We all seem to be racking our brains looking for existing factors in Asian nations that will make industrialization possible. What we keep coming up against is that industrialization was always possible in Asia but until the mid 19th Century, was not perceived by Asian elites (or to be fair, by Central and Eastern European elites in places like Russia and Austria) as necessary--or anything more than a threat to existing social relations that was to be resisted at all costs. What is needed to kick-start industrialization in Asia earlier is literally an earlier kick---in the butt of Japan!
Industrialization need not start in the 18th Century to be effective. Even for a nation like Japan. The Japanese may not have much coal, but they do have high mountains and plenty of water. And waterwheels turned cranks and drive shafts before steam engines did. And in the EARLY 19th Century, waterwheels still are in use.
So let's assume a POD somewhere in the 1800s to 1820s. The British East India Company or perhaps Thomas Raffles sends a flotilla to Japan to negotiate the surrender of some strategic islands that can be used for the China trade (either Sakashima Gunto --the Southern Ryukyu Islands; having the advantage of nearness to Taiwan and the Chinese coast, Okinawa having the advantage of the yearly tribute expedition to China or Tsu-Shima, which is centrally located for both China, Japan and Korea.
This shows conclusively to much of the Japanese elite that Japan's seclusion policy is not effective and that Japan must emulate the West. The result is that the Bafuku is overthrown by 1830 in the reign of the Emperor Ninko (1817-1846).
Forty years makes a big difference in the 19th Century!
In the 1830s, Russia has not claimed any of China, much less Sakhalin or the Kuril Islands. Japan is free to claim both. None of the European nations are anywhere close to taking over the Pacific Islands. (The British and Dutch only made a paper claim to New Guinea, the world's second largest island in 1828). Japan can expand into many if not most Pacific Islands (much as Russia expanded across Siberia in the early 17th Century) as soon as it can build a navy to take them and find them extremely low on any European nation's national list of priorities. And in the 1830s, those ships can still be made of wood (which Japan has aplenty) and powered by wind.
And unlike Japan, many of those islands ARE rich in natural resources. Consider:
Sakhalin. Rich in coal reserves
New Guinea: rich in gold, copper (in conjunction with gold), nickel, rich agricultural land for sugar cane (domesticated originally in New Guinea), rice and tea. Can comfortably support over 80 million people.
Solomon Islands (lead, zinc, nickel, gold, bauxite)
New Hebrides (Vaunuatu) gold, silver, manganese
New Caledonia Nickel
Fiji gold, phosphate, bauxite, lead, zinc, iron, titanium
And if the Japanese can wrest the Amur River and it's basin (or at least that part of the Amur Basin north of the Lesser Khingnan Mountains) from China --which is doable in the 1840s and 50s with steamboats mounted with guns --well, from Wikipedia, here are the mineral resources of what is IOTL, Amur Oblast (the Middle Amur Basin from Khabarovsk to the Stanovoi Range):
ranes nest here, as well as a host of other rare birds.
Natural resources
Amur Oblast has considerable reserves of many types of mineral resources; proven reserves are estimated to be worth US$400 billion. Among the most important are
gold (the largest reserves in Russia),
silver,
titanium,
molybdenum,
tungsten,
copper,
tin, etc.
Black coal and
lignite reserves are estimated to be 70 billion tons. Probable iron
deposits are estimated to be 3.8 billion tons. The Garin deposit is fully explored and known to contain 389 million tons of iron ore. Estimated reserves of the deposit are 1,293 million tons. The deposit's ore contains a low concentration of detrimental impurities; the ore contains 69.9% iron. Amur Oblast is also a promising source of titanium, with the Bolshoy Seyim deposit being the most important.
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This concentration of resources is well worth remembering, not only for this TL but for many others involving alternatives to Japan taking over Manchuria. If Japan can start expanding from the 1830s (and is likely to experience far less pushback from European nations if it does beginning in the 1830s, Japan's industrialization is likely to be far more successful than IOTL and Japan is likely to gain far more acceptance as a world power by the turn of the 20th Century.
Of those islands,
