Discussion: Japanese colonization of (pre-Columbian) America

Because "samurai in Americas" and "Native Americans with samurai-esque armor" are ideas too awesome to pass up. This idea is inspired both by phildup's magnificent TL and by this thread.

Since somebody already started a TL similar to this idea, but with the Chinese, I think I might explore another possibility: this time with Japan. I know it's a bit of a stretch, but I refuse to believe that this is outright ASB.

So...

When are the best possible timeframes, before 1492, for Japan to discover the Americas themselves and somehow set up colonies there? The Kurile-Alaska route would be the most easiest route, obviously. But assuming the Japanese explorers become curious enough to go further, how long before they reach OTL US Northwest or even California?

Have your own ideas? Feel free to discuss here.
 
If I recall, the current that makes the Kuril-Alaska route so good can also just as easily lead you to the Pacific Northwest and as far south as Baja California.

The biggest issue is simply, "why?" I think at a minimum, you need to have Hokkaido and Sakhalin entirely colonised by Japan before they'll consider looking beyond the Home Islands. Japan mostly ignored those islands until the 19th century or so. To have a Japan that looks outward, I think the best way is to have the Mongols conquer Japan and the new Japanese state that emerges ends up centralised and outward-looking. Once you do that, it's plausible Japan could expand in Kamchatka and eventually to Alaska and the good lands in the Pacific Northwest.

Why they would be there? Well, the Japanese had a thing for exiling political opponents of the leadership. So have people get exiled further and further, and bring their retinues along with them. Eventually, you won't be getting an exile in Kyushu or Sado Island or wherever as exiles in Japan typically did, you'll be going to Kamchatka, Alaska, or if you're lucky, OTL Vancouver or Seattle area.
 
I actually think Post-Columbian contact is more plausible. After all, it's a lot easier to go to America if you know it's there...
 
If I recall, the current that makes the Kuril-Alaska route so good can also just as easily lead you to the Pacific Northwest and as far south as Baja California.

The biggest issue is simply, "why?" I think at a minimum, you need to have Hokkaido and Sakhalin entirely colonised by Japan before they'll consider looking beyond the Home Islands. Japan mostly ignored those islands until the 19th century or so. To have a Japan that looks outward, I think the best way is to have the Mongols conquer Japan and the new Japanese state that emerges ends up centralised and outward-looking. Once you do that, it's plausible Japan could expand in Kamchatka and eventually to Alaska and the good lands in the Pacific Northwest.

This is where I'm stuck. I'm trying to find a good reason for Japan to explore the seas in this timeframe. I agree though that the easiest POD would be a more successful Mongol invasion, not exactly a full conquest (since it might open a big can of butterflies) but enough success that it will shake Japan to its core and makes her think things over in a long term.

Why they would be there? Well, the Japanese had a thing for exiling political opponents of the leadership. So have people get exiled further and further, and bring their retinues along with them. Eventually, you won't be getting an exile in Kyushu or Sado Island or wherever as exiles in Japan typically did, you'll be going to Kamchatka, Alaska, or if you're lucky, OTL Vancouver or Seattle area.

This is also a good pretext for colonization, just like what happened to Australia.

I actually think Post-Columbian contact is more plausible. After all, it's a lot easier to go to America if you know it's there...

But what I wanted is for the Japanese to influence Native American culture (and probably to save them from mass death, to a certain extent) before Columbus' arrives. The concept of "venturing into unchartered territory" has always been an interesting one to me.

Besides, don't you want to see Native Americans slashing katanas upon the conquistadores? :p
 
This is where I'm stuck. I'm trying to find a good reason for Japan to explore the seas in this timeframe. I agree though that the easiest POD would be a more successful Mongol invasion, not exactly a full conquest (since it might open a big can of butterflies) but enough success that it will shake Japan to its core and makes her think things over in a long term.

I had an idea about the Mongols pushing Japanese leadership to the far north of Japan before they finish their conquest (because Japan is mountainous and will put up a TON of resistance, it could take a while), maybe conquering a part of Hokkaido (around Hakodate or so) in the process before the Mongols push forward and take over that region. Eventually Hokkaido would end up under the full control, and likely Sakhalin from there onward.

From there, maybe have fur become a major good in Japan, and once the fur in Hokkaido and Sakhalin are depleted, you get even more expansion along the coast, to Kamchatka (Kamchatka will end up becoming Japanese colonised TTL, that's a given), and eventually to Alaska and beyond.
 
Because "samurai in Americas" and "Native Americans with samurai-esque armor" are ideas too awesome to pass up. This idea is inspired both by phildup's magnificent TL and by this thread.

Since somebody already started a TL similar to this idea, but with the Chinese, I think I might explore another possibility: this time with Japan. I know it's a bit of a stretch, but I refuse to believe that this is outright ASB.

So...

When are the best possible timeframes, before 1492, for Japan to discover the Americas themselves and somehow set up colonies there? The Kurile-Alaska route would be the most easiest route, obviously. But assuming the Japanese explorers become curious enough to go further, how long before they reach OTL US Northwest or even California?

Have your own ideas? Feel free to discuss here.

I don't quite understand why everybody feels that the Mongol conquest is necessary for Japan going North to Kurile-Alaska.
Well, maybe centralization be of some help, but how will this make going North more probable? I am not sure here...

By the way for me it seems pretty natural and not ASB if Japan would go exploring North and accidentally discovers America in some ATL.
Actually I wonder why the Japanese didn't make it in OTL.

If there were some circumstances that discovery might have happened:

- first; some Northern Japanese clans settled in the even more Northern islands and territories like Sakhalin and even further. So first they got accustomed to the Northern climate, frosts I mean - what kind of clothes to wear and things like that.

- second; these Northern Japanese being warlike and enterprising realized that it was a good business to trade furs with the locals or/and extort these furs by sheer force or/and extracting an annual tribute from the tribes (like the Russians did much later in these lands).
* Here some little Ice Age might come handy - meaning lower temperature in Japan, China and other countries which would provoke great demand for furs.

You don't need too much centralization for that. First that might be private enterprises. The Russians did that kind of things in the European North long long before any centralized polity appeared:
- a few hundred Russian guys got together and said: "Lets go North/East and rob some locals out of their furs".
Which they did.

But soon some authority would realize how profitable that was and get this fur trade/loot under control. Usually some Prince calculates that permanent taxation in furs is more profitable than primitive one-time pillaging/raping.

When the Japanese found out that in the North America there were some places with warmer climate (to the South of Alaska) the movement of the Japanese and permanent settlement is pretty much inevitable.
 
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I don't quite understand why everybody feels that the Mongol conquest is necessary for Japan going North to Kurile-Alaska.
Well, maybe centralization be of some help, but how will this make going North more probable? I am not sure here...

By the way for me it seems pretty natural and not ASB if Japan would go exploring North and accidentally discovers America in some ATL.
Actually I wonder why the Japanese didn't make it in OTL.

It's because they'll be forced more and more north. Think about it like the Southern Ming. China didn't want to (or was unable to) conquer or colonize Taiwan. However, when the Qing swept south, they fled there and took over anyways.

Likewise, if the Mongols are coming, it's likely that the Japanese will flee away from them - to the north. IOTL, it wasn't exactly easy to colonize Hokkaido, much less Sakhalin, Kurils, or even America!

Also, some Japanese ships traveled north, probably. But what did they find? Frozen lands, with nothing they wanted. So they chose not to go further.
 
What I'm planing for my TL is not colonization by a Japanese state at least not in the 1500's. I'm toying with some ideas, What i'm considering is that the Japan that I seek to have, is one that can contain it's domestic issues much better than the Tokugawa or the Toyotomi. So there is neither general isolation or a mass crack down on Christians, but an interest in trade and exploration.

To that end I want to explore the possibility of Japanese Catholics willing to go to New Spain, as settlers and middle men. Japanese ships did if I remember correctly reach Mexico although they were western built. As for a later colonies's that depends on how my TL plays out in Europe. I currently have two things planned in that area, one Sebastiao of Portugal lives and there is no Iberian Union with Spain, two that Ivan Ivanovich lives and the Rurikids continue in Russia with no Time of Troubles.

As for colonies period I'm inspired by the Kakizai/Matsuemae in Hokkaido, in that clans are given rights to colonize and set up trade.
 
I'm not sure a successful Mongol conquest would be necessary. You could have a series of Emperors or Shoguns who adopt a deliberate policy of encouraging long-distance trade; then, however long a period of time afterwards, some Japanese government official says "Hey, I wonder if there are any resources to the north that might be good for trading?" and arranges to have an exploratory fleet sent off.
 
I'm not sure a successful Mongol conquest would be necessary. You could have a series of Emperors or Shoguns who adopt a deliberate policy of encouraging long-distance trade; then, however long a period of time afterwards, some Japanese government official says "Hey, I wonder if there are any resources to the north that might be good for trading?" and arranges to have an exploratory fleet sent off.

Possibly, but you'd need at first a minimum of Hokkaido and Sakhalin/Karafuto coming under definite control of the Japanese (i.e., more solid than pre-Meiji Japanese rule). Japanese colonisation of the New World would also involve (early) Japanese rule over those islands, parts of Siberia (Kamchatka at minimum, and from there however far inland the Japanese can get before they're stopped by the Russians/someone else). I think the Mongols are the best way to produce that shift in priorities for the Japanese to act different than OTL in this manner. The issue with your scenario, what resources are there in the north besides the fur trade? Industrial Japan could have needed the resources there, but in pre-industrial Japan, what would they have found of interest aside from fur?
 
Ainu "colonization" and possible East Asia-America trade through an Ainu medium is far, far more plausible than Japanese colonization.

Heh, maybe I should make a timeline about that.
 
Ainu "colonization" and possible East Asia-America trade through an Ainu medium is far, far more plausible than Japanese colonization.

Heh, maybe I should make a timeline about that.

How so? Looking at the Ainu OTL, they don't look more set up to do that than any other indigenous Siberian group. Maybe an Ainu group that falls under the Chinese sphere of influence like the Japanese did, but what would make them any more likely to do so than the Japanese themselves?
 
Besides, don't you want to see Native Americans slashing katanas upon the conquistadores? :p

Following Japanese colonization attempts however serious, in all likelihood, Japanese soldiers would probably end up slashing a lot of the first nations and no katanas would be used on the conquistadores at any point.

Secondly, any Japanese colonization is probably neatly and definitively nipped in the bud by the first semi-serious European colonial power that takes interest in the area. The Japanese despite a big effort in assimilating European technologies in the 16th and early 17th c. were just not competitive in any long-distance warfare or trading when measured against their European rivals.

Closer to home, they'd be more formidable, but that would require some deep PODs that would let them colonise the north of Honshu to a degree that out-migrationary pressures could develop.
 
How so? Looking at the Ainu OTL, they don't look more set up to do that than any other indigenous Siberian group. Maybe an Ainu group that falls under the Chinese sphere of influence like the Japanese did, but what would make them any more likely to do so than the Japanese themselves?
In a word: itaomachip.

All the way up to 1809 when the shogunate banned Ainu trade, Ainu traders on sewn boats up to 15 meters long, called itaomachip, linked Japan, Korea, and the Russian Far East. We know specifically that Japanese travelers and officials specifically recruited Ainu sailers and itaomachip to go to the Kuril Islands. And to quote a Smithsonian curator (emphasis mine)
Ainu trade and contacts with foreign and neighboring peoples [.....] extended all the way south into Japan on the one side, to Korea on the west and north to Sakhalin and the Amur basin and Siberia, as well as up the Kurile Islands to Kamchatka. So they were in a real wonderful sort of crossroads area of East Asia, maritime East Asia, and they were the people who traded and moved materials around that part of the world for probably the last thousand or maybe even two thousand years. In this room we see lots of trade materials that were brought into Ainu culture, enriched Ainu culture, and actually were transformed into what Ainu culture really stood for, much of it being foreign materials. They also were suppliers for the Japanese, bringing silks from China, down across the seaways into Japan, and moving other materials even across the Kurile Islands and up to Kamchatka. So they were great sailors and their boats were capable of open sea travel, and some may even wonder if they didn't get across the North Pacific to Northwest America.
 
In a word: itaomachip.

All the way up to 1809 when the shogunate banned Ainu trade, Ainu traders on sewn boats up to 15 meters long, called itaomachip, linked Japan, Korea, and the Russian Far East. We know specifically that Japanese travelers and officials specifically recruited Ainu sailers and itaomachip to go to the Kuril Islands. And to quote a Smithsonian curator (emphasis mine)

Japanese fishermen and other sailors occasionally washed up on the shores on the West Coast of North America. It was a one-way exchange, and I doubt for the Ainu it would be anything but a one way trip if they landed in North America (and they possibly did, along with quite a few others Japanese and otherwise who landed in the New World and never returned to their homeland).

Point being, I don't think the Ainu would colonise America in any way different than the Japanese would if they got there in the first place (which is plausible given the current). But maybe it's plausible, I'll admit that I never heard of this trade before now.
 
Point being, I don't think the Ainu would colonise America in any way different than the Japanese would if they got there in the first place (which is plausible given the current). But maybe it's plausible, I'll admit that I never heard of this trade before now.
It's more plausible than the Japanese, because unlike the Japanese the Ainu did regularly go far into the frozen north and northeast.
Also based on the context I'm guessing that the curator was implying that the Ainu did successfully return from Alaska/British Columbia to Hokkaido, though I could be wrong.
 
It's more plausible than the Japanese, because unlike the Japanese the Ainu did regularly go far into the frozen north and northeast.
Also based on the context I'm guessing that the curator was implying that the Ainu did successfully return from Alaska/British Columbia to Hokkaido, though I could be wrong.

I somehow doubt they would have, since if they were there, they were shipwrecked (like the Japanese fishermen in their same situation), and there would be no reason to trade with Alaskan or British Columbian natives, since they would have had the same things Kamchatkan or other Siberian natives of that region had so why risk going that much further to get the same stuff?

Was that just a matter of location, though? If the Japanese could have ended up in solid control over Hokkaido, why wouldn't they have done the same thing? And there were a bunch of separate Ainu-speaking groups in Northeast Asia, like the Ainu of Kamchatka weren't the same as the Ainu of Hokkaido.
 
I somehow doubt they would have, since if they were there, they were shipwrecked (like the Japanese fishermen in their same situation), and there would be no reason to trade with Alaskan or British Columbian natives, since they would have had the same things Kamchatkan or other Siberian natives of that region had so why risk going that much further to get the same stuff?
Alaskans have things Kamchatka is too south to have; walrus ivory, for example, as well as a larger otter population than in Kamchatka. I would imagine that the Ainu would be interested in them, if only for the possibility of selling them to East Asian state societies (think about how much elephant ivory and rhinoceros horns are valued in China even today). Meanwhile the Alaskans really, really needed iron (there was an iron trade in the Canadian/Alaskan arctic, actually, based on meteoric iron). And obviously the Chinese and Japanese have more iron than can be found in a million meteorites. So there is incentive for both sides. And if the Ainu go down to the PNW, which I find unlikely, there are complex chiefdoms. Maybe the Ainu introduce cold-resistant crops to them for some reason and they turn into small state societies, why the hell not.

Was that just a matter of location, though? If the Japanese could have ended up in solid control over Hokkaido, why wouldn't they have done the same thing? And there were a bunch of separate Ainu-speaking groups in Northeast Asia, like the Ainu of Kamchatka weren't the same as the Ainu of Hokkaido.
They could have, but it would be more challenging for the Japanese. The POD requires an earlier subjugation of the Ainu and Japanese adventurism in the north, and it's easier to experiment with the Ainu when they already lived and sailed in the north.
 
Possibly, but you'd need at first a minimum of Hokkaido and Sakhalin/Karafuto coming under definite control of the Japanese (i.e., more solid than pre-Meiji Japanese rule). Japanese colonisation of the New World would also involve (early) Japanese rule over those islands, parts of Siberia (Kamchatka at minimum, and from there however far inland the Japanese can get before they're stopped by the Russians/someone else). I think the Mongols are the best way to produce that shift in priorities for the Japanese to act different than OTL in this manner. The issue with your scenario, what resources are there in the north besides the fur trade? Industrial Japan could have needed the resources there, but in pre-industrial Japan, what would they have found of interest aside from fur?

Fur was pretty valuable, wasn't it? I could see the Japanese building a series of trading posts along the coast, and sailing along further and further to look for new supplies to trade for.
 
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