hey @Ambassador Huntsman there have been important changes in india? it seems to be one of the few regions in wich important changes hasn't happened yet
Nobunaga’s Ambition Realized: Dawn of a New Rising Sun
- Thread starter Ambassador Huntsman
- Start date
It's more convenient to lump it all over as the "Japanese Enlightenment" since it's still up in the air whether Beijing and the Chinese coastal cities can join it - or develop their own, distinct traditions at the very least.
With Britain as a second-rate power, it's probably going to be Spain and France that they're going to be mainly influenced by, the former by the way of reacting upon the literature that's being traded with Manila, and the latter by the Japanese Embassy within it. The rest of the European texts from England and the Holy Roman Empire are probably going to be translated into French before being read by interested Japanese book collectors.
It's going to be especially important in mathematics since you're opening up entire new regions that will lend to personages and correspondences of the same magnitude as Leibniz, Gauss, and Bolyai, ...
... and it also seemed like that they'd also be joined by Korea at that.
The Neo-Confucian, Silhak, and militarist stances are also mostly home-grown since it's not like they are keeping tabs with European events like how Japan or even China do, at least not beyond the Western ships whose utility - compared to the traditional designs - proved themselves during that very war, and even then they only pursued due to their desire to maintain parity with the Japanese.
Seems like Asia already got its definition of modernity that converged with that of Europe, at least for its Northeastern part.
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During the Dutch-Portuguese War, the Portuguese were able to largely ward off the Dutch in India including in Ceylon. So Portuguese Ceylon is still a thing. Also because Bombay was never part of any dowry (ITTL Charles II married Christina of Sweden, Catherine of Braganza married Philippe I, Duke of Orléans), it’s still part of Portuguese India. And the Swedish East India Company is a thing and there is a Buddhist pilgrimage tradition now from East and Southeast Asia. That’s as far as things have gone.
The Dutch are still the biggest European cultural influence, followed closely by the French and then the Portuguese surprisingly as the latter just has sheer longevity. The Spanish still have a bad name to them due to the conflicts Japan have fought against them…
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Chapter 122: State of Affairs in Bireitō
Chapter 122: State of Affairs in Bireitō
In 1590, an expedition led by Oda Nobunaga’s son Nobuhide the Younger landed on what would become known as the island of Bireitō and began a century-long political agenda of overseas expansionism through flourishing trade, maritime growth, and territorial acquisition. Almost 100 years forward, the island that had jumpstarted Japanese’s ascendance beyond the home islands continued to be the realm’s most desirable overseas possession, brimming with prosperity and being among Japan’s most ethnically diverse areas between both the provinces Bireizen and Bireigo. The two halves of the island were governed by Wakamatsu Hirohide (若松煕秀) in the northern Bireizen and Tarui Tomoyuki (垂井朝之) in the southern Bireigo, with the Shimazu clan holding many coastal possessions on the northeastern side of the island which were governed independently of the Wakamatsu clan. In total, the population on the island sat around 350,000 aboriginal natives and immigrants.
Green = Kingdom of Tatuturo
Signifying Bireitō’s commerce and diversity most brilliantly was Iriebashi, the largest city on the island and one of the major urban centers of the entire Japanese realm. By the 1680s, the city’s population was around 50,000, around a seventh of the entire island’s population. It functioned as a fusion of Azuchi and Sakai, being the capital of Bireizen province and the stronghold of the Wakamatsu cadet branch of the Oda clan as well as the island’s most important sea port. Its mercantile importance stood out in particular due to its close proximity to Ming China and its initial role as the gateway between Japan and the Nanban trade, even being host to a squadron of the Azuchi navy. This status was further bolstered in the 1670s as the economic and political malaise that hung over the home islands was nonexistent in Bireitō, allowing Iriebashi and other Bireitoan ports to pick up trade activity lost by the rest of Japan. Finally, Iriebashi was a major hub for rice and other agricultural imports from China and Japan as the city made up such a large proportion of the island’s population that it proved difficult for Bireitō’s countryside to sufficiently provide for the city’s appetite. All of these factors attracted Japanese and foreign merchants alike in droves, especially rice shippers. Alongside these merchants were samurai retainers, craftsmen from the home islands, Fujianese immigrants working as artisans and laborers, and even a handful of aboriginal Bireitoans, making the city more cosmopolitan than anywhere else in the wider Japanese realm. This ethnocultural diversity manifested in the different languages and dialects spoken in the streets and the variety in places of worship, Iriebashi being one of the few large cities in Japan to be home to a small mosque. It even manifested in the architecture, Japanese-style structures with clear Chinese influences. Other urban centers on the island like the Shimazu-controlled Mamezaki, the southern Bireigo capital of Momoyama, and the former Spanish coastal fort of Nanbanmachi could not match the cosmopolitan hustle and splendor of Iriebashi.
The island outside of the coastal villages and urban centers could generally be divided between rural regions predominantly inhabited either by Japanese or Chinese immigrants or the aborigines. Japanese and Chinese immigrants were concentrated in the lowlands while the aboriginal population predominantly lay in the highlands, lowland tribes having either been forced off their ancestral territory or assimilated by the Japanese with the exception of the Kingdom of Tatuturo. Furthermore, while Japanese immigrants were evenly distributed across the lowlands albeit with a higher concentration in Bireizen, the Fujianese immigrants on the island disproportionately settled in Bireigo due to geographical proximity to the Chinese mainland. In these predominantly Fujianese farming villages, Japanese samurai landowners and their personal retinue were nevertheless often the ruling class. Throughout the 17th century, however, some of the daughters of these Fujianese villages would marry and have children with the lower-ranking samurai and magistrates. Overtime, repeated intermarriages would build a small but significant multiethnic class of lower and middle-ranking samurai that served as a midpoint between the Fujianese farmers and the Tarui clan in Momoyama. They would come to be loosely known as the Minwa (明倭) [1] in later centuries.
The aboriginal tribes on the island, on the other hand, continued to maintain a more distant relationship with their nominal overlords, with many natives in the mountainous region continuing to live and self-govern with little to no contact with Iriebashi or Momoyama. Those that did, however, progressively orbited closer into the Japanese sphere of influence. A large part of that were many of the tribal chiefs’ inclusion in the Kunishu-ins, the equivalents to Azuchi’s Shinka-in, on the island and their resulting involvement in the central governance of the island to some extent. These involved tribes acted as vassals to the Wakamatsu and Tarui Oda lords, with the kings of Tatuturo even acting as a tributary to Azuchi. This status gave them access to Japanese goods and technology while preserving a degree of independence, the tribes operating their own farmland and running their own land tax systems parallel to those more directly controlled by the Japanese. At the same time, they gradually adopted elements of their overlord’s culture, male warriors adopting equestrian combat and picking up gunpowder weapons and women showcasing expensive kimonos to native men. A few even utilized the Japanese language on a regular basis, especially when dealing with the Japanese. All of these developments meant that although the Japanese dealt with aboriginal raids and revolts, these had largely ceased by the Tenwa-Jokyo era.
Aboriginal Bireitoans hunting deer
Despite the emergence of the Minwa and the greater inclusion of the aborigines as well as the success of Zheng Zhilong and his son Tagawa Seikou, the Japanese remained the predominant ruling class on the island, though they weren’t as oppressive as the Japanese samurai class were in Luson. In Bireitō, samurai clans like the Ikeda, Aguro, and the Yamada made up the upper echelon of administrators, councilors, and commanders while minor families and individuals formed the bureaucratic and landowning core on the island. Samurai were not the only Japanese immigrants on the island, for Bireitō was host to merchants, artisans, and farmers who had come southwards from their original homes hoping to take advantage of the new opportunities the island provided. While they certainly didn’t live lives devoid of suffering, these immigrants were generally able to establish themselves and on average Japanese farmers on Bireitō lived more comfortable lives than their counterparts back in the home islands. These immigrants predominantly came from western and central Japan, resulting in a variety of dialects not only coexisting but also fusing together into what would become a unique Bireitoan dialect of the Japanese language.
Ikeda Tadamasa, one of the most influential and powerful retainers of the Wakamatsu clan
Although Bireitō was an island where no ethnic group made up a majority of the population, the three main groups were mostly segregated politically and culturally, and ethnic tension did exist, a unified culture was beginning to show its first signs of sprouting. Obata Zen, the Buddhist sect that had quickly spread throughout the island, was increasingly a faith supported and held across cultural and ethnic lines. Gradual trends of increasing cultural admixture were also bringing the peoples on the island together. Economics and agriculture also played a significant role, for the island was thoroughly interconnected internally with crops like rice, sugarcane, fruits, and sweet potatoes flowing from the countryside and handicrafts and foreign goods interspersing from urban centers. Although Bireitō had often been outside of the political drama or geopolitical machinations taking place in Azuchi and even Luson through proximity with the Spanish, in many ways it was Japan’s most interesting region 100 years after the beginning of unified Oda rule of the realm due to this very diversity slowly evolving towards a more cohesive socio-cultural foundation.
[1]: Combination of the kanji for Ming China (明国) and ancient Japan (倭国)
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This chapter is something I've been waiting for a long time, and this did not disappoint! I love how beiritou is structured around the Japanese-Chinese population, and it is the most cosmopolitan regions that Japan controls.
I hope we get to see more of Tagawa Seikou and his descendants though, same with yasuke, as they are all very interesting people who all played very important roles in different parts of Japanese history. I'd expect a Minwa samurai class claiming to be descendents of Tagawa Seikou, and be an important clan in beiritou. Same with yasuke's descendants becoming a major clan.
Bireitou is cool and I hope to see it further integrate into the Japanese realm alongside Ezo/Hokkaido and Karafuto.
Yasuke’s descendants are the Aguro clan, already one of the three major samurai clans on the island. The Ikeda clan is still at the top though being that they’re not only major hereditary Oda retainers but Ikeda Tsuneoki, the ancestor of all the major Ikeda lines, was Nobunaga’s foster sibling and shared the same wet nurse and it’s hard to top that.
Tagawa Seikou kinda is on another level, like he wasn’t really a samurai but he ended up being a very significant figure ITTL. I don’t think his main descendants will claim themselves as Minwa given that their power is already legitimized and recognized through their sheer wealth from their estates and commerce.
Thank you!!
Ah ic.
I still see a few minwa that married daughters of the clan (not sure how often that happened) claiming descent though. And its not like people didn't fake descent in that era...
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So, I just realized something and can someone correct me if I'm wrong: There has been a lot of changes with Asia, the Americas, and Europe. But has there been any changes with African kingdoms? And I'm not talking stuff with European colonies like the Dutch or even the Ottoman Empire. I'm talking about African kingdoms like Ethiopia, Rowzi or Ashanti or the Swahili Cities under Omani control, etc?
In theory there should be. Even with the changes in Europe, you got Japanese ships going around Africa. I find it hard to believe that they're not stopping anywhere on the way or that one curious Japanese person hasn't explored beyond India. Changes would've happened, but I think it depends on how much Ambassador Huntsman knows about Africa during this period.
I haven't thought of any significant changes in Africa ITTL due to minimal contact Japan has had with the continent. While it is true that ships have sailed aroud Africa, that still has almost exclusively been diplomatic embassies and not enterprising merchants or anything of that sort. Nor is Japan engaged with the slave trade. That being said, I truthfully also don't know enough about African history to have attempted something but I can give it a shot.
What I can say now is that any significant changes that have or would happen would happen in East Africa or in the Red Sea region and not on the other side. In terms of Japanese mercantile reach, as stated in a previous chapter the India Trade Guild had made contact in ports closer to Africa beyond India like Aden, Basra, and Hormuz as of 1665 so there is a high likelihood of a small level of Japanese trade activity in the Swahili cities and the Ethiopian coast by the end of the 17th century. Whether it is significant enough for big changes to happen is a question.
What I can say now is that any significant changes that have or would happen would happen in East Africa or in the Red Sea region and not on the other side. In terms of Japanese mercantile reach, as stated in a previous chapter the India Trade Guild had made contact in ports closer to Africa beyond India like Aden, Basra, and Hormuz as of 1665 so there is a high likelihood of a small level of Japanese trade activity in the Swahili cities and the Ethiopian coast by the end of the 17th century. Whether it is significant enough for big changes to happen is a question.
If I can respectfully suggest, I think an interesting change in Africa would be in Ethiopia. This timeline is getting close to the 18th Century, and a significant event in Ethiopia that starts by the end of that century is the Zemene Mesafint.
Stop me if you heard this one before- A nation collapses into a bunch of waring states, governed by various families in certain parts of the country, and the emperor (Who is religiously important) is merely a figurehead, which lasts for a century till reunification...
Alright the Era of Princes was way more complex than that. But given the timeline is still early, maybe a change ITTL that the Zemene Mesafint doesn't occur and Ethiopia becomes a major player? Not saying the Japanese gets heavily involved in Ethiopia, but like you did in Europe with Sweden and the House of Vasa surviving as part of the grander schemes of things.
Again, this is just merely a suggestion, as I think changes in Africa could also be interesting. But it's up to you.
tbf the farthest Japanese economic activity would've would've reached is around Madagascar and maybe the Swahili coast. I don't think Japan would go beyond India as they could just sell to markets in Japan to Java and buy from the Europeans, making their want to leave for Africa a lot weaker.
I do think they'll eventually start to explore Africa though, as Madagascar and the Swahili coast is right off of the Indian coast.
tbf it'd be fun to see this happen, and instead they just (somewhat successfully) modernise.
I’ll look into more. Granted, it might be a year if I were to change it before I release a chapter on it because it’s relatively far off.
So I just thought of a question that, correct me if I’m wrong, don’t remember being asked
Besides the Oda Clan, who are the largest and wealthiest clans in Japan in terms of Koku? I want to say the Mori, Tokugawa and possibly the Shimazu are contenders, but is there anyone else?
Besides the Oda Clan, who are the largest and wealthiest clans in Japan in terms of Koku? I want to say the Mori, Tokugawa and possibly the Shimazu are contenders, but is there anyone else?
Chapter 123: Education and Mass Literacy in 17th Century Japan
Chapter 123: Education and Mass Literacy in 17th Century Japan
At the dawn of unified Oda rule of Japan, few commoners could read or write, literacy mostly restricted to the upper classes and wealthy merchants. Over the course of a century, this situation would quickly change as education became more valued through a combination of peacetime stability and Japan’s trade expansionism necessitating greater literacy especially from commoners in urban areas. Among the general populace in urban centers, terakoya (寺子屋) sprung up to not only provide lessons on writing, reading, and arithmetic but also teach higher level subjects including history and geography. Originally centered around private Buddhist institutions, they would come to be hosted in the homes of samurai, merchants, or even the commoners themselves. In addition to the terakoya, some Yamato Christian churches ran schools themselves that taught a similar curriculum to the terakoya with the addition of bible studies and other religious matters on Sundays. Certain merchant and artisan families with money also hired personal tutors for their children, who often were taught philosophy, science, medicine, and language skills through this avenue of learning. All of this combined led to a rapid rise in the literacy rate among the middle classes of the Japanese realm. This development was not restricted to the home islands, terakoya springing up in Lusonese and Bireitoan cities like Iriebashi, Awari, and Momoyama, albeit the rise in literacy would be limited beyond the Japanese populations in those cities.
Depiction of a terakoya
Beyond the commoner classes, education also saw advancements among the samurai and other upper classes. At the beginning of the Azuchi period, many samurai boys received much formal education beyond what would be taught on the basic level of a terakoya, instead focusing on martial arts and loyalty towards their master. Those who did mainly hired tutors or delegated such duties to lower-ranking retainers. As time went on and the samurai class increasingly bureaucratized, the needs of the samurai domains and that of peacetime demanded a shift in approach. Although a few clans would set up specialty educational institutions or support private juku (塾) schools for the sons of high-ranking samurai and those of lower-ranking samurai found to be gifted, the Shimazu clan would be the first to establish a formal shigakko (士学校) [1] in 1641 to keep up with its own colonial and mercantile expansion and increased interactions with Dutch merchants in the. In fact, Shimazu Norihisa would even hire a Dutch merchant to teach the European language for what would be one of the more advanced classes at the Zojikan (造士館), as this first shigakko would be called.
Other clans would slowly begin to follow in the Shimazu clan’s footsteps in the late 17th century, especially those engaged ever increasingly in commerce with access to the sea. This included the Miyoshi, Mori, and Tokugawa clans. Interior domains in the east and north would lag behind due to continued militarization of these clans in response to the Furuwatari and Manji Civil Wars and greater economic isolation from the rest of the realm. Students at these shigakko studied a variety of subjects beyond basic literary skills, ranging from Chinese classics and martial arts to mathematics and history. Certain schools also incorporated more advanced classes on various sciences, wagaku (和学), and yogaku (洋学) [2], including the teaching of foreign languages like Dutch, Chinese, and even French in some cases. Although neo-Confucianism failed to gain a foothold in 17th century Japan, vestiges of the philosophy continued to be an important fabric of Japanese society and Chinese writings, especially the Four Books and Five Classics as well as Sun Tzu’s Art of War. They were considered integral in shaping the students as loyal retainers and devoted warriors for the clan. Other subjects would prepare said students for the various civil, military, and even business responsibilities they would have in their eventual roles.
There were material and intellectual developments that both benefited from the rising literacy and increasing importance of education in the Japanese realm and drove it further in a symbiotic cycle. The former was exemplified by the increased mass production of books and other prints and the adoption of newer printing mechanisms. Even before the Azuchi Period, woodblock printing had been on the rise from facilities at Buddhist temples. Woodblock printing, however, would see an unprecedented expansion in the late 16th and early 17th centuries in response to the greater demand. Unfortunately for that particular technology, both Western and Chinese movable type printing presses had made their way into Japan around the same time. The two different types of the printing press would eventually come together through the invention of a domestic variation of the movable type, based on wood rather than metal to better express the semi-cursive and cursive styles characteristic of Japanese writing. This Japanese wooden movable type would come to become the predominant method of printing by the middle of the 17th century [3], although the particular tastes of artisans would preserve a niche for woodblock printing as the preferred way to reproduce higher quality prints. It would be through woodblock that ukiyo-e (浮世絵) art would be mass-produced down the line as well.
Prints of the Saga Book (嵯峨本), printed via wooden movable type in 1608, one of the first examples of that particular technology’s usage
In terms of intellectual developments symbiotically connected with the rise in education and mass literacy in Japan, they manifested in wagaku and yogaku, two new schools of intellectual and academic study. Wagaku arose from the waning of cultural and economic attachment to Ming China and the search for a more distinct “Japanese” cultural identity through Japan’s own cultural distinctions and accomplishments. This was represented by a renewed appreciation and study of ancient Japanese classics like the Kojiki (古事記) and the Genji Monogatari (源氏物語) and the hope of discovering the original pure character of Japan through such works.. Three men would come to define this philosophy and interest: Tokugawa retainer Watanabe Mosui (渡辺茂睡) [4], courtly retainer Shimokobe Choryu (下河辺長流), and Shingon Buddhist priest Keichu (契沖). The rise of this philosophy helped influence the incorporation of ancient Japanese texts into the curriculums of shigakko and even terakoya in some cases. In turn, wagaku was aided in its appeal and popularity as more pupils were greatly exposed to such Japanese classics.
If wagaku represented a renewed self-reflection of Japan’s cultural heart and soul, yogaku represented a new desire to look outwards in line with Azuchi’s maritime and commercial expansionism. 17th century Europe was marked by the Scientific Revolution and it wasn’t long before some of these breakthroughs and developments made their way towards Japan via imported books, mainly in Dutch but also in French and Portuguese, and their subsequent study and application by scholars, merchants, patron samurai, and urban artisans developed into its own academic field affecting multiple topics including mathematics and medicine. The ease of this development was due to Japan’s well-established interest in military technology and luxury goods first introduced by Portuguese merchants and Jesuit missionaries that had clearly led to positive developments for the Japanese realm. Once yogaku firmly established itself as an academic field, the incorporation and study of Western sciences, medicine, and ideas was in full swing due to both intellectual curiosity and practical application. European doctors and scientists would also be in demand, including the Dutch surgeon Caspar Schamberger who notably opened a medical school and study named after himself in Azuchi [5], one accessible to all classes rather than just the samurai.
Portrait of Caspar Schamberger
Finally, the rise in education and mass literacy triggered a literary blossoming in the 17th century, leading to the writing and printing of the first commercial literature aimed towards the increasingly literate and educated urban middle class. These initially came in the form of the kanazoshi (仮名草子), printed books written either entirely of or predominantly in hiragana characters. They covered a range of genres, from short stories and essays to travel guides and even the Bibles printed and distributed by the Yamato Church. Although initially scarce outside of the the three main cities of Azuchi, Kyoto, and Sakai, the increased adoption of wooden movable type allowed them to spread throughout the entire realm from the 1640s onwards. Notable kanazoshi authors include Jodo Shinshu priest Asai Ryoi (浅井了意), who wrote the famous travel guide Tokaido Meishoki (東海道名所記), and ex-ronin Honda Danzo (本多団蔵) who wrote the Furuwatari Taiheiki (古渡太平記), an account of the Furuwatari War. In an interesting turn of events that demonstrated increasing Western influence on Japanese culture, Aesop’s Fables would even be translated into Japanese as kanazoshi and widely circulated among the masses. Towards the end of the 1660s [6], however, a new literary genre would emerge from kanzoshi books, the ukiyo-zoshi (浮世草子). They would become Japan’s first outing in vernacular fiction, defined by themes and writing styles appealing more strongly to the senses and life experiences of lower-class samurai and commoners rather than that of the elites. Ukiyo-zoshi would be pioneered by Ihara Saikaku (井原西鶴), who wrote a variety of erotic and folk prose stories in the 1670s and 1680s that captured the relatability to townsfolk and samurai the genre would be known for. He would even write a rebuttal to Aesop’s Fables called the Isopo Hanron (伊曾保反論) that satirized many of the fables through stories of his own authorship.
Haikai (俳諧) poetry would be the other major form of popular literature that would come about in the 17th century, once again representing the greater literacy of the Japanese population and an appetite for more earthly themes unwelcome in elite circles. It encompassed a host of less conventional styles, including hokku (発句) [7] and renku (連句) in contrast to the older and more aristocratic waka (和歌) and renka (連歌) poetic styles. Matsunaga Teitoku (松永貞徳) would help establish the literary genre, with succeeding poets like Nishiyama Soin (西山宗因) and the famous Matsuo Basho (松尾芭蕉) applying more depth to the haikai form. In particular, Basho would come to be defined by the natural and more serious aesthetic of his works influenced by his many travels.
Depiction of Matsuo Basho
The Japanese language itself even evolved upon the unification of Japan. It was around this time that Late Middle Japanese gave way to Early Modern Japanese. Although there wouldn’t be a standard dialect until the 19th century, the Kansai dialect would continue to be the most important variation of the language, used by the merchants of Sakai, the nobles of Kyoto, and many samurai who spent at least part of their time in Azuchi. A particular version of the dialect with significant influences from the Owari-Mino dialect would predominate in Azuchi and surrounding provinces and slowly spread among the daimyo families. The latter influence came from the Oda clan being that many Azuchi bureaucrats were from the main Oda holdings in Owari, Mino, and Oumi and from the old tradition of the heir training to be the next daijo-daijin at the helm of these core hereditary lands.
[1]: Called hanko (藩校) IOTL
[2]: Rangaku (蘭学) is called yogaku ITTL because of the greater presence of non-Dutch Europeans throughout the 17th century and emerge much earlier due to Japan’s trade expansionism.
[3]: IOTL, wooden movable type declined in usage because of the demands of the same artisans that would preserve woodblock usage ITTL, leading to woodblock printing remaining the dominant form of printing press in the Edo period IOTL.
[4]: Watanabe is his original last name and was changed because his father’s master IOTL, Tokugawa Tadanaga, had his lands confiscated by Tokugawa shogun Iemitsu. ITTL, he keeps his last name as that doesn’t happen.
[5]: IOTL, Schamberger returns to the Netherlands due to the restrictions of sakoku and publishes accounts on his observations while in Japan and in the East Indies.
[6]: This development happens around 10-15 years earlier than OTL.
[7]: Pre-modern name of haiku (俳句)
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Once again, another amazing chapter from @AmbassadorHuntsman. Keep it up!
I think those three you named kinda are in their own league, although collectively the Ikeda clan are up there through their domains in Settsu and Echigo provinces as well as on Bireito. You do have a handful of medium-sized heavyweights in terms of size and wealth like the Ryuzoji in Kyushu, the Miyoshi in Shikoku, the Hashiba in Harima and Tajima provinces, the Sakuma and Nanbu clans in the Oshu region, and a few others.