TL-191: After the End

I asked David if sushi was still a popular dish in the US by 2023, and he said that it was not. This may change with the admission of Japanese States into the Union in the 2220s.

That has while wondered me: How did USA managed to annex Japan and didn't Japanese oppose such thing?
 
That has while wondered me: How did USA managed to annex Japan and didn't Japanese oppose such thing?
Here's what David said about the annexation of Japan in a previous post:
The fall of the Ecological Union took place in early 2165. It was a direct result of the return of the Interstellar Expedition in 2164, and the horror stories told by the survivors of their desperate fight against an alien enemy. The world was plunged into a state of panic, as the leaders of the world began to debate a strategy of planetary defense. In late 2164, the International Security Council approved Article One for Planetary and Interstellar Defense. Pushed through by all of the great powers, Article One obliged all signatories to defend each other, on Earth or in Outer Space, from any extraterrestrial threat. Signatories to Article One were also obliged to contribute to a system of planetary and interstellar defense.

Almost every country on Earth ratified Article One. Even the Emirate of Ramadi, which was not a member of the ISC, ratified Article One. The European Community, Egypt, Kurdistan, Persia, and Bharat made it clear what would happen if the emirate refused to do so.

The Ecological Union refused a demand from its immediate neighbors, and the rest of the OTO and CDS, to ratify Article One. The response from the Ecological Union was an angry refusal, and a denial that space travel or powered flight, much less aliens, were real.

In response, the USA, China, Brazil, and Russia, along with contingents from the rest of OTO, the CDS, the Council of Astrakhan, and the Council of the Western Hemisphere declared war on the Ecological Union. The war, in spite of the desperate use of biological agents by the Ecological Union and fanatical resistance from the All-Volunteer Ecological Brigades, was over within the first four months of 2165.

The postwar settlement was a matter of dispute between the Big Four of the allied coalition, as each of the great powers had different visions for winning the peace.

The Empire of Brazil favored a fast reunification between the Republic of Ezo and the former Ecological Union. The Brazilian government wanted Japan restored as a “normal” country.

The Russian Republic also initially favored reunification, but under the exclusive rule of an enlarged Republic of Ezo.

The Chinese Republic, in strong contrast to the Brazilians and Russians, wanted the total dismantlement of Japan as any kind of unified state, as well as its total disarmament. The Republic of Korea was also strongly opposed to any restored or rearmed Japanese state.

The President of the United States had very different ambitions to the rest of the USA’s coalition partners. Even as she oversaw US preparations for the Second Interstellar Expedition and a new round of defense spending related to Article One, she worked to lay the groundwork for postwar Japan. Similar to the former CSA after the end of the Second Great War, the US occupation zones were divided into military districts. This system of military rule would expand as the USA gradually took over the occupation zones of the other allied nations in the former Ecological Union in the late 2160s.

The President came down decisively on the side of China and Korea on the question of Japanese reunification and rearmament. Through diplomacy, she was able to convince the Chinese and Koreans to allow to the USA to take over the management of their occupation zones. While the Chinese were initially somewhat wary, it was an arrangement that they could agree to. The President even agreed to adjustments to the maritime borders that would favor China and Korea.

The Russians initially refused to change their initial stance on postwar reunification, but reconsidered due to two main reasons: the Russian government didn’t really want a unified, probably revanchist Japan to re-emerge either. The Russians also had no interest in paying for the reconstruction of a reunified state, given the total collapse of government in the former Ecological Union.

The Brazilians maintained their demand for a reunified Japan, but allowed the USA to take control of their occupation zone after withdrawing their forces in 2167.

The President was sincere when promising the leaders of China, Korea, Brazil, Ezo, and Russia that no Japanese military would be created by the USA from the former Ecological Union.

The President of the United States did not share her true goals in Japan until her final State of the Union address in 2168. These true goals, rooted in past US policies carried out throughout North America in the 20th Century, caused an immediate uproar both in the USA and abroad. But in the end, the President succeeded in creating a new domestic consensus on the fate of the US controlled Home Islands. Not to mention, no foreign country was interested in challenging the USA, with an interstellar war to wage.

The first Japanese states would not be admitted into the Union until the late 2220s.
 
Speaking of Japan, it also makes me wonder how the Japanese people that stayed were so willingly able to accept syndicalism under People's Friend Sakamoto easily? That wasn't even the most popular (far) left wing ideology in Japan IOTL during the 20th century; communism and socialism were. Now both would've been forced underground and persecuted with the consolidation of the Empire into a totalitarian dictatorship like IOTL, and would've sprung up with the fall of the Empire. Syndicalism was more a western European thing, especially in Catalonia, Spain. I could still see social democracy, socialism, and of course, communist movements still spring up in Japan ITTL, in spite of the Bolsheviks losing the First Russian Civil War due to the rapidly urbanized and industrialized structure that developed. Thinking about it and to reiterate, I can't say I'd fully agree with David on Japan becoming an inefficient Soviet/North Korea-style dictatorship post-4PW with an unpopular ideology when there were others that had bigger followings, much less being dumbed down further into accepting an alter-globalist, anti-science ideology after the collapse of the JWR. So yeah, my thoughts with some ramblings, but feel free to respond, and I'd also like to know David's explanation on it. More complex the more I think about it.
 
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On the topic of the First Interstellar Expedition, when all the countries of the world ratified Article One, did all bygones become bygones with whatever country had between others? That is to say any source of tensions and bad relations were resolved going forward and start having good relations (excluding the JEU's ultimate fate).
 
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How is Star Wars in After the End? Is it made a little later (Palpatine was based on Nixon, and DeFrancis was TL-191 Nixon but in the 1990s), or is it never made in After the End? If Star Wars doesn't exist in After the End, is there an analog for it?

It doesn’t exist in TTL. None of the people who were involved in the first film exist in TTL. I don’t think that there would be anything closely analogous to the series from our world in TTL, since genres and films that inspired Lucas in our world, such as spaghetti westerns and the films of Akira Kurosawa, don’t exist in TTL.

This is what I previously wrote, slightly edited.

George Lucas doesn’t exist in TTL. However, a rough analogue to the Lucas family does exist in 2023, and is spread across southern California. Members of the Lucas family have been small business owners, mechanics, reached the middle management in factories and served their required time in the US military, with an informal tradition of working in positions related to construction, maintenance, or logistics. The Lucas family is a conservative family that votes for the Democratic Party in every presidential election, but otherwise doesn’t get involved in politics.

By 2023, no one in the Lucas family has attended any of the premier US film schools: either those in the California University “Network,” or the East Coast film academies with their prestigious and exclusive technical facilities and German-language exchange programs.

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The closest equivalent to Star Wars in this world is the quartet of science fiction films directed by US filmmaker Ella Nunez: Planet of the Flotsam (2005), Moon of the Villains (2008), Star of the Harlequins (2011), and Galaxy of the Smugglers (2014). Each film focuses on a different segment of the series’ fictional galactic society. However, there is no equivalent in this series to either the “Hero’s Journey” or to the mystical Light Side-Dark Side conflict from OTL Star Wars.
 
How is Japanese cuisine perceived ITL, and What are the most popular international cuisines in the United States as of 2023?

By 2023, Japanese cuisine isn’t particularly popular in the USA.

German cuisines are more popular in the USA in TTL, because of the close military and diplomatic alliance between the two countries.

Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Italian, and Mexican cuisines are fairly popular in the USA by 2023.
 
Speaking of Japan, it also makes me wonder how the Japanese people that stayed were so willingly able to accept syndicalism under People's Friend Sakamoto easily? That wasn't even the most popular (far) left wing ideology in Japan IOTL during the 20th century; communism and socialism were. Now both would've been forced underground and persecuted with the consolidation of the Empire into a totalitarian dictatorships like IOTL, and would've sprung up with the fall of the Empire. Syndicalism was more a western European thing, especially in Catalonia, Spain. I could still see social democracy, socialism, and of course, communist movements still spring up in Japan ITTL, in spite of the Bolsheviks losing the First Russian Civil War due to the rapidly urbanized and industrialized structure that developed. Thinking about it and to reiterate, I can't say I'd fully agree with David on Japan becoming an inefficient Soviet-style dictatorship post-4PW with an unpopular ideology when there were others that had bigger followings, much less being dumbed down further into accepting an alter-globalist, anti-science ideology after the collapse of the JWR. So yeah, my thoughts with some ramblings, but feel free to respond, and I'd also like to know David's explanation on it. More complex the more I think about it.
Ōsugi Sakae was a prominent Anarchist-Syndicalist leader during the early 20th century in Japan until he was executed in the Amakasu incident. If his death had been butterflied away, he could have spread anarcho-syndicalism as a mainstream ideology in Japan. Another figure, Hatta Shūzō, was a major anarcho-syndicalist, but became a communist following the Bolshevik Revolution that led to a split in Japanese leftist politics between syndicalists and communists. If he had remained an anarchist, it could have remained the dominant political ideology of the radical left in Japan.

I honestly don't think true communism, at least Bolshevik-influenced communism, would be popular throughout many countries due to the absence of the USSR. More political parties might be influenced by the US Socialist Party or the German Social Democratic Party.
 
That has while wondered me: How did USA managed to annex Japan and didn't Japanese oppose such thing?

By the 2160s, the USA was led by a president who was committed to US territorial expansion by any means necessary. There were also precedents in modern US history for annexing defeated enemies into the Union, namely the former Dominion of Canada and the former CSA.

Almost one in the former Ecological Union supported the US annexation. However, there was little to nothing that anyone could do to stop the process. After the fall of the Ecological Union, the USA inherited what was an essentially a broken society with no functioning government.
 
On the topic of the First Interstellar Expedition, when all the countries of the world ratified Article One, did all bygones become bygones with whatever country had between others? That is to say any source of tensions and bad relations were resolved going forward and start having good relations (excluding the JEU's ultimate fate).

There were still tensions between different nations and alliance blocs on Earth. However, with the reality of a looming interstellar war, there was a far more concerted effort on the part of the great powers to prevent possible wars between nations.

There would never be a Third Great War,
 
By 2023, Japanese cuisine isn’t particularly popular in the USA.

German cuisines are more popular in the USA in TTL, because of the close military and diplomatic alliance between the two countries.

Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Italian, and Mexican cuisines are fairly popular in the USA by 2023.
If so, what type of food could you say fills the niche of instant ramen ITL, i.e., something cheap which could be stored unrefrigerated and that could be prepared instantly?
 
By the 2160s, the USA was led by a president who was committed to US territorial expansion by any means necessary. There were also precedents in modern US history for annexing defeated enemies into the Union, namely the former Dominion of Canada and the former CSA.

Almost one in the former Ecological Union supported the US annexation. However, there was little to nothing that anyone could do to stop the process. After the fall of the Ecological Union, the USA inherited what was an essentially a broken society with no functioning government.

Will anyone in former Japan speak Japanese by 2263 or is the whole place completely anglified?

Do sitcoms still exist ITTL?

Pretty surely are altough different. I don't see why sitcoms are not exist unless they are not on some reason globally too unpopular even as idea or on some odd reason banned globally.
 
When it's all about entertainment again: Starting with ABBA, Sweden was the biggest non-Anglophone pop music exporter in the latter half of the 20th century. And nowadays, it looks like (South) Korea has become this for the early 21st century. Which countries ITTL fulfill a similar role as let's say second-tier pop-cultural powerhouses? Their styles will likely be unrecognizable enough (especially due to the Southron Holocaust as you already said) that I'd be amazed if you dare to create it.
 
Ōsugi Sakae was a prominent Anarchist-Syndicalist leader during the early 20th century in Japan until he was executed in the Amakasu incident. If his death had been butterflied away, he could have spread anarcho-syndicalism as a mainstream ideology in Japan. Another figure, Hatta Shūzō, was a major anarcho-syndicalist, but became a communist following the Bolshevik Revolution that led to a split in Japanese leftist politics between syndicalists and communists. If he had remained an anarchist, it could have remained the dominant political ideology of the radical left in Japan.

I honestly don't think true communism, at least Bolshevik-influenced communism, would be popular throughout many countries due to the absence of the USSR. More political parties might be influenced by the US Socialist Party or the German Social Democratic Party.
In agreement with you, Loch. Definitely some following there. What will not be butterflied away, however, is the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923, which began the fall of liberal parliamentary democracy in Japan when the Army began to assert their own authority in conjunction with their own ulterior and political motives against anyone deemed "radical" and "hostile", and against Koreans living in Japan. Thus, anarcho-socialism, syndicalism, and any other small libertarian socialist groups will be vulnerably targeted into extinction. I also agree that Soviet-style communism won't take place in Japan (e.g. Leninism, Trotskyism, Stalinism, etc.), but Orthodox Marxism could still well have a following due to Marx's own prediction of his ideology taking hold in highly urbanized and industrialized societies (specifically Western Europe), of which Japan is. As for the left as a whole in Japan ITTL, yes, it would most definitely be US and European-style social democracy/democratic socialism that would predominantly be taking hold ITTL in absence of a successful Russian Revolution.
 
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When it's all about entertainment again: Starting with ABBA, Sweden was the biggest non-Anglophone pop music exporter in the latter half of the 20th century. And nowadays, it looks like (South) Korea has become this for the early 21st century. Which countries ITTL fulfill a similar role as let's say second-tier pop-cultural powerhouses? Their styles will likely be unrecognizable enough (especially due to the Southron Holocaust as you already said) that I'd be amazed if you dare to create it.

It is not discussed often, but Italy should be a pop-culture juggernaut in TTL. Since Italy didn’t join either Great War, Italys film and music industry would have remained intact. It is also a richer / larger country than OTL and it would be a “neutral” alternative to American or German “cultural imperialism” by other countries.
 

How of South Africa of OTL similar to the South Africa of this timeline (besides Apartheid ending earlier)?
David established that Apartheid was much more draconian and bloody, aided in no small part by Confederate expatriates. It ultimately resulted in de facto civil war which was only ended with a German-led intervention. Besides the abolition of apartheid obviously, the Zulus became independent and the rest of the country is now considerably more decentralized than OTL. It’s also a key Bharati ally in Africa
 
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