Japan with no Meiji restoration?

So I was looking at some cool maps of Japan from the Tokugawa and was wondering what would Japan, and history, look like if there had been no Meiji Restoration? I imagine Korean independence would be possible.
 
Shogunate would still modernize and they did plan to invade Korea too. Japan still adopts modern technology but adopts less of western culture and trends. It would be interesting to see how the samurai develops into the modern era.
 
You could maybe avoid the restoration itself (the change in regime), but Japan is always going to have to open up and westernize to a large extent, even if under the shogunate.

As for Korea, I don't want to sound overly deterministic but I don't see Japanese imperialism as any less likely to develop. Unless you do a massive screw, it's pretty much inevitable. Maybe you can conceive a situation in which Japanese imperialism develops but Korea gets lucky and manages to stay independent in some way, but that's unlikely since Korea was a very logical target for annexation
 
Japan was unique. And even with the benefits that Japan had it was in no way a give that they would have industrialisation. It was just more likely.
Now if we look at Japan, and turn away from the romantic narrative of Meiji, the country actually started on its path in the 17 century. They did not just wake up one morning and decided too get some industries. (Just look at states that tried that).

The economy of contemporary Tokugawa Japan, had a high degree of centralization, an integrated market, and a advanced transport network. The Japanese merchant did not have to cope with internal toll barriers. Two-way trade between town and country was an established fact of Japanese life already in the seventeenth century. Technological progress, helped by a very high level of literacy, was a feature of Tokugawa agriculture which had a firmly established rate of growth long before the Meiji restoration. And, in so far as relevant, the Japanese elite in the seventeenth century held an active curiosity about western science and technology, now all these do not add up to a possibility of spontaneous industrialization. But the society and economy of pre-Meiji Japan gave her a great potentiality to respond to the opportunity.

Given these major structural trends a restored Imperial government or a continuation of the Bakumatsu will not change its development in a major way. Other things might, but not that.
 
Depends on exactly why the Meiji restoration didn't happen...

Remember, the Meiji Restoration was a series of fairly unlikely events that somehow beat the long odds and didn't implode, and there is almost as many facets that could singularly change it into a failed project as there were moving parts

Japan could wholesale have bought into a certain ideology, instead of cherry-picking, with absolutely no loyality towards any single one (other than a dislike towards the more socialistic bends, which makes sense when you consider that it was an oligarchy replacing an aristocracy), the American south could have dodged the Boll Weevil cotton plague, leaving Japan unable to unload their silk and cotton industry at worthwhile prices, any of the attempted revolts and/or riots could have gotten even more out of hand (or more effectively supported by anti-japanese elements)
 
Depends on exactly why the Meiji restoration didn't happen...

Remember, the Meiji Restoration was a series of fairly unlikely events that somehow beat the long odds and didn't implode, and there is almost as many facets that could singularly change it into a failed project as there were moving parts

Japan could wholesale have bought into a certain ideology, instead of cherry-picking, with absolutely no loyality towards any single one (other than a dislike towards the more socialistic bends, which makes sense when you consider that it was an oligarchy replacing an aristocracy), the American south could have dodged the Boll Weevil cotton plague, leaving Japan unable to unload their silk and cotton industry at worthwhile prices, any of the attempted revolts and/or riots could have gotten even more out of hand (or more effectively supported by anti-japanese elements)
So what does this mean for Japan? Could it end up an out and out European colony? Does a weaker Japan make it more likely the Qing would be able to make their last minute reforms work a little better than Otl? I read somewhere that the only reason we see the Meiji restoration as inherently better than Qing reforms is that Japan won the Sino Japanese war and China didn’t
 
So what does this mean for Japan? Could it end up an out and out European colony? Does a weaker Japan make it more likely the Qing would be able to make their last minute reforms work a little better than Otl? I read somewhere that the only reason we see the Meiji restoration as inherently better than Qing reforms is that Japan won the Sino Japanese war and China didn’t

I would probably look at a, possibly slightly grimmer, variant of what happened in Siam; not quite forced into vassalage, but bullied and probably losing some of the outer parts (both Hokkaido and the Ryukyu island chain, stretching from Kyushu to Taiwan, would be prime areas for imperialistic aspirations), and in little to no shape as to intervene in either Qing or Korea
 
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