Could Toyotomi have conquered Korea? China? India? Persia?

What could Japan have conquered?

  • None of the below

    Votes: 40 37.7%
  • Korea

    Votes: 65 61.3%
  • China

    Votes: 1 0.9%
  • Southeast Asia

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • India

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Persia

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    106
Even if Japan scinicizes to please it's newly conquered lands in China, this pisses the Japanese off;
Japanese have been sedentary farmers for 2000 years and been writing Chinese Buddhist and Confucian works for 1000 years. If a Chinese scholar of 1640s is offered a choice of a Manchu employer or a Japanese one, who'd he prefer? Would Japanese demand that Chinese cut their hair?
Japanese were already sinicized to an extent the Manchu were not.
 
Japanese have been sedentary farmers for 2000 years and been writing Chinese Buddhist and Confucian works for 1000 years. If a Chinese scholar of 1640s is offered a choice of a Manchu employer or a Japanese one, who'd he prefer? Would Japanese demand that Chinese cut their hair?
Japanese were already sinicized to an extent the Manchu were not.
The only problem I can see with the Japanese would be feudalism.It would compete with the gentry elite.They might also take land from gentry.
 
The problem with conquers of China is that they eventually become Chinese themselves, if Japan conquered China it would have a Chinese agenda in a generation or two.
 
For Japan to carry such a large venture successfully,I think it is essential that they further centralize the country before attempting to conquer China.

I think the best plan would be to create a navy and raid the Chinese coast Wokou style.Apart from badly weakening the Chinese economy and thus accelerating Ming collapse,this would enable the army to keep it's edge.The loot from raiding the Chinese coast would allow the folks in charge of Japan to boost the economy as well as to maintain a large standing military force which could be used to centralize the country.I highly doubt ruling Japan by various fiefs is an efficient idea.I also don't think the Chinese gentry elite would like having the country divided in fiefs either,as this will likely take away their position as local administrators of different regions.For a successful rule of China,cooperation of the gentry elite is essential,and this can only be gained by co-opting them into local government.
The Manchu DID divide China in fiefs - to Chinese (Wu Sangui and the other two Feudatories). For some reason, Manchu princes and tribal chiefs had their Banners, but did not get fiefs in China.
How did the Manchu get their princes and tribal chiefs to accept the Emperor and his government of Chinese officials?
 
The Manchu DID divide China in fiefs - to Chinese (Wu Sangui and the other two Feudatories). For some reason, Manchu princes and tribal chiefs had their Banners, but did not get fiefs in China.
How did the Manchu get their princes and tribal chiefs to accept the Emperor and his government of Chinese officials?
Only a small portion of territory,Yunnan,Guangdong and Fujian were granted as fiefs to the three feudatories.Unless the Japanese have fully centralized before conquering China,whoever's in charge of Japan will most likely be forced to subdivide most of the country into fiefs as was the custom in Japan.

As for your question,the Jurchens had a practice of integrating Chinese traitors into their administration early in their rise to power.They also adopted a lot of Chinese practices such as centralized rule early on.The Jurchen princes and chiefs also didn't have any fiefs,at least not the way the Japanese did so to speak early on.The power of the Jurchen nobility was balanced by the power of the Chinese traitors and their armies.
 
Only a small portion of territory,Yunnan,Guangdong and Fujian were granted as fiefs to the three feudatories.Unless the Japanese have fully centralized before conquering China,whoever's in charge of Japan will most likely be forced to subdivide most of the country into fiefs as was the custom in Japan.
How centralized were Manchu before conquering China? Even if the Toyotomi vassals get to keep their ancestral fiefs in Japan, Toyotomi might instead reward the daimyo for their armies and personal service in China with staple or money stipends.
 
How centralized were Manchu before conquering China? Even if the Toyotomi vassals get to keep their ancestral fiefs in Japan, Toyotomi might instead reward the daimyo for their armies and personal service in China with staple or money stipends.
I'd say the Jurchens were fairly centralized by the time they conquered cities from the Ming in Liaodong.From that moment on,they actively recruited traitors from the Chinese to help them administrate territories as well as to swell their ranks.Unlike the Japanese,the Jurchens could not have become the power they have become without the help of these traitors since the lack the expertise and the numbers to administrate Chinese territories or to make equipment for war.

As for the Japanese,the thing is I'm not sure why the daimyos and the samurais would accept stipends.I'm pretty sure that they would want the Japanese model to be exported to China.They afterall are much accustomed to feudalism and that they control most of the army.

I do think though that it is possible that the Toyotomis can do a William the Conqueror style subdivision of the country,with much of the land still retained by the Toyotomis themselves.

What I'm really interested in would be whether the Toyotomis will continue the charade of having puppet emperors from the House of Yamato.They most likely will still have them within the initial generations after the conquest,but afterwards?There's plenty of examples within China of having the emperor abdicate and that the Japanese elite might be sinicized enough to accept it.
 
Last edited:
Japanese have been sedentary farmers for 2000 years and been writing Chinese Buddhist and Confucian works for 1000 years. If a Chinese scholar of 1640s is offered a choice of a Manchu employer or a Japanese one, who'd he prefer? Would Japanese demand that Chinese cut their hair?
Japanese were already sinicized to an extent the Manchu were not.
First, there is no garuntee that Manchuria would rise to conquer China and contest it with our hypothetical Japanese conquest of China. Because butterflies.
Second, Manchuria has, as of 1640 an 800 year period of scinicization under the (arguably only half Manchu) Liao and Jin dynasties. That is not much behind Japan.
Third, is Japan really that similar to Ming China? Does Japan place a focus on bureaucracy? No. Japan places a focus on its warrior culture far more than the Manchus do, so much so that by the 1600s, samurai were already on their way to becoming the administrative branch of the Japanese government. Will the Manchus replace the Chinese beauraucracy with a warrior class? As history has proven to us twice, they will preserve the local Confucian beauraucracy.
Finally, given the Han psyche of the time, choosing between Japan and Manchuria would be like choosing between a hanging and a beheading. The anwser is simple--you serve the local Han warlord until the warlord is defeated. Then you surrender to whoever who has conquered the province.
No one will and no one has conquered China without scinicizing. Japan of the 1600s has not scinicized enough.
 
Last edited:
First, there is no garuntee that Manchuria would rise to conquer China and contest it with our hypothetical Japanese conquest of China. Because butterflies.
Second, Manchuria has, as of 1640 an 800 year period of scinicization under the (arguably only half Manchu) Liao and Jin dynasties. That is not much behind Japan.
Third, is Japan really that similar to Ming China? Does Japan place a focus on bureaucracy? No. Japan places a focus on its warrior culture far more than the Manchus do, so much so that by the 1600s, samurai were already on their way to becoming the administrative branch of the Japanese government. Will the Manchus replace the Chinese beauraucracy with a warrior class? As history has proven to us twice, they will preserve the local Confucian beauraucracy.
Finally, given the Han psyche of the time, choosing between Japan and Manchuria would be like choosing between a hanging and a beheading. The anwser is simple--you serve the local Han warlord until the warlord is defeated. Then you surrender to whoever who has conquered the province.
No one will and no one has conquered China without scinicizing. Japan of the 1600s has not scinicized enough.
I don't think you can say that Manchuria had 800 years of sinicization.The Jurchens in Manchuria were semi-nomadic before the rise of the Aisin-Gioro.Some of them like the Wild Jurchens seemed to be even more primitive.It's the Jurchens who moved into urban areas that were 'sinicized' so to speak.
 
I don't think you can say that Manchuria had 800 years of sinicization.The Jurchens in Manchuria were semi-nomadic before the rise of the Aisin-Gioro.Some of them like the Wild Jurchens seemed to be even more primitive.It's the Jurchens who moved into urban areas that were 'sinicized' so to speak.
The Liao dynasty can be argued to be mongol, be even they scinicized, despite being much more lassiez faire. The Jin on the other hand is a complete different story. The Jin were definitely Manchus, yet they preserved much of northern Song culture and religon, including a branch of Taoism and a earlier version of Ci. I think I can safely say the Jin were Scinicized. If you discount the Liao, this still means the Manchus have had 700 years of scinicization.
 
The Liao dynasty can be argued to be mongol, be even they scinicized, despite being much more lassiez faire. The Jin on the other hand is a complete different story. The Jin were definitely Manchus, yet they preserved much of northern Song culture and religon, including a branch of Taoism and a earlier version of Ci. I think I can safely say the Jin were Scinicized. If you discount the Liao, this still means the Manchus have had 700 years of scinicization.
The ones that actually remained in Manchuria doesn't seem to have sinicized prior to the rise of the Aisin-Gioro.
 
I don't think you can say that Manchuria had 800 years of sinicization.The Jurchens in Manchuria were semi-nomadic before the rise of the Aisin-Gioro.Some of them like the Wild Jurchens seemed to be even more primitive.It's the Jurchens who moved into urban areas that were 'sinicized' so to speak.

The Manchus were alien, but legitimate, and went out of their way to respect Han customs and Confucian ideology? Let us all laugh hysterically at the idea of the Japanese doing that.
 
The Manchus were alien, but legitimate, and went out of their way to respect Han customs and Confucian ideology? Let us all laugh hysterically at the idea of the Japanese doing that.

Considering you did have lots of Chinese influences in Japanese culture, it wouldn't be that much a stretch, you didn't chauvinistic attitudes against Chinese culture until much later. The only distinctly Japanese features that might be attempted be important into a theoretical Japanese ruled, is the emperor being descended from divinity than the mandate of heaven the idea of feudalism mixed with bureaucracy in Japan, and maybe some abstract expansion of the Shogunate system with provinces still have the hereditary or semi-hereditary governors with Chinese daimyo as it were, or maybe even some Japanese given Chinese land.

Granted any of that happening would be almost flat out impossible, I still wouldn't see the Japanese rejecting Chinese customs and Confucianism wholesale.
 
The Manchus were alien, but legitimate, and went out of their way to respect Han customs and Confucian ideology? Let us all laugh hysterically at the idea of the Japanese doing that.
I wouldn't say they went out of their way to respect Han culture (frex the queues) but that they didn't seek to uproot Han systems of government, so it was easier for them to replace the Ming. Sort of like replacing who's on top rather than reorganizing society from the bottom up.
 
Westernisation doesn't really mean much in a pre-industrial era.
Being Westernized means you've adopted their economic principles,science and philosophies--as well as continuing to do so like Russia.Such that you are not in danger of getting behind since you would have people that are willing to research as well as to learn the most up to date information from the west.

Western navies by the 1700s was definitely better than anything you can find in the Far East.Similarly,the Qing armies were no where as fully equipped with firearms as the western armies.A lot of them were either armed with outdated firearms or with melee weapons.
 
Last edited:
As for the Japanese,the thing is I'm not sure why the daimyos and the samurais would accept stipends.
Most of the samurai did accept stipends in 17th century.
In Sengoku times, most samurai were landholders who lived in their villages and only left when mobilized for wars.
Over 17th century, most samurai were dispossessed of their lands and made landless employees who lived in castle towns.
They somehow accepted it.
I'm pretty sure that they would want the Japanese model to be exported to China.They afterall are much accustomed to feudalism and that they control most of the army.
They might wish for it, but they did not export it even into Japan. Tokugawa bakufu changed the feudalism thoroughly.
And Toyotomi started it. Like uprooting Tokugawa and other daimyo with their samurai. A lot of samurai did get new fiefs - but these were no longer ancestral lands with established land claim.
 
The only way the Manchu could conquer China was by large scale defections of Chinese armies. Even after Wu Sangui joined the Manchu and they captured Beijing in May-June 1644, the Manchu did not decide to try and conquer China until autumn 1644 - until then, they considered taking their loot and going home.
And in autumn 1644, the whole army of Manchus, including that of Wu Sangui, was just 250 000 men, against the million men of Southern Ming.
The Manchu victory in 1645 campaign was possible because large armies defending central China defected to Manchu.

How would Toyotomi Hideyoshi treat defecting Chinese armies?
 
Top