AHC: Make all of Japan a Republic by the 1870s

I've done some light reading so far on the Meiji Restoration, Boshin War, and Ezo Republic and I am most interested in the later. It was a small Republic, based on the American model, planned universal suffrage for the samurai class, and was backed by the French but lasted less than a year before being defeated by the new Imperial government.

So with perhaps a POD during the Boshin war, your prerogative, have Japan governed by a stable Republican government, with suffrage as a goal in mind, by the some date in 1870s.
 
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birdboy2000

Banned
You mean the Republic of Ezo.

It governed Ezo. As in Hokkaido. One of the main reasons for its creation was that the Tokugawa Shogun had already given up; the war was basically lost. I don't see how they reconquer Japan without an army.

It has two chances for survival. The first is for the Imperial Court to consider it useful as a safety valve for samurai dissent, and allow it to survive as an autonomous region under the rule of an elected leader. This is probably the most likely; Ezo had been autonomous anyway, and the Meiji government would later face ill-fated rebellions from disgruntled samurai OTL.

The second is for a European power to break it off. This is harder, because it was heavily French-influenced, and Ezo is quite far from any real areas of French interest - their closest territory is in southern Vietnam, and backing a puppet state in Hokkaido would annoy the heck out of Japan for no real gain. But Napoleon III was not exactly a model of self-interested foreign policy, so he might be persuaded do it anyway.
 
The second is for a European power to break it off. This is harder, because it was heavily French-influenced, and Ezo is quite far from any real areas of French interest - their closest territory is in southern Vietnam, and backing a puppet state in Hokkaido would annoy the heck out of Japan for no real gain. But Napoleon III was not exactly a model of self-interested foreign policy, so he might be persuaded do it anyway.
This really requires France to win the Franco-Prussian War.
 
I don't know if Republicanism can really come to Japan that early, The Ezo Republic only came about after most of the Shogunate forces where defeated, pretty much fled to a sparsely populated island. The Ezo Republic pretty much recognized the authority of the emperor, and to develop Hokkaido in his name. The closest someone got TL wise was a timeline where there was a Shogunate with no emperor after a Shogun was able to getting away with doing it.
 
Yoshinobu, the shogunate during the Bishin War, resigned from office and agreed to "be the instrument for carrying out" imperial orders. If he retained more leadership, and persuaded the domains to remain on his side, while making his government stray away from the Emperor and resemble a Republican form, perhaps there is some chance. But that, of course, is highly unlikely. Maybe some of the elites in Kyushu island sided with the shogunate and decided to reform the Japanese government instead of overthrowing it...
 
European politics are the key. You need to get France in more of a position to support it.
 
European politics are the key. You need to get France in more of a position to support it.
Why just France specifically? Besides the point of its involvement in OTL. And then how exactly?
 
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