Chinese Japan

A Chinese-dominated Korea would be hard to pull as a scenario IMO.
Considering the fall of the Ming as a reason for their militaries to attempt occupation of various parts of Asia, Korea would be hard-pressed to send back any refugees, much less accept a foreign dynasty.
The reason is because the Manchus are right next to Korea and such a situation is extremely convenient for them to use the refugee crisis as an excuse to invade Korea.
This was what actually happens IOTL, where a neutral to pro-Ming stance by Korea leads to two consecutive invasions by the Manchus. So any larger refugee would not help.

If the situation was that the Han Chinese were to completely dominate Korea to invade Japan, it would look similar to Koryeo: a slight dynastic "consensus" by landing half-Korean, half-Chinese monarchs to power, with indirect political control, along with complete military control. Such a scenario may allow a Japan invaded by China and subsequently ruled by it.
 
As a parallel, however, Britain wasn't ever really a resource-rich country either, but it was constantly invaded by neighbors.
Britain/the area around England is a resource rich country compared to Scandinavia(it's also a pretty rich country during the Anglo-Saxon period compared to most of it's neighbours),and the Scandinavians aren't nomads--they are people who are experts at the time at seafaring.Britain is also closer to the continent than Japan ever was.
 
Last edited:
I actually think a Chinese conquest of Japan would be more successful the farther back in time you go.

I'm not particularly convinced that a China that faces no real nomad/northern threat would expand east towards Japan. Imperial Chinese expansionism generally has a logic behind it and that is to control trade routes and keep their profits/goods away from the hands of potential enemies. A 'stable' Han Dynasty continuation would probably continue to focus its expansion towards the caravan routes in Central Asia, much like the Tang did after their establishment.

Conversely, the Song were sort of 'forced' to focus on the sea both by its reliance on coastal and riverine fleets to defend itself, and its inability to obtain profit from the caravan routes due to its northern rivals. As such, not only did the Song promote maritime development, it also nurtured a large Chinese merchant fleet whose materiel and men formed a large and indispensable portion of the Song and Yuan navies.

The Han and Tang, not living in the same political circumstances as the Song, would have had no real incentive to encourage Chinese to go to the sea in the same way that the Song did (Chinese maritime trade during the Tang was mainly handled by Arabs, whose maritime knowledge would later by used against them by Song merchants). As such, it would take an inordinate amount of time and money for either Han or tang to develop naval infrastructure from scratch, which would present a massive barrier to any successful invasion of Japan by them.

As an example, the failure of Kublai's Japanese invasions were not simply because of unlucky timing, they were also because the Yuan had basically exhausted the 'naval manpower' pool that it had inherited from the Song in various conquests. This meant that its navy, which was so important in terms of landing supplies and reinforcements, found it exceedingly difficult to sustain the Mongol invasion force on Kyushu. The same problem occurred in Annam and Champa, where victorious Mongol armies were ultimately forced back because the navy simply could not bring in the supplies in a timely manner.
 
Top