Japanese Hegemony in East Asia

Construct a PoD where Japan westernizes as early as meeting with the West. Before or when Oda Nobunaga rises to power.
Goals:
1. Conquer China bit by bit (provinces by provinces)
* could include Korea
** prioritize coastal provinces
2. Either successfully made Japanese as 1st or 2nd language on the conquered areas
* preferred first few conquests to remain intact even after de-colonization period including Taiwan, Hainan, and etc.
**if you can Nipponized them all, then sure. If not, I won't say anything

I'm sure I'm Japanwank, so ASB as small as possible. If there is, I wouldn't mind as long as it's not half of the PoD. If none, great, since it's around 1550s.
I would be interested if the British and the western powers would do something like OTL Hong Kong or Macau in Japan. I will appreciate if you could continue the PoD until before WW1. If you can continue after WW1, then sure. :p
 
I remember reading a timeline where they were defeated by the Mongols. The Mongols collapsed as everyone expected, but the Japanese benefited by it. They streamlined their empire with the best aspects of the Mongol Empire; I.e. emperor a leader rather than a ceremonial figure-head, Samurai loose any political power, and they start creating tribute states. Most important part of this timeline was they were defeated by a foreign power early on. I can see this as making them more interested in modernization and open to other cultures.

I know that a mongol invasion was attempted but failed due to weather. As my friend put it, Mongols great horsemen, terrible sailors.
 
It's impossible, Japanese ship style was more suited to boarding, than naval combat, which was shown of their invasion of Korea, They still would be outnumbered by the Ming, and had yet to really decline. Second you have the Sengoku period still ongoing, and Nobunaga uniting Japan was not assured, or if anyone would come to power with the same mindset.

By the time Nobunaga came to power in Owari it was still a small province and only really a local player. Nobunaga also benefited from luck against most of his enemies, the Saito of Mino were lead by Saito Tatsuoki who was incompetent and lost his followers to Nobunaga. The Imagawa he managed to beat by getting lucky enough to pull a strategy to kill their lord and stave off that invasion. Even later on he had Shingen and Kenshin got sick and died before they could bring anything serious against him.
 
Not really possible as written. You could maybe have Japan conquer China sometime after the Mongols / Yuan, but it's not easy, and the "assimilation" would at most be like the way the Chinese "assimilated" under the Manchu Qing. In other words, the Chinese may adopt hair, clothing, or even calligraphy styles (although I believe "Japanese calligraphy" amounts to imitations of old-fashioned Chinese styles), but they'll still be thoroughly Chinese. The Japanese, meanwhile, will assimilate more into China, or build themselves an apartheid system as did the Qing.

As for language, you can get millions of Chinese people speaking Japanese if you can get a Japanese dynasty at all. No problem. What you won't get is them speaking it as a first language. It'd be a career advancement tongue, just like Manchu.
 
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