Challenge: Ming Japan

With a POD after 1550, make the Ming dynasty rule Japan. It could be a conquered province, or anything else, just there has to be Chinese occupiers on Kyushu, Shikoku, and Honshu at least.

How could this happen, realistically? The POD can be as late as you want. So say you wanted Southern Ming to invade Japan, that would work, just you would need to explain how.

Ready.... go!
 

Typo

Banned
The Ming believes the Japanese to be a continuing threat after the invasion of Korea, and puts a huge amount of resouces into taking Japan itself. After the fall of the Ming on the mainland, which was bound to happen (maybe the Manchus don't rule China ITL though), the Ming remenant flees to Japan, much like how they fled to Taiwan OTL.
 
The Ming believes the Japanese to be a continuing threat after the invasion of Korea, and puts a huge amount of resouces into taking Japan itself. After the fall of the Ming on the mainland, which was bound to happen (maybe the Manchus don't rule China ITL though), the Ming remenant flees to Japan, much like how they fled to Taiwan OTL.


Who would take the place of the Manchus though? My two ideas would be the Shun dynasty (or a TTL equivalent) or the Mongols.

But didn't someone post something a while back about Southern Ming conquering Japan? Maybe if they survive and shift focus to a large navy, they can think about attacking Japan as retribution for the Imjin War? :confused:
 
Impossible! the chinese would never be able to conquer Japan. You would need a POD so early it would butterfly away the ming.
 
A trend I've noticed in EU3 is that Ming will sometimes inherite Japan through dynastic connections. I'm not sure how plausible that is, though.
 
A trend I've noticed in EU3 is that Ming will sometimes inherite Japan through dynastic connections. I'm not sure how plausible that is, though.

Inheriting realms due to dynastic connections was a remnant of feudal Europe, and as far as I know it didn't happen outside Europe much. Certainly not between different cultures.

It's called Europa Universalis, after all.
 

Typo

Banned
Who would take the place of the Manchus though? My two ideas would be the Shun dynasty (or a TTL equivalent) or the Mongols.

But didn't someone post something a while back about Southern Ming conquering Japan? Maybe if they survive and shift focus to a large navy, they can think about attacking Japan as retribution for the Imjin War? :confused:
Most likely the Shun, all that really needed to happen was for whoever to have garrisoned the Great Wall to support the new government.
 
Impossible! the chinese would never be able to conquer Japan. You would need a POD so early it would butterfly away the ming.

Ahem - proper arguments, please?

Whilst I agree that it would propably be *very* hard to get the Ming to conquer Japan with a POD no earlier than 1550, I'd still say that the Ming during their zenith were definitely capable of invading and conquering Japan, and Japan was definitely not some kind of politically monolithic unconquerable fortress at this point.

When it comes to the manpower, naval power, technology, levels of organisation and economic power that Ming dynasty China had during its heyday, I don't see a reason why the Ming *wouldn't* be capable of conquering Japan at that point.

However, the problem here is to give the Ming a good reason to invade and conquer Japan.
 
Ahem - proper arguments, please?

Whilst I agree that it would propably be *very* hard to get the Ming to conquer Japan with a POD no earlier than 1550, I'd still say that the Ming during their zenith were definitely capable of invading and conquering Japan, and Japan was definitely not some kind of politically monolithic unconquerable fortress at this point.

When it comes to the manpower, naval power, technology, levels of organisation and economic power that Ming dynasty China had during its heyday, I don't see a reason why the Ming *wouldn't* be capable of conquering Japan at that point.

However, the problem here is to give the Ming a good reason to invade and conquer Japan.

Earlier Imjin Wars with a much, much, much stronger China?
 
While I'm going to acknowledge beforehand that this suggestion is unlikely (not unlike the whole premise though, really), its just something I'm throwing out there.

Historically, the Ming attempted to get Toyotomi Hideyoshi to halt his campaigns in Korea by placating him with the title of King of Japan. Toyotomi historically declined this, ostensibly because he felt it would be disrespectful to the Emperor, to whom he still owed at least theoretical, if not actual, fealty. Obviously one can assume that other factors featured in his decision besides respect for the Emperor, but it would not be prudent to simply dismiss this as an important factor. In any case, however, I am digressing...

Perhaps one could make an argument for Toyotomi Hideyoshi accepting this title from the Ming court. He had often felt scorned by his title of Regent, which he saw (rather correctly) as a consolation prize for being denied the title of Shogun, owing to the common knowledge of his low birth. Had he accepted his Ming title, it is theoretically possible for the Ming to make political inroads into his court, perhaps in the form of brides, consorts, or concubines. In such a scenario it is rather more likely that each dynasty will endure past its historical end-point, as one of the major contributing factors in the final decline of the Ming was their being forced to exhaust the imperial treasury funding Korean resistance to Toyotomi's continuing invasions, and a strengthening of Toyotomi's dynasty with Chinese ties could cause a different result at the Battle of Sekigehara, or perhaps even preclude Tokugawa Ieyasu's coup entirely. With such inroads in place, and increased longevity for each respective dynasty, it is possible that the Chinese and Japanese courts will become more close, perhaps even to the point of joining somehow. In this way it would be theoretically possible to achieve a Ming Japan.

As I said before, this isnt a 'particularly' likely scenario, but its the best and possibly most-creative-while-still-remaining-grounded I can give you.
 
While I'm going to acknowledge beforehand that this suggestion is unlikely (not unlike the whole premise though, really), its just something I'm throwing out there.

Historically, the Ming attempted to get Toyotomi Hideyoshi to halt his campaigns in Korea by placating him with the title of King of Japan. Toyotomi historically declined this, ostensibly because he felt it would be disrespectful to the Emperor, to whom he still owed at least theoretical, if not actual, fealty. Obviously one can assume that other factors featured in his decision besides respect for the Emperor, but it would not be prudent to simply dismiss this as an important factor. In any case, however, I am digressing...

Perhaps one could make an argument for Toyotomi Hideyoshi accepting this title from the Ming court. He had often felt scorned by his title of Regent, which he saw (rather correctly) as a consolation prize for being denied the title of Shogun, owing to the common knowledge of his low birth. Had he accepted his Ming title, it is theoretically possible for the Ming to make political inroads into his court, perhaps in the form of brides, consorts, or concubines. In such a scenario it is rather more likely that each dynasty will endure past its historical end-point, as one of the major contributing factors in the final decline of the Ming was their being forced to exhaust the imperial treasury funding Korean resistance to Toyotomi's continuing invasions, and a strengthening of Toyotomi's dynasty with Chinese ties could cause a different result at the Battle of Sekigehara, or perhaps even preclude Tokugawa Ieyasu's coup entirely. With such inroads in place, and increased longevity for each respective dynasty, it is possible that the Chinese and Japanese courts will become more close, perhaps even to the point of joining somehow. In this way it would be theoretically possible to achieve a Ming Japan.

As I said before, this isnt a 'particularly' likely scenario, but its the best and possibly most-creative-while-still-remaining-grounded I can give you.


That's a cool idea... maybe due to closer ties, the Ming inherit Japan?
 
I'd say it's more possible to have the Mings go to Japan after losing ground in China and then end up as the Shogun of Japan. Some people are just underestimating the role of Tennou in Japanese political culture as the source of legitimation of power. While maybe a bit doable, overthrowing Japanese Royalty won't even going to be moderate rated task to do, considering how that very idea would be taken by the Japanese....
 
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