for katana practice.