Japan's Isolationist Policy Continues Into The Present Day

The Point of Divergence for this scenario ... From 1633 to 1853, Japan enforced a policy known as Sakoku, which was an isolationist policy which banished all foreigners from the islands of Japan. This was mostly due in response the arrival of Portugese Catholic monks on the island and spreading the word of Christianity among the common folks. During this time, the only point of entry into Japan was the island of Nagasaki, where Dutch traders would come to trade. It wasn't until 1853, when Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Tokyo Bay with four warships in tow, that the process to open Japan to the world began, making Japan the modern superpower it is today.

What if Commodore Matthew Perry never arrived in Tokyo Bay in 1853 and the United States never forced Japan's doors open? Would another country have done so? And if Japan still had maintained its isolationist policy until the present day, how might the world be different?
 
I'm certain at some point somebody else would have forced their way in. There's no way a country of that size, location and influence would have just been ignored.

If the Americans hadnt opened it someone else would have. Likely Britain or perhaps France.
 
And butterflies might mean a less peaceful end to such a British or French mission. Are there any TLs about an extended Shogunate Japan resisting colonialism?
 
Oooh, I was just checking out Pacific Overtures today. Anyways, perhaps we should start from the top. Japan did not just have contact eight eh outside world through Nagasaki. They also traded with the Ainu and the Koreans. Thr Satsuma also threatened their way into the RyuKryu islands, forcing them to act as puppets. This was partially to trade with China through them. The people of those islands could not trade with those outside the Chinese Imperial system, which led to awkwardness as people wouldn't sell foreigners stuff. One slightly unhinged minister had to drag sacks of food from people, leaving money behind before going back to the temple he was squatting in. At the end of his many years there he was given all the money he paid, as it had constantly been confiscated. But yah, the Japanese very much desired foreign trade. Just in a way that kept the profits for the lords. If that meant keeping thr Dutch in a small island, and making them store all their goods in Japanese warehouses (which th Dutch could not take the stuff back form, and they had to trust the Japanese to sell it) then so be it. Once when they were planning on threatening the Dutch they actually asked some other lords to make sure they could increase imports from Korea, so that there would be little actual change in the volume bought or sold.

The exclusion policy was mainly a matter of security. For the Shogun. And some lords. and the council that took over from the shogun when he became more like a figurehead, if the book Shogun is to be believed. It was kind of like how people form samurai families were forbidden to participate in commerce. The social hierarchy would be kept in place and, and all sorts of wasteful policies, such as making people live as hostages using exhorting amounts of money for stupid fashions, kept people weak. The Tokugawa shogunate did start there reign by taking a third or half the land from one of their allies. If they treat their friends like that, why would they be any kinder to the needs of the common folk? Plus I suppose part of the reason for seclusion Macau have been because of th Japanese losing. The war in Korea didn't go great, and the achinese were very angry t them for their pirate raiders, though I think the Chinese scrapping their own fleets helped make them vulnerable to them.

Anyways, assuming Japan DID stay isolated until, say, one hundred years ago.... Communist revolution. But so many strains to choose from. Maoism, a bit of Juche, maybe we get Hoxha... Sure, it might turn into a hermit state once more, but it is what it is.

 
There's a lot of things to happen between the late 19th POD and the rise of communism. One can argue that the rise of Bolsheviks in Russia owed in part to the Russo-Japanese War (and not only WW1), so a completely isolated Japan would butterfly the global growth of communism, at least in the way we have seen.
 
I think the Dutch getting Luzon from the Spanish can also mean that the opening of Japan is delayed, the from of Trade from SEAsia to Japan passed via Luzon or at least N. Luzon.
 

Definitely. While I can't find the source right now I have read that one of the reasons for the US' forced opening of Japan happened when it did was a fear that one of the European powers was about to do it and the US would be locked out. Some kind of forced opening of Japan was probably inevitable within a decade or two. However within that Japan could still have attempted some kind of isolationist policy but it would almost certainly result in Japan being divided into colonies or Spheres as the power imbalance only grew and grew.
 
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