Culture and Economy of a modern-day Japanese Empire

I was intrigued by this the other day. Let's suppose that the Japanese Empire was able to keep up the Taisho Era and completely establish democracy in their realm. Formosa and Korea become integrated parts of a federal state.

What does the culture of the country look like in comparison to today? Language status? Economic strength?
 
It would likely still be the 2nd largest economy and may (even if only for awhile) actually become the largest economy.

In terms of culture Taiwan would likely resemble the rest of the Home Islands thsemsleves, just with more local traditions and festivals and a
minority of who did'nt speak Japanese as a first language.

Korea, well it depends on exactly how Japanese politics develop, and how the governing system is set-up* their will likely remain a permanent
group of people favoring independence and another group who want more autonomy than others have.
While Japanese would likely be taught in schools as a requirement, Korea would end up being bilingual, with most people speaking Japanese
and Korean and a small group who refuse to speak Japanese at all.
I expect it would keep alot of its traditions and beliefs and stuff as well, though their would inevitably be adoption of those from Japan itself*.

Depending on the set-up it would at best resemble the United States, though I suspect that Korea would end up being comparable to OTL Québec.


*That is it a three-state Federation, or are Japan and Korea divided into multiple states.
**It's also likely that some Korean traditions and holidays would be adopted by the rest of Japan as well.
 
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Well, I think Karafuto and the South Seas mandate will come to resemble te bulk of the country demographically.
 

loughery111

Banned
I was intrigued by this the other day. Let's suppose that the Japanese Empire was able to keep up the Taisho Era and completely establish democracy in their realm. Formosa and Korea become integrated parts of a federal state.

What does the culture of the country look like in comparison to today? Language status? Economic strength?

One assumes this precludes the attempt to take down the rest of East Asia?

Assuming that, they're easily the world's second power in the present day if we hold the rest of world history constant. But the butterflies in Europe are... large.
 
It's very hard to say. The economy would depend greatly on Japan's ties with other countries, both in East Asia and in the West. By "keeping up the Taisho era", I assume you mean that Japan avoids its gradual entanglements in Manchuria, and certainly its full-scale war in China. This would require scaling down the power of the military, which was happening in the 1920s, and public opinion turning against war, which was also happening to some extent. The challenge is maintaining this after the Great Depression, which is the point at which militarism resurges. Japan's campaigns in Manchuria were motivated by an odd mix of prestige and resource-hungriness. It's quite a challenge to have people convinced that modernisation can be achieved by trade, especially when relations with the United States in particular and the West in general were quite fraught.

If this does succeed though, I'd expect relations to eventually thaw with the Western powers, and for there to be an uneasy truce with Nationalist China. Japan's economic rise would be less meteoric than it was IOTL post-war, I think. There would certainly not be the economic aid from the United States, and trade would continue to be focused on China. Moreover, a great part of Japan's post-war miracle IOTL can be ascribed to Yoshida Shigeru's decision to consciously avoid rearmament, which would drain the country of resources. It's heads up whether Japan ITTL devotes a too large proportion of its economy to the military. My guess as regards Japan's economic status in the present day ITTL is that it will still be less powerful than that of most of the West, but will be stable and functional. Hard to say; too many butterflies.

Culturally, it would probably still be quite socially conservative. The main difference would be the lack of Westernisation, which would be most striking in the cityscapes, tastes in decoration, clothing, etc.

Politically, I imagine that it'd shift more and more towards the British model. There would probably be an unspoken agreement that the Emperor doesn't interfere in politics, and the appointed Prime Minister would be leader of the party with the greatest number of seats. Similar to OTL, but less explicitly defined. You could expect to still have the aristocracy in place. The elephant in the room is the status of the military.

As a student of the Japanese language, I find it fascinating how different Japanese would be in this timeline. Hiragana and katakana would both be used interchangeably, for example. Formal documents would retain their classical language. For that matter, would shintaiji (character simplification) be introduced, or would Japan continue to use traditional Chinese characters? Depending on the state of nationalism, loan words may be avoided, and Japanese may have more words for pieces of technology, like Chinese does. If Korea and Taiwan become bilingual, they would probably have distinctive accents and dialects, and almost certainly a lot of Korean words would become commonplace in Chosen-Japanese.

At least, that's my speculation. It's my first post, so I may need to acclimatise.
 
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