Meji failure

What would happen if the Meji restoration failed? Could Japan fall like its neighboors and becoming prey to the european interests? How will this Japan develop?

Well, the word you're looking for is "failure", to start.

That said, I don't think the Meiji Restoration was quite the revolution it's portrayed as. Japan had industry long before that, indigenous weapons manufacturing and everything. Plus, Japan wasn't valuable enough to colonize early, and was too powerful to victimize late in the race for colonies. So I don't really think they'll be colonized with a POD in the 1860's.

Also, the fall of the samurai was pretty much inevitable. Either they fell, or they radically changed themselves. Either way, the samurai class as it had been was on the way out. The world around Japan had changed too much for the country to keep its doors mostly shut, and the country itself was changing greatly.

There was that rebellion in early Meiji, that show there was a possibility had Meiji screwed up somehow like bickering factions getting really disunited of civil troubles... longer if else.

l-101 said:

What would happen if the Meji restoration failed? Could Japan fall like its neighboors and becoming prey to the european interests? How will this Japan develop?

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No, modernization of the military etc was already a view held by -both- the Shogunate and the imperialists. The question was always about how to divide up the fruits of modernization as oppose to a fundamental opposition to it. The primary thing the -Shogunate- side was under attack for was allowing foreign "barbarians" into the country.

Japan fought a civil war as late as the 1860s. Most of the groundwork for modernization had long since been put in place, but that doesn't mean that it couldn't fail.

Countries have bad luck all the time. Just look at the entire history of Mexico.

The significance of the Meiji Restoration really comes down to the ability of the post-Shogunate government to greatly build prestige over a short amount of time. By (seemingly) rapidly entering into the Western world, Japan was able to build up its international reputation as an independent player.

Modernization in the Restoration Government

1. The restoration allowed for the rise of a new intellectual elite which saw the need for a very rapid transformation of traditional Japanese society. It's why even things like dressing like a Westerner became important.

2. The prestige of the new government allowed for a slow change to the treaty port system which was drastically affecting the economy of Japan.

How can this fail?

1. There was tremendous resentment over the rapid pace of these changes. Combined with a series of cholera epidemics which sprang out throughout the nation, it could be very easy for the populace to reach a tipping point and rebel. Even in our "successful Meiji" timeline, there were many many minor insurrections in the period.

2. While Japan gained tremendous amounts of prestige, they also garnered large amounts of mockery for their attempts to become "Western". Japan's power really came from being a unified nation in an area that only weakly felt the hand of empires. Power projection into the area was simply hard to accomplish. If Japan challenges a nation and loses, people will start to believe the mockery more than the prestige.

The Meiji partisans essentially did an about-face on their original cause (they didn't exactly expel the barbarians) and the Tokugawa government was heading in the same general direction, so it's easy to overstate the changes. OTOH, there's the proverbial Nixon in China factor, and the anti-modernization movement will be stronger if not given the chance to gain power and then back away from much of their platform. The membership of different clans serve as the oligarchs of a modernizing Japan, but I'm not sure how differently they act.

l-101 said:

What would happen if the Meji restoration failed? Could Japan fall like its neighboors and becoming prey to the european interests? How will this Japan develop?

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The Op wants Meiji to fail never mentioned Japan to fail. Japan would be hard to conquer in 1860s by Europe.

Japan will still be modern with a different type of government from otl Meiji.

From what I know the Meji supporter were open to outer world, many studied the western culture and the Shogunate was accused of leaving the country in the hands of the western powers after being forced to end the isolament they had imposed, of course there were ultranationalist groups who hated foreigners presence.
I was thinking more to something similar to the China which adapted to the western influence and was never conquered but it didn't modernized coherently and was victim of the european countries.
I imagined a Japan that doesn't become rival of the Europeans, it remains indipendent but exploited from the West. However I gather from the responses that the Japan was too homogeneus and in an area less important for the Europeans to end like that.

l-101 said:

What would happen if the Meji restoration failed?

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Basically, not much in the long-term as others have said. Japan was already on the path towards modernization. The only real change is what that modernization looks like.

The Ubbergeek said:

There was that rebellion in early Meiji, that show there was a possibility had Meiji screwed up somehow like bickering factions getting really disunited of civil troubles... longer if else.

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Yes, and perhaps a more devastating Boshin War or a more widespread series of rebellions could have delayed or even reversed a lot of the Meiji reformations...but I think the end result is the same. Whether it becomes known as the Meiji Restoration, with Imperial primacy returned, or a Shogunate Revolution where the Emperor is once and for all removed from the political picture, Japan will finish modernizing. It's just that with the victory of the Imperial forces in the civil war, they were able to accelerate industrialization and modernization because Meiji was a modern, forward-thinking man and his opponents were largely reactionary conservatives who didn't want to upset the existing social order, which we know industrialization and the further democratization of lethal force would do.

l-101 said:

Could Japan fall like its neighboors and becoming prey to the european interests? How will this Japan develop?

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In short, no. European attention was firmly focused on the 'uncivilized' areas of Asia and Africa by this point, or on China. And while Japan certainly wouldn't be quite as powerful, there is a (distant) history of peaceful cooperation between Europe and Japan to take into consideration.

Whitewings said:

Also, the fall of the samurai was pretty much inevitable. Either they fell, or they radically changed themselves. Either way, the samurai class as it had been was on the way out. The world around Japan had changed too much for the country to keep its doors mostly shut, and the country itself was changing greatly.

Click to expand...

Pretty much, as I mentioned above, while the Sword Hunts and the like were supposed to keep weapons out of the hands of non-samurai, the democratization of lethal force that modern firearms bring to the table ensures that the Samurai will fail as a dominant warrior class. And given that socially-speaking they have been atrophying for the better part of the past 150 years as they had no real place in society and started to wax whimsical about the honor, duty, and the like...it's just a matter of time before they got swept into the dustbin of history, either by this ability for the peasant to more easily kill the samurai, or by the samurai themselves one day waking up and asking "Why are we doing this? We don't have a purpose" and kinda fading into the background and getting forgotten. Sure, a Samurai Officer Class could come up with things, as in Germany with the Junker military class...but there's just too much social baggage, too much conservative thought, their reactionary desire for the past too deeply ingrained for the Samurai to make effective officers in the same sort of systematized way that the Germans harnessed the Junkers.

l-101 said:

I was thinking more to something similar to the China which adapted to the western influence and was never conquered but it didn't modernized coherently and was victim of the european countries.
I imagined a Japan that doesn't become rival of the Europeans, it remains indipendent but exploited from the West. However I gather from the responses that the Japan was too homogeneus and in an area less important for the Europeans to end like that.

Click to expand...

The only problem with this has already sorta been hinted at. Even before the Meiji Restoration, Japan has been infiltrated by Westerners and their ideas for the better part of the past 15 years or so. If they try to close the doors and undo these reforms, the Europeans will sweep in. You need only look as far as China. In the 1840s, 50s, 60s, with the Opium Wars, with the Boxer Rebellion, with all that stuff, once the door was opened by the EUropeans, they would not at all permit it to close in even the slightest way. For Meiji to truly fail, you'd have to do that...but there's no way a semi-industrialized Japan can hold off all of Western Europe, plus the United States if they decide that gunboats and marines are what they have to do to protect the expats and ensure the further spread of Western society, culture, and values.

That said, you are right. Japan is too centralized and homogenous to be colonized in the traditional sense, but again, cultural or social colonialism is what the Europeans are doing there...planting the seed of Western Civilization and letting it grow like a weed that infects the whole garden of what could be called Japanese Traditional Society.