AHC/WI: Japanese presence in Pre-Columbian America

A smaller pacific. It is much, much larger than the Atlantic.

Alternately, some early POD that pushes the Jomon or Ainu towards a more maritime orientation, and a slow spread north then east down the west coast of North America.
 
Integrate the Japanese with the Malays. Malayan seafaring culture leads the Japanese to displace natives in Hawaii, southern Alaska, and the eastern coast of Canada.
 
You need, at minimum, to have the Japanese MASSIVELY increase their maritime activity.

Have a larger, and earlier settlement of Hokkaido, and start moving into Sakhalin/Karafuto

Have them corner the market on Siberian furs, and trade them to China for ???

Japanese fur traders continue north, especially as the best furs are trapped out in the closer parts of Siberia. Gradually, they go up Kamchatka, then along the Kommandorskis, then the Aleutians.

Continuing south from there, they reach the Pacific Northwest peoples, and perhaps establish hegemony over them, possibly picking one or two nations to use as their local agents.

By the time the West shows up, rice is a normal crop in Puget Sound and the Willamette Valley, and Japanese is the language of administration and writing for the whole coast.

OK, so you probably can't do this much before 1800 (trapping out Siberia will take a while), so doing it before Columbus is surely impossible. Doing it before White Men arrive at Puget Sound is likely possible.

Incredibly unlikely, mind, but possible.
 
A smaller pacific. It is much, much larger than the Atlantic.

Alternately, some early POD that pushes the Jomon or Ainu towards a more maritime orientation, and a slow spread north then east down the west coast of North America.
This. People always underestimate the Pacific in these threads.

My favorite way of demonstrating it: if you sail 2400 miles west from France, you end up in Newfoundland; welcome to the New World. If you sail 2400 miles west from California? You hit Hawaii.
 

Benevolent

Banned
What will it takes to have a Japanese-influenced culture or civilization to exist in the Americas before Columbus' arrival?

If you allow for the migration of Aleuts and Haida Gwaai to Hokkaido and have an i ndividual speak about idk ivory and pelts you just might make it possible. Or have Japanese Whaling pressures to intensify to the point of a slow island hopping expansion from Hokkaido to the northernmost PNW.

Maybe create or intensify a war that forces the starved masses to over exploit whales or persecution causing some to escape across the Pacific? Itd be suicidal to simply go across but again basically a northern route makes it easier.
 

Benevolent

Banned
To be real though a Polynesian expansion is far more likely and actually has happened in Easternmost Polynesia.

From the trade with the Americas it could be that the Japanese can see the true value of Turtle Island and merely follow the traders back to Hawaii and reach the mainland from there.
 
Yes, starving masses migrate faster.
Just like the current Japanese whaling "research" started in the hungry days immediately after WW2.

So starving Japanese are likely to move farther and faster than if they were merely searching for furs and ivory.

Speaking of ivory, Farley a peat wrote a book that speculated about some obscure archeological finds in the Eastern Canadian Arctic. Now at speculated that early European explorers (circa 1,000 AD) were searching for walrus ivory when ivory was worth its weight in gold in Europe. Genuine "unicorn" ... er Narwal tusks commanded an even higher price among European nobility.

Here, along the Southern BC coast, many native faces have traces of Japanese features, which makes me wonder how many Japanese sailors accidentally drifted across the Pacific.
 
I guess the big question would be why would the Japanese go to the Americas when they have a ridiculously wealthy neighbor far closer to them in China? I mean, the idea of Native American Samurai sounds incredibly awesome, but why go 6,000 miles or so to trade for gold when you could just trade with China or Korea next door? Really, you'd have to either speed up development of Japanese sailing technology or really slow down European sailing technology to make this feasible and you'd probably have to do both. Now, if China were to start charging ridiculous rates for trade and they had an effective monopoly in East Asia, then maybe that might spur a search for alternate sources of trading partners. Honestly, I think the Japanese might find more value setting up lumber and whaling outposts in the Pacific Northwest. Maybe from there, though, you might have some explorers who set up trading posts further and further south and maybe encounter some more advanced civilizations. That might just do it for giving the Japanese motivation to stay in the Americas.
 

Benevolent

Banned
Yes, starving masses migrate faster.
Just like the current Japanese whaling "research" started in the hungry days immediately after WW2.

So starving Japanese are likely to move farther and faster than if they were merely searching for furs and ivory.

Speaking of ivory, Farley a peat wrote a book that speculated about some obscure archeological finds in the Eastern Canadian Arctic. Now at speculated that early European explorers (circa 1,000 AD) were searching for walrus ivory when ivory was worth its weight in gold in Europe. Genuine "unicorn" ... er Narwal tusks commanded an even higher price among European nobility.

Here, along the Southern BC coast, many native faces have traces of Japanese features, which makes me wonder how many Japanese sailors accidentally drifted across the Pacific.

The features are likely Kanaka with trace amounts of Japanese influence from the plantation era, people tend to forget the Hawaiian presence in BC from saltspring up for some reason.
 

Benevolent

Banned
I guess the big question would be why would the Japanese go to the Americas when they have a ridiculously wealthy neighbor far closer to them in China? I mean, the idea of Native American Samurai sounds incredibly awesome, but why go 6,000 miles or so to trade for gold when you could just trade with China or Korea next door? Really, you'd have to either speed up development of Japanese sailing technology or really slow down European sailing technology to make this feasible and you'd probably have to do both. Now, if China were to start charging ridiculous rates for trade and they had an effective monopoly in East Asia, then maybe that might spur a search for alternate sources of trading partners. Honestly, I think the Japanese might find more value setting up lumber and whaling outposts in the Pacific Northwest. Maybe from there, though, you might have some explorers who set up trading posts further and further south and maybe encounter some more advanced civilizations. That might just do it for giving the Japanese motivation to stay in the Americas.

Native American Samurai? I mean the Japanese presence would be at most the equivalent of mountain men and traders who establish frontier Metis families with some Japanese cultural markers remaining that act as prestige skills iron forging being one of them maybe sword making but anything else is rather weeb fanciful dream than probable you know?
 
You would need a POD starting at the Kenmu Restoration or the Mongol Invasion and a Japan more intent on expanding into Hokkaido and Sakhalin at the latest, because Japan would need a strong central government unlike the weaker government they had historically. You'd probably also need something along the lines of "Zheng He discovers America" to spark some manner of competition between China and Japan to further increase Japanese interest.

Japanese colonisation of America probably will occur parallel to Columbus and the Spanish rather than before him, and will cause so many butterflies you won't have things like Louis and Clark meeting Japanese people.

Very implausible, but very cool to imagine samurai battling Indians in front of totem poles or whatever.
 
Native American Samurai? I mean the Japanese presence would be at most the equivalent of mountain men and traders who establish frontier Metis families with some Japanese cultural markers remaining that act as prestige skills iron forging being one of them maybe sword making but anything else is rather weeb fanciful dream than probable you know?

I was exaggerating.
 
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