Balkanized Japan

[Rekjavik]

How can we prevent Japan from developing as a united nation, containing a multitude of independent nations and city states held loosely together with some form of weak central force, similar to the German Confederation?

How would the lack of a strong Japan affect the developments in Asia and how much further would the Russians get into China? Would the European powers view the weak Japan as a possible trading station, perfect terrain for proxy wars or as a new colonial frontier?

 

[Kosovic]

You cant really. Japan is just Japanese.

In Balkans you have, Greeks, Slavs, Shqiptars, Romanians and Bulgarians. There is no unity between them. But Japan only has one nation, u cant balkanise it.

 

[Philip]

You cant really. Japan is just Japanese.

The Ainu might disagree. Further, it would not be hard to introduce other ethnic groups. More Korean, perhaps.

 

[Kosovic]

Still not enough to "balkanise" it.

And i just love how the place where i was born is such an example to avoid.

 

[Ran Exilis]

You cant really. Japan is just Japanese.

In Balkans you have, Greeks, Slavs, Shqiptars, Romanians and Bulgarians. There is no unity between them. But Japan only has one nation, u cant balkanise it.

Actually, given the right circumstances, it really is possible to politically divide (in other words; balkanize) an ethnically homogenous, formerly united nation.

BTW, at least on this board, "balkanisation" just means dividing a previously united polity in a multitude of new (and often hostile) polities, regardless of wether the original polity was ethnically diverse or ethnically homogenous. Just search "balkanized USA" if you want to see my point.

And if you think that Japan can never become politically divided, i.e. balkanized, then I can only assume that you've never heard of the Sengoku period.

..
As for the non-Yamato ethnic groups in Japan; aside from the Ainu, there was also a number of other distinct tribes and peoples in ancient and early Medieval Japan, including the Emishi and a number of tribes that are thought to have been of Austronesian origin.

..
And as for the challenge itself; just make sure that the Sengoku period never ends and that the internal divisions only get worse, so that the emperor and the shogun lose pretty much all real power, while the local daimyos remain the defacto independant rulers of their domains.

 

[admkenshin]

I would say that balkanization can occur in Japan, as long as there is a feudal or mostly feudal political system in place, and that there is a warrior ruler class. After all, samurai were just happy to kill each other, war was their thing, but the average farmer wont be too happy about being sent to kill another farmer, that spoke his language and had the same customs.

It also wouldn't work in an industrialized Japan, however, then there is another way to keep Japan at least divided in two. Ideological division, as in Germany and Korea.

Of course, I'd doubt Japan would stay balkanized for long with foreign aggression...

 

[Youdontwanttoknow]

It would be very simple. At some point have the Emperor and the Imperial court destroyed as institutions (as this is where Japanese 'unity' came from until the Meiji Restoration) and have the Shogunate at the time take control.

Over the space of many years after this, have the Shogunate fall or have a division and two or more Shogunate's fighting each other... Eventually all the little warlord clan areas are operating independently of each other and without the Emperor overseeing it all, there is no need to unite back into a single 'Japan'

This over a century or more will lead to people thinking of each other as diffrent and not just Japanese anymore either

 

[Joseph Solis in Australia]

Balkanization of Japan is very easy and simple. The shogunates had fighting to each other instead of developing Japan in times of isolation from foreign contact. Western and Southern Japan separates from Northern and Eastern Japan during 18th century due to the losing confidence to the shogunate and they want contact to Western world. By early 20th century, Northern and Eastern Japan is still under to shogun and poor and Western and Southern Japan is rich and the government is monarchy lead by emperor with Diet as legislative body. By the 1920, Northern and Eastern Japan will invade by USSR and eventually a communist country in Northern and Eastern Japan.

 

[Tyr]

Japan is not at all just Japanese, it has some regional differences, as you go further back in history these become even greater (from meiji on especially there was a big attempt to create one Japan)

 

[maverick]

It wouldn't be Balkanization, not enough strong minorities...

It would be more like HREzation, like in the Sengoku period...

 

[Dan1988]

If anything, a balkanized Japan could look like this, for starters:

Each colour-coded area is a modern-day OTL Japanese region - the black lines are the OTL Japanese prefectures. These regions could be developed even further as separate Japanese "nations". To balkanize it even further, have each of the Ryuku islands be its own separate nation, and Hokkaido could be split into at least 2-3 different nations (including an "Ainu Mosir"). The Japanese "language" in this sense would thus be different in each nation. Throw in some more ethnic groups (if the Ainu and Emishi were not good enough, how about some Nivkhs and even some migration of Chinese people or Filipino peoples?), and Japan could be a pretty volatile place.

 

[rcduggan]

It wouldn't be Balkanization, not enough strong minorities...

It would be more like HREzation, like in the Sengoku period...

As stated above, Balkanization on this forum can also mean just splitting a state up into smaller states, even if they have the same ethnicity.

For more ethnic groups, what about a more large-scale Toi invasion not limited to just pirates? This could lead to a significant Jurchen population in Kyushu and maybe Honshu. Perhaps more Ainu in Honshu and Hokkaido.


Maybe during the Sengoku, the smaller warlords are more adept at forming coalitions to keep anyone from gaining too much power? Say Nobunga's empire is destroyed, then the Toyotomi and later Tokugawa states are broken up by coalitions of other warlords? I'm not sure how long this sort of instability could last though.

 

[Louis XI]

I am surprised no one has thought about this, but colonization might do the trick.

If the Portuguese had been more successful in spreading the word of God, religious dissension could have led to a "balkanized", disunited Japan.

For some reasons, the Japanese authorities are more lenient on Christian converts, and the situation degenerates. Christians become more and more restive, and they receive support from the Portuguese, who send troops in later periods to resist the pressure imposed by the traditional fiefdoms.

In the meantime, the Dutch help the traditional Shintoist authorities, and provide them with modern weapons to fight against the Portuguese.

Some Japanese, disgusted at the sight of all those stinking Gaijins defiling their ancestral homeland, split from official authorities.

You have three states hating one another, ready to cut each others' throats. Then add Hokkaido, which falls in Russian hands.

In the following years, Americans impose trade by force on the isolationist party.

 

[Slamet]

I am surprised no one has thought about this, but colonization might do the trick.

If the Portuguese had been more successful in spreading the word of God, religious dissension could have led to a "balkanized", disunited Japan.

For some reasons, the Japanese authorities are more lenient on Christian converts, and the situation degenerates. Christians become more and more restive, and they receive support from the Portuguese, who send troops in later periods to resist the pressure imposed by the traditional fiefdoms.

In the meantime, the Dutch help the traditional Shintoist authorities, and provide them with modern weapons to fight against the Portuguese.

Some Japanese, disgusted at the sight of all those stinking Gaijins defiling their ancestral homeland, split from official authorities.

You have three states hating one another, ready to cut each others' throats. Then add Hokkaido, which falls in Russian hands.

In the following years, Americans impose trade by force on the isolationist party.

Exactly what they did in my country, under the banner of Islam.

Finding the reason to be more easy on the Christians, that's going to be the main challenge. In Shintoism you can be Shinto and Buddhist at the same time, but in Christianity you have to owe an allegiance to just one god. The Japanese don't like that, owing allegiance to a Gaizin god.

Or maybe you can keep Shintoism as a cultural tradition?

 

[Louis XI]

Exactly what they did in my country, under the banner of Islam.

Finding the reason to be more easy on the Christians, that's going to be the main challenge. In Shintoism you can be Shinto and Buddhist at the same time, but in Christianity you have to owe an allegiance to just one god. The Japanese don't like that, owing allegiance to a Gaizin god.

Or maybe you can keep Shintoism as a cultural tradition?

You are certainly right in pointing out that Christianity requires total allegiance from its followers, which is a concept that was alien to the Japanese. This indeed might explain the lack of success of that religion, alongside with the political acumen of some of the Japanese leaders who understood the colonial interests behind the seemingly harmless tenets of Christianity (love one another, etc...)...

Next time I post, I will try to come up with some research on those aspects (especially how Christianity could have become more appealing to the Japanese). Fascinating subject!

 

[rcduggan]

This indeed might explain the lack of success of that religion, alongside with the political acumen of some of the Japanese leaders who understood the colonial interests behind the seemingly harmless tenets of Christianity (love one another, etc...)...

There were tens of thousands of converts near Nagasaki on Kyushu, which IIRC was the main center of Kirishitan worship after the Tokugawa banned Christianity and missionaries. It did have some success, and several bakufu did convert in the 17th century. But the Tokugawa persecution ensured that Christianity would lose almost all ground in Japan in the ensuing centuries.

 

[EstSolder]

Maybe this:

It was in Wikipedia. Japan would look like after ww2, but I think happily not. If Japan would look like there were be 2 Japans on time of Cold War.

 

[Sam]

How can we prevent Japan from developing as a united nation, containing a multitude of independent nations and city states held loosely together with some form of weak central force, similar to the German Confederation?

How would the lack of a strong Japan affect the developments in Asia and how much further would the Russians get into China? Would the European powers view the weak Japan as a possible trading station, perfect terrain for proxy wars or as a new colonial frontier?

I'm not sure that a divided Japan would be necessarily much weaker than the unified country of OTL. I'm not a huge fan of the whole "Interstate competion drove European domination of the world" thesis, but it does seem to me that the institutions that grow out of such competion can be easily applied to overseas expansion.

Assuming, for the sake of argument, both that this is true and that such institutions are developed in balkanised Japan. Even if the country is divided into four or five pieces, each piece will be roughly comparable to the Netherlands. Given that, in the absence of Tokugawa isolation, these states will be as developed as any in Europe, they will be serious competitors in the colonial game.

Given the above, how far can they go? After 1750 or so, both Indonesia and the Phillipines seem destined to fall under Japanese dominion, and I could see any one such state having a good shot at India. After 1880 or so, we will also see Japanese colonies in Africa and possibly China. In fact I could see some variant of Japanese as the worlds leading language(s).

 

[Louis XI]

I have just read a very interesting article about Christianity in Japan:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirishitan

The Japanese at first took Catholicism for some sort of new sect of Buddhism. This made the task of missionaries easier.

However, "the uncompromising Xavier took to the streets denouncing, among other things, infanticide, idolatry and homosexuality (the last being widely accepted at the time). Misunderstandings were inevitable."

-"By the end of the sixteenth century, the Japanese mission had become trhe largest overseas Christian community that was not under the rule of a European power".

-"Accepted on a national scale, Christianity was also successful among different social groups from the poor to the rich, peasants, traders, sailors, warriors, or courtesans. Most of the daily activities of the Church were done by Japanese from the beginning, giving the Japanese Church a native face, and this was one of the reasons for its success."

By 1590, one half of Jesuits in Japan were Japanese.

-"Nagasaki was called the Rome of Japan and most of its inhabitants were Christians. By 1611 it had ten churches."

-"By 1587, Hideyoshi had become alarmed. Not because of too many converts, but rather because Christian lords repeatedly ovdersaw forced conversions of retainers and commoners, that they had garrisoned the city of Nagasaki, that they participated in the slave trade of other Japanese and, apparently offending Hideyoshi's Buddhist sentiments, that they allowed the slaughter of horses and oxen for food."

-"Between 1557 and 1620, eighty-six Daimyos were baptized, and many more were sympatrhetic to the Christians."

-"From the correpondence between the Portuguese King Joao III and the Vatican Pope of the period, it is written that the Christian Daimyos sold women into slavery for the Jesuits' gunpowder at a going rate of 50 baptized Japanese girls for a barrel of saltpeter. As many as 500,000 Japanese girls were sold on the slave markets and shipped to South America and Europe."

-"In 1567, Hideyoshi Toyotomi called the marrano Gaspar Coelho to command to stop slave trade of Japanese women and bring back all the Japanese."

Tokugawa Ieyasu was not as lenient as his predecessor. He demanded the expulsion of all European missionaries and the execution of all converts. The systematic persecution began in 1614.

-"The Shogunate was concerned about a possible invasion by colonial powers, which had previously occurred in the New World and the Philippines."

 

[rcduggan]

I have just read a very interesting article about Christianity in Japan:

Exactly my point earlier in the thread. So would no persecution have lead to a a Christian Japan, and / or a division on religious lines (Catholic daimyo and Buddhist-Shinto daimyo fighting against each other)?