AHC: Surviving Japanese colonial empire.

Is there any possibility that post WW1 Japan borders can be kept to the present day? These territories are namely Korea, Taiwan and the German Pacific Colonies

pod can be anytime adter 1900, bonus points if Japan owns North Sakhalin and/or Hainan.
 
Not difficult at all. Keep Japan out of World War 2. Scale down the anti Americanism, dont bomb Pearl Harbour, and forget about trying to acquire places like the Philippines, Dutch East Indies, or Indochina. Soon enough, Japan turns into an anti-Soviet anti-Communist ally of America in the vain of OTL Spain and Portugal or an alt-Italy that remains neutral in World War 2. If you add to that deeper involvement in the Far East during the early 20s, you end up with a Japan that holds Korea, Taiwan, Sakhalin, the Russian Far East, the Kurils, Manchuria, parts of China that could include Hainan, etc. The latter may piss off the French, but if the alt-Japan adopts an anti-communist stance in Southeast Asia it may very well gain substantial influence there as well.
 
Not difficult at all. Keep Japan out of World War 2. Scale down the anti Americanism, dont bomb Pearl Harbour, and forget about trying to acquire places like the Philippines, Dutch East Indies, or Indochina. Soon enough, Japan turns into an anti-Soviet anti-Communist ally of America in the vain of OTL Spain and Portugal or an alt-Italy that remains neutral in World War 2. If you add to that deeper involvement in the Far East during the early 20s, you end up with a Japan that holds Korea, Taiwan, Sakhalin, the Russian Far East, the Kurils, Manchuria, parts of China that could include Hainan, etc. The latter may piss off the French, but if the alt-Japan adopts an anti-communist stance in Southeast Asia it may very well gain substantial influence there as well.

While you're obviously right on the type of foreign policy route Japan needs to take, keeping the Empire until the present day is a lot more challenging than that.

You need to find a way to have Korea, Taiwan and Manchuria not revolt.

Portugal was a NATO member and that didn't exactly stop the west from backing anti-colonial guerrillas in Angola...
 
While you're obviously right on the type of foreign policy route Japan needs to take, keeping the Empire until the present day is a lot more challenging than that.

You need to find a way to have Korea, Taiwan and Manchuria not revolt.

Portugal was a NATO member and that didn't exactly stop the west from backing anti-colonial guerrillas in Angola...
Korea is a lot closer to Japan than Angola is to Portugal. Also unlike Angola Korea has only one small and narrow land border. Much harder to smuggle people, weapons, supplies, etc across.
 
Korea is a lot closer to Japan than Angola is to Portugal. Also unlike Angola Korea has only one small and narrow land border. Much harder to smuggle people, weapons, supplies, etc across.

But still, Japan won't get charte blanche from the West to do all the atrocities it would need to do in order to keep the territories. Even if funding guerrillas is not very easy, there will at least be embargos and other types of diplomatic consequences.

Having to deal with an occupied Korea in a state of prolonged revolt would put significant strain on Japan's economy, not to mention the lives that would be lost. I think that sooner or later someone in Japan would just realize that it would be better to simply give up, and colonialism will end with either a reform of the Japanese political system or even a revolution...
 
While you're obviously right on the type of foreign policy route Japan needs to take, keeping the Empire until the present day is a lot more challenging than that.

You need to find a way to have Korea, Taiwan and Manchuria not revolt.

Portugal was a NATO member and that didn't exactly stop the west from backing anti-colonial guerrillas in Angola...

Still, I think American foreign policy in our timeline also proves that they were willing to go a great distance to prevent communism in Asia. If they were ready to offer hundreds (?) of thousands of American lives in East Asian wars against communism, I'm sure they would be willing to tolerate a lot of Japanese colonialism or even ethnic cleansing in their territories. While you are definitely right in that there are limits to American support, having the Soviet Union as the only alternative right at the doorstep distinguishes Asia from Africa.
 
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Still, I think American foreign policy in our timeline also proves that they were willing to go a great distance to prevent communism in Asia. If they were ready to offer hundreds (?) of thousands of American lives in East Asian wars against communism, I'm sure they would be willing to tolerate a lot of Japanese colonialism or even ethnic cleansing in their territories. While you are definitely right in that there are limits to American support, having the Soviet Union as the only alternative right at the doorstep distinguishes Asia from Africa, where Americans supported many non-communist i

Well, there is an escalation problem. While I do agree that the Americans may be more willing to turn a blind eye to Japanese colonialism in Asia, I think the Japanese would eventually cross the limit as increasing amounts of violence would be necessary.

There is also the fact that an unstable Korea under Japanese rule would most likely be unprofitable, and there is not much reason to keep an unprofitable colony. Even if Korean resistance itself can't directly overthrow colonial rule, some kind of reformist or even revolutionary movement in Japan most likely will.

In my opinion, it's most definetely necessary to change the atitude of the Japanese authorities towards the Korean and Taiwanese populations in the early 20th century. There are just too many reasons why a fanatical colonislist dictatorship isn't likely to hold up for very long.
 
I suspect that if the USA supports Japan, then the Korean resistance will seek Soviet help and thus be labelled communist. With the American attitude toward communism, Japan will have a freer hand.

Regarding Taiwan, my first wife was Taiwanese. My memory is that the people living in Taiwan did not mind the Japanese but hated the Chinese that came over after 1949. She claimed that her family had a profitable business and when the Chinese came they seized everything of value form the people living there.
 
Japan needs to reform its colonial system for this to occur and to not fight the US at all costs. Even then it is going to be damn hard. GB had a much better record than Japan in running its colonies (Not difficult!) and still lost almost all of them in the 1950s-1960s.
 
Still, I think American foreign policy in our timeline also proves that they were willing to go a great distance to prevent communism in Asia. If they were ready to offer hundreds (?) of thousands of American lives in East Asian wars against communism, I'm sure they would be willing to tolerate a lot of Japanese colonialism or even ethnic cleansing in their territories. While you are definitely right in that there are limits to American support, having the Soviet Union as the only alternative right at the doorstep distinguishes Asia from Africa.

Japanese politicians often framed their colonial expansion as a fight against communism, especially in China. From what I've read, 1930's Japan hated communism with a McCarthy-esque passion. If Japan scales back on their direct military Chinese adventures and therefore avoids WWII then they'd probably be a pretty solid ally for the US against Soviet expansion.

If Japan avoided going into China proper (and making such a political and publicity mess of it) I don't see any reason that the US wouldn't tolerate Japan's other colonial ambitions.
 
Does this Japan control Manchuria and still invade China but avoids war with the allies or is it an alt-democratic Japan that doesn't invade Manchuria and China ?
 
Keeping Taiwan wouldn't be that difficult in a "no Japanese involvement in WW2" scenario. Keeping Korea in such a scenario is a totally different ball of wax. I can't see Japan keeping Korea without lots of protests and reprisals happening which may be enough to get international pressure on Japan to let Korea go.
 
They’d end up having to let Korra go. However, the Pacific Islands, Taiwan and Southern Sakhalin (and the North too with a different 1920s) could remain Japanese till today absent WWII...
 
Keeping Taiwan wouldn't be that difficult in a "no Japanese involvement in WW2" scenario. Keeping Korea in such a scenario is a totally different ball of wax. I can't see Japan keeping Korea without lots of protests and reprisals happening which may be enough to get international pressure on Japan to let Korea go.

Japan went to war with the US rather than cave to pressure over China. If they don't get stuck in a quagmire in China I can't see a scenario where they grant Korea independence before the 60's or 70's and maybe not even then. If the US decides that the Soviets and containing communism are the primary goals I think they'd easily overlook Japanese treatment of Korea in return for a Japanese ally against communism in the far east. The Americans might strongly disapprove but it seems unlikely they'd let it drag down US-Japanese relations the way the Chinese war did. After all Korea had been a Japanese possession for decades at this point and under the Japanese sphere for even longer.
 
If Japan is non-democratic and still is as militaristic as otl. They won't be leaving Korea or any of it's colonial possessions as long as the home islands have the political will to hold on to them. If Japan is democratic then Korea will be gone due it's sheer population and lack of desire for such large Korean voting population.
 
A different Japan, that never invades China in 1937 would need Western approval a lot less than Portugal, France, etc did. Because such a one would eventually be able to repair relations with China. A massive trading partner right there.
 
A different Japan, that never invades China in 1937 would need Western approval a lot less than Portugal, France, etc did. Because such a one would eventually be able to repair relations with China. A massive trading partner right there.
Also, it would probably have nuclear weapons.
 
They'll have to stay out of Manchuria at the very least (meaning leaving it under at least nominal Chinese authority), since it's going to become a guerilla morass sooner or later.

Korea will have to go to, eventually (no way Japan can keep down a population with only a 2:1 advantage in population without bankrupting Tokyo).
 
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