Japan turned into a European Protectorate

Say Japan doesn't modernize

Could Japan be turned into a European protectorate in the 19th century

What countries could turn Japan into a protectorate

What would be the impact on East Asia
 
Maybe a partition, since one country getting all of Japan probably wouldn't be acceptable. So Russia gets Hokkaido, France gets Kyushu, and Britain takes Honshu. Not sure who might get Shikoku--maybe Portugal, the Netherlands, or Spain, although all three countries are probably incapable of holding it. If it's post-ACW, then maybe the United States might grab it but that's debateable too. Maybe either Britain, Russia, or France.

Alternatively, maybe it could be a protectorate in all but name like Thailand, with Japan consisting of only Honshu with the rest being given to other powers. It would be a British client state in that case. In return, Russia would probably be given much more free reign in Manchuria and Korea.
 
Maybe a partition, since one country getting all of Japan probably wouldn't be acceptable. So Russia gets Hokkaido, France gets Kyushu, and Britain takes Honshu. Not sure who might get Shikoku--maybe Portugal, the Netherlands, or Spain, although all three countries are probably incapable of holding it. If it's post-ACW, then maybe the United States might grab it but that's debateable too. Maybe either Britain, Russia, or France.

Alternatively, maybe it could be a protectorate in all but name like Thailand, with Japan consisting of only Honshu with the rest being given to other powers. It would be a British client state in that case. In return, Russia would probably be given much more free reign in Manchuria and Korea.

I think most timelines that don't have Japan radically modernizing will end this way.
 
Maybe a partition, since one country getting all of Japan probably wouldn't be acceptable. So Russia gets Hokkaido, France gets Kyushu, and Britain takes Honshu. Not sure who might get Shikoku--maybe Portugal, the Netherlands, or Spain, although all three countries are probably incapable of holding it. If it's post-ACW, then maybe the United States might grab it but that's debateable too. Maybe either Britain, Russia, or France.
Would a condominium be possible
 
Maybe a partition, since one country getting all of Japan probably wouldn't be acceptable.

Why? The British got India. The Russians got Manchuria. The French got Vietnam whole (actually, the entire Indochina region if you count client states). Britain got Egypt under their effective control. Why can't Britain bring Japan into their sphere of influence whole if they find an un-westernized Japan and a willing Shogun?
 
I mean, America pretty much did this OTL post-WWII.

Funny thing about this. Truman rose in the Democratic Party machine and knew about and possibly was involved in bribing voters (the 1870s to 1930s were a lot of machine party politics... and to be honest I don't see what's wrong with bribing voters since some of them might not even show up if you give no clear incentive). Being a child of that, he came up with this idea that the UN should have Japan and not China as a permanent seat. True japan committed many war crimes.. But the logic was that Nationalist China would be able to hold onto the mainland for 3 decades at most before either falling into seven states from warlords or a communist takeover (this was a bit optimistic). Japan on the other hand would be de facto a US protectorate for decades to come and it would basically be a "free vote" for America. Even after the decades pass and Japan assumes independence, it would be ideologically converted into a more Anglophile thinking.

So before making this proposal public, he decided to see if he had Senate and international support. I have no idea how he intended to sell this to the American public after they were given a bunch of reasons to hate the Japanese, or maybe he forgot about them since testing public opinion didn't seem to be on the to-do list. Senators agreed through backroom dealing (politics was different back then). "OK Britain, how about an empowered Japan?" The British ambassador and Churchill basically laughed at the idea and pointed to the Hong Kong and Singapore atrocities. And the idea was quietly forgotten.

Fast forward. For several decades Japan was a de facto protectorate of USA. For awhile military governors had formal powers to veto the Japanese elected government which replaced the military junta (no one calls it a junta, but basically sometime after the Meji Restoration Emperors stopped doing the hard work of ruling and had the IJA run the show). After the Japanese PM was calling the shots, they still deferred to America for foreign policy for a long time. This no longer happens and they make their own decisions, but they are dominated by the Liberal Democratic Party. For whatever reason, the LDP has no defined ideology, but their PMs have consistent supported friendship with USA.
 
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