Japan, Russo-Japanese War, Cold War
(The Rise of the Second Imperial Kingdom)
With Meiji's peace agreement with the US and the Western world established, and with most of the colonies now independent. The Imperial House would find itself in a new political climate.
Since the Kenmu Restoration had eliminated the threat of civil war and united the Samurai caste and the nobles nearly six hundred years ago, the old feudal structure would no longer suffice in the 20'th century. As such, the Imperial House became the Dai Santoseiji, the Great Triumvirate in the Constitutional reform of 1901.
The Sokuryo-shi no Ie, the House of Surveyors, would be the institution responsible for the election of the prefectural governments across Japan, assigning various taxes for property, toll checkpoints, imports and exports and maintaining vital infrastructure. While the Sabaki no Ie, the House of Judgement, became the nation's highest court whose legislators can both pass laws and serve as judges for high profile cases.
The institution of the highest authority on the law and the land itself would belong to the Taiyo to Tsuki no Gyokuza, known as the Throne of the Sun and Moon, which is governed by the ruling Monarch and the Prime Minister, who also controls both the lower houses. The Shogun's new duties would be the highest commanding officer of all the armed forces while serving the Prime Minister and the Imperial Monarch, while many warriors of the Samural clans had either moved on as wealthy businessmen, went into politics or remained in the military.
While this new system appear to closely resemble the various constitutional monarchies of Europe and allow for elections similar to America. However, no civilian can ever put himself or herself as a political candidate as a legislator or the head of any prefecture unless deemed worthy of integrity and inherent leadership by the Choro Hyogi-Kai, the Emperor's Council of Elders.
As Japan expanded its technological innovation from Western designs, their industrial knowledge were exported to it's allies, mainly in Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines and it's former dependencies in Central America and the Caribbean. This would allow the nations of the Royal Commonwealth to build their own factories, which would rival the United States in terms of manufacturing, GDP growth and economic reach into other countries, such as Peru, Chile and Bolivia.
Russia's foray into expansionism in Far East would backfire during the Russo-Japanese war. While the US had successfully signed the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905 and had forced the Russian fleet to retreat back to the north, but Nicholas the Second had made a fatal mistake of using merchants in Vladivostok to smuggle weapons to criminal organizations in Japan to trigger civil unrest and potentially overthrow the Dai Santoseiji. This nullified the treaty, and the Japanese launched a thorough campaign by destroying all Russian battle ships in the Sea of Okhotsk in 1906 while besieging the seaports. When the Russian government attempted conscription while terribly under-equipped and untrained, the local population revolted and aided the Japanese forces in driving out the Russian military from the Eastern Siberian Coast.
Without any warships or military seaports under Russia's control in the region, along with the total loss of Kamchatka Peninsula and the independence of Magadan, Chukotka, Khabarovsk and the Primorsky Krai from the Russian Empire, Nicholas would sign the Second Treaty of Portsmouth and step down from the throne in 1908. Kamchatka would be incorporated into the Imperial Kingdom of Japan, while the newly independent nations in the region would be a part of the Royal Commonwealth for their actions during the war.
With the fall of the Qing Dynasty, Beijing would be seized and the country splintered into multiple pieces of territory. Port Arthur and other Chinese provinces sharing the Bohai Sea and the Bohai Strait (Along with Tianjin and Beijing) would become separate countries, joining the Royal Commonwealth in 1918.
_____________________________________________
(The Shadows of Turmoil - 1928 to 1950)
Despite the restoration of diplomatic and economic trade with America and Europe, racial viewpoints of Hispanic and African communities remained largely negative. With Japan however, it became something bigger in the eyes of the West. It was the greatest fear that Japanese ideology would eventually surpass Greco-Roman ideology and prevent America and Europe's economic dominance in world affairs.
Under the previous Emperors of the 1800s, many Native Americans, Hispanics and former African slaves were treated fairly, humanely and were given more autonomy and rights as loyal servants and honorable warriors under the Imperial Kingdom rather than slaves and chattel under America or any European colonial power. For the Japanese Monarchy and the rest of the government, they get diplomatic and social recognition for the humane treatment of their non-native subjects while non-Japanese servants were usually recognized for their good deeds, and are given a chance at becoming full-fledged citizens if they wished to do so. Despite the previous attempts by Western churches to undermine Japanese expansion, Christianity was legally reinstated and decriminalized after the Catholic Church and leaders of multiple denominations had made reparations to the Imperial Kingdom and the victims of religious persecution.
Furthermore, with the control of Texan oil fields and recent developments in oil exploration projects between the Imperial Kingdom, Indonesia and Vietnam, there were increasing concerns in Washington DC and Moscow that the economies of both America and the Soviet Union will be completely overshadowed by Japan and the Royal Commonwealth. If this happens, their economic growth will be limited due to the prevalence of reliable goods from the Royal Commonwealth, which will heavily increase imports tenfold and making them more and more dependent on foreign goods. Although they weren't allies, they shared the same enemy. The West feared Japan and it's allies for it's economic potential while the Soviets wanted revenge for the loss of the Okhotsk Sea and the territories that used to serve the Russian Empire.
Starting from 1928, the US Executive Departments of State, Treasury, Navy and War would finance Hideki Tojo and various factions inside the military in an attempt to nullify the Great Triumvirate's powers and destabilize the Commonwealth. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union would promote Communism within China to seize control from the Nationalists and push Japanese influence away from the mainland.
Then on June 29, 1935. The Kotei no Kuroi Te, known as the Emperor's Black Hand, would eventually discover the existence of a future coup d'etat by the Kodo-ha faction of the military. However, they had also discovered that the coup was elaborately designed to fail and drive greater fear into the general public and the political class, giving the Tosei-ha greater powers. As time went on, the Black Hand found that the funding for both sides were from the same sources: The United States' Office of Strategic Services, the Secret Intelligence Services Executive of Britain and Hideki Tojo himself.
The planned coup began earlier due to the leaders being tipped off by government insiders, over a hundred thousand loyal soldiers and police officers would round up and arrest the perpetrators and financiers from both sides. The faction leaders would be charged with treason, stripped of all military service medals and banished from the Armed Forces. Additionally, they were forced to work regular jobs for the rest of their lives to repay the damages done to the country's political system and to the public.
Hideki Tojo would eventually explain the exact details about the United States and Britain's involvement along with physical cash and documents, along with future plans to seize power from the Monarch and stage a false flag to invade Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia to eliminate Mao Zedong's forces to secure American interests in China. He would then commit suicide after giving out the information and three weeks after he was convicted. While Prime Minister Konoe turn himself over to the authorities, he was placed under permanent house arrest for being a mole for the Tosei-ha and would live the rest of his life as a social pariah.
Ultimately, Emperor Showa had felt inadequate and unworthy of the throne, causing him to assign Kijūro Shidehara as Prime Minister and Empress Consort Kojun to assume control of the throne.
A diplomatic firestorm began when the OSS and SIS' involvement in the attempted coup d'etat had reached back to the American public and in Tokyo, causing relations between the US and the UK to deteriorate. There were also plans by President Franklin D. Roosevelt for another coup d'etat in Asai Mizu, only to be uprooted by the Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland and the outbreak of the Second World War and the split of India into three states after a disastrous famine swept throughout the country.
While the Soviets and Allied Forces were distracted in Europe, the Shogun had reorganized and purged the entire military of all signs of the Tosei-ha and the Kodo-ha, while the Sabaki no Ie removed several political figures that were responsible for the 1936 incident. Many arms manufacturers acquired new contracts to help build up the nation's military capabilities, thousands of soldiers and dozens of ships would be deployed on rotations to the northward Kamchatka Prefecture, the Caribbean and in Taiwan, while the Emperor's Black Hand would become the newest branch of the Royal Japanese Armed Forces, now known as the Strategic Defense Intelligence Agency. By 1948, the military had finally upgraded it's Air Force with top of the line aircraft with the help of former German designers, it's naval capabilities enhanced by cutting edge submarines at the time and the Army's battle strategy and doctrine now focusing on maximizing logistics and long-term sustainability in warzones, along with the creation of Special Forces units across all branches of the military.
The security situation would remain uncertain, until in 1950, when Korea fell into civil war and was split in half. Due to increasing Soviet involvement and a potential invasion of the southern half of the peninsula, the Japanese Armed Forces had intervened a year later and forced both sides to agree to a ceasefire agreement, which would collapse in the end of 1953 when the SDIA had found out that the Chiang Kai-Shek and the United States had installed a puppet regime in South Korea a year prior to the war and the Soviet Union were in talks with the North Koreans to covertly deploy troops in the North from Manchuria for a renewed invasion effort. Even with the United Nations' efforts, it would be proven futile as the war began anew in 1954.
Fearing that the fighting would destroy all of Korean society, multiple rebel groups began to fight against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the southern Republic of Korea to remove both the pro-Soviet and pro-Western governments. Additional funding from Japanese Intelligence would culminate in the downfall of both the North Korea and South Korea, and the exile of all American, European and Soviet citizens from the Peninsula. Despite bitter historical rivalries, Korea would have no other choice but to join the Royal Commonwealth to shield themselves from the rising threat of Democracies from the West and Socialism from the Iron Curtain. With the Pacific coastlines of Korea and the former Chinese provinces now in the Commonwealth, Japan's influence now rivals the Mongol Empire in reach and size, despite the country itself not growing much in size since the earlier days of colonialism.
The gambit of Chiang Kai-Shek and Mao Zedong in Korea would see both of their resources and finances strained after losing a proxy war, and with the Japanese intelligence setting their targets on both the Chinese nationalists and the Communists, both leaders would go into hiding.
_____________________________________________
(The Way of Knowledge, Japan's ascension as a global power in the Cold War - 1958 to 1981)
After the failure of the United Nations at a ceasefire agreement in Korea and rising tensions in Europe, the organization would severely weakened and be divided into three separate ideological groups: The US-controlled democracies of the Free World, The Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact of Eastern Europe and the Japanese-led Royal Commonwealth. The Cold War was in full swing, and the US and the Soviet Union wasted no time in attacking the Commonwealth.
While most of the former Japanese colonies in the southern half of the US would be spared from CIA-backed election rigging and regime change, other nations in Latin America that hadn't been either been colonized by the First Imperial Kingdom or joined the Royal Commonwealth as full-time members were targeted during Operation Condor. Meanwhile, Japanese troops had managed to put down an attempted insurrection by Fidel Castro to create a socialist regime in Cuba and captured Bautista for his role in aiding the CIA's smuggling operations in the region.
With several observers in the Royal Commonwealth facing threats from guerrilla fighters, CIA and the KGB, Counter-Revolutionary warfare and psychological operations became commonplace with conventional troops and Special Forces units within the Royal Japanese Armed Forces. Although the number of troops trained in such tactics was limited to two infantry divisions, it became a highly effective tool when large-scale deployments became inefficient.
For Japan's goals in the Cold War, it established the Chishiki no Michi (The Path of Knowledge) as a means to connect the Japanese to other nations through the distribution of wisdom and understanding, rather than dependency on raw military intimidation alone. At the end of the 1950s, the Imperial Kingdom's diplomatic reach had expanded to India and East Africa.
During a private discussion between Brazilian President Joāo Goulart and Empress Kojun in the Overseas Prefecture of Kame no Shima (The Cayman Islands) on May 12, 1963, Japanese Intelligence and Brazilian authorities have received word of a potential coup by dissidents inside Brazil's armed forces. These rumors were confirmed by July with the SDIA's moles inside the White House, obtaining a list of candidates for a pro-American backed military junta and to block off any Soviet or Japanese influence in the region.
Since the 1800s, Brazil has been establishing close economic and diplomatic relations with the Imperial Kingdom and despite Goulart's initial tendencies towards socialism, his administration was making preparations to become a part of the Royal Commonwealth.
165 members of the SDIA's 47th Special Reconnaissance Battalion were secretly deployed in the country to gather intelligence on the main targets and inform loyalist forces of any changes or imminent security threats. Later in the year, the US Government began to accelerate their plans, which created a fatal flaw as the junta's forces weren't adequately prepared to execute the coup.
For the US, everything would fall apart when the Japanese government leaked the information about the CIA's funding of the military junta to the Brazilian press in January. Marshal Castelo Branco would launch a last ditch attack on the capital on February 8, only to be met with overwhelming force by loyalist forces and 17,000 Japanese soldiers who were also covertly deployed on orders from Joāo Goulart.
With Costa e Silva and Mourāo Filho killed, numerous far-right supporters arrested and the upper command structure of the Brazilian Military purged. Branco would take his surviving troops and flee deep into the Amazon to hide. Following the failed coup d'etat, Brazil would finally sign a defense treaty with Japan and join the Royal Commonwealth, marking Japan's first major victory in the Cold War. After clearing Guatemala, El Salvador and the Honduras from most of the rebels, they would tie themselves closely with Mexico and Japan.
The next strategic victory within the same year saw Japan possess nuclear weapons from the aid of German rocket engineers who fled into Hong Kong, along with turncoats from United States' Department of Energy and high-ranking Soviet scientists who defected. This would give the Japanese government an effective deterrent and made it less likely to be intimidated in a geopolitical sense.
During this time, Chiang Kai-Shek would be assassinated and Communists seizw control of Yuhzong, the capital of Inner China. However, Mao would pass away, leaving the rest of the country in political turmoil.
At the same time, Japan and Thailand began a major counterinsurgency effort in Southeast Asia. Britain and NATO were harvesting opium and turning it into heroin to give Western intelligence services additional funding from smuggling to Royal Commonwealth states and America. The KGB would also do the same in Laos and communist-controlled areas of Inner China. The governments of Singapore and Malaysia had been sanctioned after the Japanese leaked information about the involvement of illegal arms shipments to Indonesia to supply pro-Western forces inside the Indonesian military, with the goal to separate Indonesia from the Royal Commonwealth and Seize control of the oil fields in the region. This would be enough to force the governments to resign after nationwide protests.
Subsequently, General Suharto's supporters in the armed forces would seize power in the September 30 movement. Sukarno would sign an emergency declaration nationwide and a summit with Empress Kojun and Shogun Amano Yoshihide would involve a military operation to remove Suharto from power would begin. Operation Midori no Inazuma would involve over 70,000 Japanese, Korean, Thai, Cuban and loyalist Indonesian troops during paratrooper drops into Jakarta in September; the naval battles in the Java Sea and the capture of General Suharto in 1970.
The Royal Commonwealth would also prevent the pro-Soviet Derg from taking power in 1972. Similar to Brazil's ascension, Emperor Haile Selassie would create a defense treaty and allow Commonwealth forces to be stationed on Ethiopian soil, further counter-revolutionary initiatives by the SDIA and Japanese Special Forces would remove several threats to local security and gain a foot hold in Africa.
The biggest victory against both the West and the Soviet Union would be the major trade agreements between the Royal Commonwealth and oil-rich Arabic nations in the wake of the 1973 oil embargo. Saudi Arabia's ties with the US would be broken in favor of Japan and it's allies, then Iraq and Kuwait. As the situation deteriorated in Iran in 1974, General Ryuhei Nakamura would use dissidents in the Iranian military to seize power and drive Mohammad Reza Pahlavi into hiding. In 1976, most of OPEC would become allies to the Royal Commonwealth, although not as members directly.
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(Pax Japonica and the post-Cold War era - 1982 to Present day)
With only Alaska, Venezuela and Norway remaining as the source of oil in 1981, more and more cities in the US and Western Europe were running low of fuel for power stations, gasoline and jet fuel. The Soviet Union wouldn't suffer energy insecurity but would suffer from a growing political crisis from the Invasion of Afghanistan. President Ronald Reagan and other European Union leaders would sign a treaty to allow their members to trade with the Royal Commonwealth at a capped tax rate of 10% for non member states trading with Japan and other Royal members and 3 to 5% for Royal Commonwealth members trading with one another.
After withdrawing from Afghanistan, the Soviet Union would collapse following a riot in Moscow and the raid in the Kremlin that ousted Gorbachev from power in 1984. Ultimately, the new Russian government would open up the market for more foreign goods. Along with Inner China, after several reforms and additional trade agreements.
While the Japanese military downsized from it's peak of 3,200,000 to 1,100,000 in 2009, they still retain about 64,000 troops abroad in East Africa, the Caribbean and Southeast Asia. Most of the troops overseas would reside in Japan's last remaining Overseas Prefectures of Asai Mizu (The Lucayan Archipelago), Kame no Shima (The Cayman Islands), Kaigara-Shima (Aruba), Hong Kong and Macau.
Over the years, Japan and the Royal Commonwealth would manufacture nearly 60% of vehicles and aircraft, heavy industrial machinery plus advanced technology, Inner China would hold 25% of vital goods, 10% to the West and Russia and the remaining 5% were other countries globally. When the 2008 recession ravaged America and Europe, the confidence of Western currencies and the Russian ruble shrank while the currencies of the Royal Commonwealth adapted and survived.
Furthermore, the practice of Chishiki no Michi had generated a large gathering of developing countries over the last few centuries, along with the aforementioned history of the fair treatment of Black and Hispanic individuals who worked alongside their partners during colonialism and the Cold War.
While the West, Russia and Inner China would persist in gaining geopolitical power. Japan's 700 year old expansionist policy had not only withstood the test of time, but had established a multipolar world.
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(Despite posting this by accident, I'm finished for now. Since I don't have a computer, you can make maps or fan art based on this alternative timeline to make this more interesting)
With Meiji's peace agreement with the US and the Western world established, and with most of the colonies now independent. The Imperial House would find itself in a new political climate.
Since the Kenmu Restoration had eliminated the threat of civil war and united the Samurai caste and the nobles nearly six hundred years ago, the old feudal structure would no longer suffice in the 20'th century. As such, the Imperial House became the Dai Santoseiji, the Great Triumvirate in the Constitutional reform of 1901.
The Sokuryo-shi no Ie, the House of Surveyors, would be the institution responsible for the election of the prefectural governments across Japan, assigning various taxes for property, toll checkpoints, imports and exports and maintaining vital infrastructure. While the Sabaki no Ie, the House of Judgement, became the nation's highest court whose legislators can both pass laws and serve as judges for high profile cases.
The institution of the highest authority on the law and the land itself would belong to the Taiyo to Tsuki no Gyokuza, known as the Throne of the Sun and Moon, which is governed by the ruling Monarch and the Prime Minister, who also controls both the lower houses. The Shogun's new duties would be the highest commanding officer of all the armed forces while serving the Prime Minister and the Imperial Monarch, while many warriors of the Samural clans had either moved on as wealthy businessmen, went into politics or remained in the military.
While this new system appear to closely resemble the various constitutional monarchies of Europe and allow for elections similar to America. However, no civilian can ever put himself or herself as a political candidate as a legislator or the head of any prefecture unless deemed worthy of integrity and inherent leadership by the Choro Hyogi-Kai, the Emperor's Council of Elders.
As Japan expanded its technological innovation from Western designs, their industrial knowledge were exported to it's allies, mainly in Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines and it's former dependencies in Central America and the Caribbean. This would allow the nations of the Royal Commonwealth to build their own factories, which would rival the United States in terms of manufacturing, GDP growth and economic reach into other countries, such as Peru, Chile and Bolivia.
Russia's foray into expansionism in Far East would backfire during the Russo-Japanese war. While the US had successfully signed the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905 and had forced the Russian fleet to retreat back to the north, but Nicholas the Second had made a fatal mistake of using merchants in Vladivostok to smuggle weapons to criminal organizations in Japan to trigger civil unrest and potentially overthrow the Dai Santoseiji. This nullified the treaty, and the Japanese launched a thorough campaign by destroying all Russian battle ships in the Sea of Okhotsk in 1906 while besieging the seaports. When the Russian government attempted conscription while terribly under-equipped and untrained, the local population revolted and aided the Japanese forces in driving out the Russian military from the Eastern Siberian Coast.
Without any warships or military seaports under Russia's control in the region, along with the total loss of Kamchatka Peninsula and the independence of Magadan, Chukotka, Khabarovsk and the Primorsky Krai from the Russian Empire, Nicholas would sign the Second Treaty of Portsmouth and step down from the throne in 1908. Kamchatka would be incorporated into the Imperial Kingdom of Japan, while the newly independent nations in the region would be a part of the Royal Commonwealth for their actions during the war.
With the fall of the Qing Dynasty, Beijing would be seized and the country splintered into multiple pieces of territory. Port Arthur and other Chinese provinces sharing the Bohai Sea and the Bohai Strait (Along with Tianjin and Beijing) would become separate countries, joining the Royal Commonwealth in 1918.
_____________________________________________
(The Shadows of Turmoil - 1928 to 1950)
Despite the restoration of diplomatic and economic trade with America and Europe, racial viewpoints of Hispanic and African communities remained largely negative. With Japan however, it became something bigger in the eyes of the West. It was the greatest fear that Japanese ideology would eventually surpass Greco-Roman ideology and prevent America and Europe's economic dominance in world affairs.
Under the previous Emperors of the 1800s, many Native Americans, Hispanics and former African slaves were treated fairly, humanely and were given more autonomy and rights as loyal servants and honorable warriors under the Imperial Kingdom rather than slaves and chattel under America or any European colonial power. For the Japanese Monarchy and the rest of the government, they get diplomatic and social recognition for the humane treatment of their non-native subjects while non-Japanese servants were usually recognized for their good deeds, and are given a chance at becoming full-fledged citizens if they wished to do so. Despite the previous attempts by Western churches to undermine Japanese expansion, Christianity was legally reinstated and decriminalized after the Catholic Church and leaders of multiple denominations had made reparations to the Imperial Kingdom and the victims of religious persecution.
Furthermore, with the control of Texan oil fields and recent developments in oil exploration projects between the Imperial Kingdom, Indonesia and Vietnam, there were increasing concerns in Washington DC and Moscow that the economies of both America and the Soviet Union will be completely overshadowed by Japan and the Royal Commonwealth. If this happens, their economic growth will be limited due to the prevalence of reliable goods from the Royal Commonwealth, which will heavily increase imports tenfold and making them more and more dependent on foreign goods. Although they weren't allies, they shared the same enemy. The West feared Japan and it's allies for it's economic potential while the Soviets wanted revenge for the loss of the Okhotsk Sea and the territories that used to serve the Russian Empire.
Starting from 1928, the US Executive Departments of State, Treasury, Navy and War would finance Hideki Tojo and various factions inside the military in an attempt to nullify the Great Triumvirate's powers and destabilize the Commonwealth. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union would promote Communism within China to seize control from the Nationalists and push Japanese influence away from the mainland.
Then on June 29, 1935. The Kotei no Kuroi Te, known as the Emperor's Black Hand, would eventually discover the existence of a future coup d'etat by the Kodo-ha faction of the military. However, they had also discovered that the coup was elaborately designed to fail and drive greater fear into the general public and the political class, giving the Tosei-ha greater powers. As time went on, the Black Hand found that the funding for both sides were from the same sources: The United States' Office of Strategic Services, the Secret Intelligence Services Executive of Britain and Hideki Tojo himself.
The planned coup began earlier due to the leaders being tipped off by government insiders, over a hundred thousand loyal soldiers and police officers would round up and arrest the perpetrators and financiers from both sides. The faction leaders would be charged with treason, stripped of all military service medals and banished from the Armed Forces. Additionally, they were forced to work regular jobs for the rest of their lives to repay the damages done to the country's political system and to the public.
Hideki Tojo would eventually explain the exact details about the United States and Britain's involvement along with physical cash and documents, along with future plans to seize power from the Monarch and stage a false flag to invade Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia to eliminate Mao Zedong's forces to secure American interests in China. He would then commit suicide after giving out the information and three weeks after he was convicted. While Prime Minister Konoe turn himself over to the authorities, he was placed under permanent house arrest for being a mole for the Tosei-ha and would live the rest of his life as a social pariah.
Ultimately, Emperor Showa had felt inadequate and unworthy of the throne, causing him to assign Kijūro Shidehara as Prime Minister and Empress Consort Kojun to assume control of the throne.
A diplomatic firestorm began when the OSS and SIS' involvement in the attempted coup d'etat had reached back to the American public and in Tokyo, causing relations between the US and the UK to deteriorate. There were also plans by President Franklin D. Roosevelt for another coup d'etat in Asai Mizu, only to be uprooted by the Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland and the outbreak of the Second World War and the split of India into three states after a disastrous famine swept throughout the country.
While the Soviets and Allied Forces were distracted in Europe, the Shogun had reorganized and purged the entire military of all signs of the Tosei-ha and the Kodo-ha, while the Sabaki no Ie removed several political figures that were responsible for the 1936 incident. Many arms manufacturers acquired new contracts to help build up the nation's military capabilities, thousands of soldiers and dozens of ships would be deployed on rotations to the northward Kamchatka Prefecture, the Caribbean and in Taiwan, while the Emperor's Black Hand would become the newest branch of the Royal Japanese Armed Forces, now known as the Strategic Defense Intelligence Agency. By 1948, the military had finally upgraded it's Air Force with top of the line aircraft with the help of former German designers, it's naval capabilities enhanced by cutting edge submarines at the time and the Army's battle strategy and doctrine now focusing on maximizing logistics and long-term sustainability in warzones, along with the creation of Special Forces units across all branches of the military.
The security situation would remain uncertain, until in 1950, when Korea fell into civil war and was split in half. Due to increasing Soviet involvement and a potential invasion of the southern half of the peninsula, the Japanese Armed Forces had intervened a year later and forced both sides to agree to a ceasefire agreement, which would collapse in the end of 1953 when the SDIA had found out that the Chiang Kai-Shek and the United States had installed a puppet regime in South Korea a year prior to the war and the Soviet Union were in talks with the North Koreans to covertly deploy troops in the North from Manchuria for a renewed invasion effort. Even with the United Nations' efforts, it would be proven futile as the war began anew in 1954.
Fearing that the fighting would destroy all of Korean society, multiple rebel groups began to fight against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the southern Republic of Korea to remove both the pro-Soviet and pro-Western governments. Additional funding from Japanese Intelligence would culminate in the downfall of both the North Korea and South Korea, and the exile of all American, European and Soviet citizens from the Peninsula. Despite bitter historical rivalries, Korea would have no other choice but to join the Royal Commonwealth to shield themselves from the rising threat of Democracies from the West and Socialism from the Iron Curtain. With the Pacific coastlines of Korea and the former Chinese provinces now in the Commonwealth, Japan's influence now rivals the Mongol Empire in reach and size, despite the country itself not growing much in size since the earlier days of colonialism.
The gambit of Chiang Kai-Shek and Mao Zedong in Korea would see both of their resources and finances strained after losing a proxy war, and with the Japanese intelligence setting their targets on both the Chinese nationalists and the Communists, both leaders would go into hiding.
_____________________________________________
(The Way of Knowledge, Japan's ascension as a global power in the Cold War - 1958 to 1981)
After the failure of the United Nations at a ceasefire agreement in Korea and rising tensions in Europe, the organization would severely weakened and be divided into three separate ideological groups: The US-controlled democracies of the Free World, The Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact of Eastern Europe and the Japanese-led Royal Commonwealth. The Cold War was in full swing, and the US and the Soviet Union wasted no time in attacking the Commonwealth.
While most of the former Japanese colonies in the southern half of the US would be spared from CIA-backed election rigging and regime change, other nations in Latin America that hadn't been either been colonized by the First Imperial Kingdom or joined the Royal Commonwealth as full-time members were targeted during Operation Condor. Meanwhile, Japanese troops had managed to put down an attempted insurrection by Fidel Castro to create a socialist regime in Cuba and captured Bautista for his role in aiding the CIA's smuggling operations in the region.
With several observers in the Royal Commonwealth facing threats from guerrilla fighters, CIA and the KGB, Counter-Revolutionary warfare and psychological operations became commonplace with conventional troops and Special Forces units within the Royal Japanese Armed Forces. Although the number of troops trained in such tactics was limited to two infantry divisions, it became a highly effective tool when large-scale deployments became inefficient.
For Japan's goals in the Cold War, it established the Chishiki no Michi (The Path of Knowledge) as a means to connect the Japanese to other nations through the distribution of wisdom and understanding, rather than dependency on raw military intimidation alone. At the end of the 1950s, the Imperial Kingdom's diplomatic reach had expanded to India and East Africa.
During a private discussion between Brazilian President Joāo Goulart and Empress Kojun in the Overseas Prefecture of Kame no Shima (The Cayman Islands) on May 12, 1963, Japanese Intelligence and Brazilian authorities have received word of a potential coup by dissidents inside Brazil's armed forces. These rumors were confirmed by July with the SDIA's moles inside the White House, obtaining a list of candidates for a pro-American backed military junta and to block off any Soviet or Japanese influence in the region.
Since the 1800s, Brazil has been establishing close economic and diplomatic relations with the Imperial Kingdom and despite Goulart's initial tendencies towards socialism, his administration was making preparations to become a part of the Royal Commonwealth.
165 members of the SDIA's 47th Special Reconnaissance Battalion were secretly deployed in the country to gather intelligence on the main targets and inform loyalist forces of any changes or imminent security threats. Later in the year, the US Government began to accelerate their plans, which created a fatal flaw as the junta's forces weren't adequately prepared to execute the coup.
For the US, everything would fall apart when the Japanese government leaked the information about the CIA's funding of the military junta to the Brazilian press in January. Marshal Castelo Branco would launch a last ditch attack on the capital on February 8, only to be met with overwhelming force by loyalist forces and 17,000 Japanese soldiers who were also covertly deployed on orders from Joāo Goulart.
With Costa e Silva and Mourāo Filho killed, numerous far-right supporters arrested and the upper command structure of the Brazilian Military purged. Branco would take his surviving troops and flee deep into the Amazon to hide. Following the failed coup d'etat, Brazil would finally sign a defense treaty with Japan and join the Royal Commonwealth, marking Japan's first major victory in the Cold War. After clearing Guatemala, El Salvador and the Honduras from most of the rebels, they would tie themselves closely with Mexico and Japan.
The next strategic victory within the same year saw Japan possess nuclear weapons from the aid of German rocket engineers who fled into Hong Kong, along with turncoats from United States' Department of Energy and high-ranking Soviet scientists who defected. This would give the Japanese government an effective deterrent and made it less likely to be intimidated in a geopolitical sense.
During this time, Chiang Kai-Shek would be assassinated and Communists seizw control of Yuhzong, the capital of Inner China. However, Mao would pass away, leaving the rest of the country in political turmoil.
At the same time, Japan and Thailand began a major counterinsurgency effort in Southeast Asia. Britain and NATO were harvesting opium and turning it into heroin to give Western intelligence services additional funding from smuggling to Royal Commonwealth states and America. The KGB would also do the same in Laos and communist-controlled areas of Inner China. The governments of Singapore and Malaysia had been sanctioned after the Japanese leaked information about the involvement of illegal arms shipments to Indonesia to supply pro-Western forces inside the Indonesian military, with the goal to separate Indonesia from the Royal Commonwealth and Seize control of the oil fields in the region. This would be enough to force the governments to resign after nationwide protests.
Subsequently, General Suharto's supporters in the armed forces would seize power in the September 30 movement. Sukarno would sign an emergency declaration nationwide and a summit with Empress Kojun and Shogun Amano Yoshihide would involve a military operation to remove Suharto from power would begin. Operation Midori no Inazuma would involve over 70,000 Japanese, Korean, Thai, Cuban and loyalist Indonesian troops during paratrooper drops into Jakarta in September; the naval battles in the Java Sea and the capture of General Suharto in 1970.
The Royal Commonwealth would also prevent the pro-Soviet Derg from taking power in 1972. Similar to Brazil's ascension, Emperor Haile Selassie would create a defense treaty and allow Commonwealth forces to be stationed on Ethiopian soil, further counter-revolutionary initiatives by the SDIA and Japanese Special Forces would remove several threats to local security and gain a foot hold in Africa.
The biggest victory against both the West and the Soviet Union would be the major trade agreements between the Royal Commonwealth and oil-rich Arabic nations in the wake of the 1973 oil embargo. Saudi Arabia's ties with the US would be broken in favor of Japan and it's allies, then Iraq and Kuwait. As the situation deteriorated in Iran in 1974, General Ryuhei Nakamura would use dissidents in the Iranian military to seize power and drive Mohammad Reza Pahlavi into hiding. In 1976, most of OPEC would become allies to the Royal Commonwealth, although not as members directly.
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(Pax Japonica and the post-Cold War era - 1982 to Present day)
With only Alaska, Venezuela and Norway remaining as the source of oil in 1981, more and more cities in the US and Western Europe were running low of fuel for power stations, gasoline and jet fuel. The Soviet Union wouldn't suffer energy insecurity but would suffer from a growing political crisis from the Invasion of Afghanistan. President Ronald Reagan and other European Union leaders would sign a treaty to allow their members to trade with the Royal Commonwealth at a capped tax rate of 10% for non member states trading with Japan and other Royal members and 3 to 5% for Royal Commonwealth members trading with one another.
After withdrawing from Afghanistan, the Soviet Union would collapse following a riot in Moscow and the raid in the Kremlin that ousted Gorbachev from power in 1984. Ultimately, the new Russian government would open up the market for more foreign goods. Along with Inner China, after several reforms and additional trade agreements.
While the Japanese military downsized from it's peak of 3,200,000 to 1,100,000 in 2009, they still retain about 64,000 troops abroad in East Africa, the Caribbean and Southeast Asia. Most of the troops overseas would reside in Japan's last remaining Overseas Prefectures of Asai Mizu (The Lucayan Archipelago), Kame no Shima (The Cayman Islands), Kaigara-Shima (Aruba), Hong Kong and Macau.
Over the years, Japan and the Royal Commonwealth would manufacture nearly 60% of vehicles and aircraft, heavy industrial machinery plus advanced technology, Inner China would hold 25% of vital goods, 10% to the West and Russia and the remaining 5% were other countries globally. When the 2008 recession ravaged America and Europe, the confidence of Western currencies and the Russian ruble shrank while the currencies of the Royal Commonwealth adapted and survived.
Furthermore, the practice of Chishiki no Michi had generated a large gathering of developing countries over the last few centuries, along with the aforementioned history of the fair treatment of Black and Hispanic individuals who worked alongside their partners during colonialism and the Cold War.
While the West, Russia and Inner China would persist in gaining geopolitical power. Japan's 700 year old expansionist policy had not only withstood the test of time, but had established a multipolar world.
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(Despite posting this by accident, I'm finished for now. Since I don't have a computer, you can make maps or fan art based on this alternative timeline to make this more interesting)
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