AHC : Japan played his hand the smart way, still owns Korea and Manchuria (or more)

Say, with a POD after 1918, have 21st Century Japan still own Korea (no Korean independence at all), and Manchukuo stay as Japan puppet ally.

Bonus points if you don't turn this into Dystopian world (except for the Koreans I guess). More if there's more Japanese territories as well.

Extra points if Hong Kong stay British too, and Macau stay Portuguese.

I suspect that a smart Japan could have accessed both markets and raw materials from China without invasion and mass murder.

It may be that if events as otl in Europe 1940 it could have created a Greater East Asian Co Prosperity sphere with sympathetic governments in former French and Netherlands colonies

This could probably be achieved if Japan held off from advancing further than those two. They definitely need to avoid any kind of strike on US lands. And if they can avoid any public show of being an ally of Germany (or avoid such an alliance altogether), so much the better for Japanese imperialism.

See my post at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/dM3HAoVyc5M/8OR70VbeMW4J on the possibility of a Chinese-Japanese rapprochement in the mid-1930's based on Chinese *de facto* recognition of Manchukuo and Japanese promises not to move any further south.

I note there that "According to Iriye, General Doihora Kenji, head of the Kwantung Army's special affairs division, was the man most to blame for undermining the incipient accommodation. Doihara argued that Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Ching-wei should not be trusted; they were not true friends of Japan but were simply acting as such because China was so weak. The only correct policy was for Japan to consolidate its power in northern China by bold moves. He aimed to remove Kuomintang power in northern China, establish separatist "autonomous" puppet regimes there, and integrate the area economically with Manchukuo.

"If Hirota was serious about reconciliation, he had to suppress Doihara's separatist moves in North China....

"So the question is: Can we imagine either a Hirota willing to stand up to the Kwantung Army back when doing so might have made a difference(1935) or alternatively a Kwantung Army led by someone less rabidly anti-Chiang than Doihora? With regard to the former possibility, Japanese civilian politicians who defied military pressure in the 1930s risked their lives, so perhaps the latter hypothesis is more worth exploring. I don't think it inconceivable that an alternate leadership of the Kwantung Army might have concluded that at least a temporary reconciliation with Chiang was desirable so as not to distract Japan from a possible future war with the Soviet Union. Surely in the event of such a war it would help to have at least a neutral (if not actually favorable) China, US, and UK; and certainly the last thing that a Japan concerned about the Soviet Union should want would be to get bogged down in fighting in China. (A problem of course is that even in 1937 the Japanese did not believe they ever *could* get bogged down in China; after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, they expected at most a short, victorious war, limited to North China...)

Well, in any sort of scenario where Japan keeps Korea, I'd imagine retaining Taiwan as well is pretty much a given.

The main thing you need to do, I think, is either prevent the Officer Corps from going collectively insane after WW1, or at least keep them generally subservient to the civilian government and disinclined to start wars on their own.

Man, it's so challenging because Japanese foreign policy was so insane. I think the only potential butterfly would be the Japanese operating as OTL but on the other side of the world, no Hitler. Further, let's make the purge a little less bad. So, Russia may be in a stronger position and may actually turn out to be the aggressor against Japan in 1939-40. Just as in OTL the USSR did not conquer Finland or Romania, it is possible that Russian aggression against Japan would not be a matter of conquest, but rather securing certain border areas and disputed Japanese islands for defensive reasons.

Now, if the USSR presses the matter against Japan and actually starts collapsing in the face of Soviet aggression, it is very possible to see Japan give up on Chinese ambitions in exchange for US trade.

So, if the Japanese can stabilize the front against the USSR in Manchuria due to its size alone and flex their naval muscle to be real pesky in the far east, the Japanese may be able to force some sort of peace where they give up small concessions to the USSR.

Fear of losing this war results in a defensive minded Japan that seeks trade with the US. Imperial Japan ends up being a key Cold War Ally in Asia against the USSR, and being that US trade will be direct with Japan and Japanese occupied Asia it butterflies away US trade with CHina for 2 or 3 decades. Therefore, great economic expansion occurs in Japan and its Asian territories, helping bankroll their military which enables them to hold onto their colonial possessions until the modern day.

For Korea, it would be extremely unlikely, if not impossible. I had addressed some of the issues earlier within another thread, in which I had stated that Japan actively distorted or destroyed countless Korean sources (beginning in 1925) in order to suit "traditional" Japanese historiography dating back at least to the Edo Period, as well as imposing severe economic and societal pressures (leading to civilian and military resistance for decades). Additionally, the Great Depression (beginning in 1929-30) would still have presumably occurred, eventually facilitating more radical factions to eventually gain power within Japan, and in turn making it likely for assimilation policies to be implemented by the 1930s in order to preempt further disorder within Korea. None of the above could have easily been butterflied away with a PoD in 1918, as the root causes extended long before then.

In any case, it was not 1930 or so that Japanese was heavily promoted within Korea, eventually becoming the sole language of instruction after 1938, and only 20% of Koreans were able to communicate in Japanese by 1940-5, partly due to the relative lack of education (40-60% of children enrolled in elementary school in the same period). Additionally, the name change policy in 1939-40 was forcibly implemented because less than 10% registered voluntarily, and the vast majority of the changes involved registering given names according to the Japanese pronunciation, not changing the Chinese characters as they originally were in Korean (although many family names were changed entirely).

As a result, most Koreans generally identified themselves more with "Korea" than with "Japan" throughout the duration of the colonial period, while assimilation policies were not actively implemented until after 1930-40 or so due to increasing militarization (which may or may not exist in this scenario), although other pressures remained throughout. As a result, once European colonies across Asia and Africa begin to agitate for independence by 1945-70 or so, it will essentially become inevitable for Korea to eventually follow suit.

None of the above means that Japan and Korea can't have relatively warmer ties than that of OTL, though.

One way is if China goes Axis. Then Japan would most likely side with the Allies, and get left to handle that side of the world while the WAllies handle Hitler. Then, in the event of victory, hope that the officer corps are a) thinned out by the war and b) survivors are satisfied in their insane aspirations by their victory. I'm using that as backstory for my own project, though Korea is Not A Happy Place .

I'd say there's a few other possibilities, though keeping Korea into the modern era is unlikely - keeping the lid on a populous, proud nation would be next to impossible.

Yuelang said:

Say, with a POD after 1918, have 21st Century Japan still own Korea (no Korean independence at all), and Manchukuo stay as Japan puppet ally.

Bonus points if you don't turn this into Dystopian world (except for the Koreans I guess). More if there's more Japanese territories as well.

Extra points if Hong Kong stay British too, and Macau stay Portuguese.

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The problem is that you'd pretty much have to butterfly away the end of colonialism (or at least delay it 50 or 60 years)- no way would a country as large as Korea stay a colony long after all the other colonies gained their independence.

theg*ddam*hoi2fan said:

One way is if China goes Axis. Then Japan would most likely side with the Allies, and get left to handle that side of the world while the WAllies handle Hitler. Then, in the event of victory, hope that the officer corps are a) thinned out by the war and b) survivors are satisfied in their insane aspirations by their victory. I'm using that as backstory for my own project, though Korea is Not A Happy Place .

I'd say there's a few other possibilities, though keeping Korea into the modern era is unlikely - keeping the lid on a populous, proud nation would be next to impossible.

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Joining the Axis is irrelevant to this issue. Japanese aggression in China is anathema to the US Open Door Policy. The US would still place embargoes on Japan for that. An embargo still gets Japan hamstrung with a lack of natural resources to fight its wars, which invariably leads to Japanese military adventurism looking for those resources which comes right up against the other powers with interests in the region which includes members of the Allies, the Soviets, and the United States.

What you need is for Japanese hegemony over East Asia to be seen as the most desireable outcome in the region. If you can get the Soviets or Chinese communists to be seen as the bigger threat, that could work.

Dan Reilly The Great said:

Joining the Axis is irrelevant to this issue. Japanese aggression in China is anathema to the US Open Door Policy. The US would still place embargoes on Japan for that. .

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But it didn't OTL. It was only after Japan invaded European property - Vietnam - that the embargo went into place.

Bruce

MichaelF said:

The problem is that you'd pretty much have to butterfly away the end of colonialism (or at least delay it 50 or 60 years)- no way would a country as large as Korea stay a colony long after all the other colonies gained their independence.

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The only way that Korea would be reluctant to contemplate independence is if only 5-10 of the major European colonies manage to successfully undergo decolonization by 1970-90 or so, which is virtually impossible. Even if WWII is somehow butterflied away, there would be enough economic, social, and political tensions for many of the colonies across Asia and Africa to eventually break away from their former colonizers. In any case, I had stated earlier above that Japan's active assimilation policies occurred as a result of militarization and eventual involvement in the Second Sino-Japanese War. However, their implementation led to fierce resistance and nationalistic responses from the populace, suggesting that even if Japan had managed to take a more balanced approach to assimilation, Koreans would be unable to identify themselves with "Japan" over the long run. Specifically, most Koreans had either been prevented from or were unwilling to assimilate into Japanese society before the 1930s, enabling them to retain their cultural identities.

Dan Reilly The Great said:

What you need is for Japanese hegemony over East Asia to be seen as the most desireable outcome in the region. If you can get the Soviets or Chinese communists to be seen as the bigger threat, that could work.

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Even then, as long as Korea remains unified, there would be enough moderate politicians to significantly influence Korean politics. IOTL, there were various individuals who had met with assorted Soviet, Chinese, and Western politicians throughout the colonial period, and would have been able to negotiate more efficiently with the USSR and the US, as well as receiving Chinese support, if the peninsula had not been partitioned. Hegemony (if it is somehow retained) does not necessarily have to be inclusive of political control.

B_Munro said:

But it didn't OTL. It was only after Japan invaded European property - Vietnam - that the embargo went into place.

Bruce

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The primary embargoes were then, certainly, but there were commercial restrictions first, and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_Control_Act said:

A month later, the Department of State notified aircraft manufacturers and exporters that the United States Government was "strongly opposed"[5] to the sale of airplanes and related materiel to those nations using airplanes to attack civilian populations.

In 1939, the non-binding embargo was extended to materials essential to airplane manufacture and to plans, plants, and technical information for the production of high-quality aviation gasoline. These measures resulted in the suspension of the export to Japan of aircraft, aeronautical equipment, and other materials within the scope of the moral embargoes. As Japanese purchases of items other than aircraft and aeronautical equipment were minuscule, the moral embargo ultimately stopped the exportation of arms to Japan.

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