tom said:
What would Japan be like NOW?
Dunno. A wealthy, cosmopolitan, open, culture with a superfically democratic parliamentary government and a strong military, I suspect.
Let's see: the question was "a Japan which, in 2004, has an empire consisting of Australia, the Pacific islands and the west coast of North America". To which I managed to add Taiwan, the Philippines and New Guinea in the course of starting them off...
So we must assume that Japan still holds this empire, it hasn't been affected by a C20th decolonisation. At most it's some sort of federal commonwealth. That also must mean Japan hasn't lost a world war, or at least hasn't lost anything too badly. Which in turn means we haven't had the compulsory democratisation of OTL modern Japan.
In addition, a Japan which has been active in the global economy since the 17th century, and which controls all this territory, is probably the leading economic power in this world, and at last one of the leading military powers too.
The Imperial house still reigns. The Tokugawa shogunal house probably still reigns, as well, but the way Japanese politics goes they are probably no longer the real power either. At some point the dynasty will have weakened, and real power been taken either by a "deputy", like the Hojo regents for the later Kamakura shoguns, or by representative institutions. The combination of an educated and industrialised population with the influence of European and American models suggests the latter.
We have a very multi-ethnic empire, from Maoris and Hawaiians to Hispanic Californians, indigenous Australians, Alaskans and Taiwanese, plus probably milliions of Chinese and Korean immigrants and their descendants seeking economic opportunity. This could result in a reactionary ethnic hierarchy, with pure Japanese looking down on barbaric provincials; but if this empire has lasted until 2004 I suspect something more tolerant must have evolved, and I see the Japanese commonwealth as quite a happily diverse sort of place. Perhaps they stress the parallel with the 4th-7th centuries, when so many Korean and Chinese families settled in Japan that one-third of the official class was said to be of foreign ancestry.
This is a world where Captain Kazuo Te Kanawa of the 3rd Imperial Aotearoa Ashigaru Battalion serves in a garrison on Karafuto (Sakhalin) against the not especially likely event of a Russian attack. His battalion replaced a detachment from the Daimyo of Hawaiyu's Royal Guard a few months ago (the Japanese backed Kamehameha's unification of Hawaii, and the Kings of Hawaii were eventually incorporated into the empire with the status of Japanese provincial daimyo). The captain wears a Japanese-made automatic pistol at his belt, balanced by a tewhatewha, a steel-bladed version of a traditional axe-like club which the Maori officers carry instead of the sword of their Japanese counterparts. He rides on an inspection tour of his company's outposts in a hovercar, doing his paperwork on a palmtop organiser while half-listening to the Californio guitar music his driver's playing on the radio. It's interrupted by a news bulletin, the Aotearoan election results. The Daimyo of Aotearoa has officially invited the Imperial Liberals to try to form the new provincial government, they don't have a majority but they are now the single largest party. Kazuo smiles, he voted Imperial Liberal because he'd like a little more autonomy for his homeland but isn't radical enough to vote for one of the pro-independence nationalist parties. A new aircraft carrier launched in Osaka. Riots in the Korean quarter of Sapporo, nothing too bad. A terrorist bomb in New Edo - no casualties, but that is more serious, Muslim fundamentalists in the Philippines are becoming more anti-Japanese these days. International news, the American election campaign - Kazuo isn't remotely interested, the Americans don't count for much anyway, though he realises he might feel differently if he was a Californio or Alyeskan. More Iran-Iraq border fighting. Japanese mediation seems to have come to nothing, though the newsreaders aren't drawing attention to that... Hmm, Morocco have just won the African Cup, beating Tunisia 3-2.