Despite the title, this is not a fandom TL, and is not intended to be ASB beyond the admittedly extremely dubious premise.
After the Meiji revolution, Japan felt a need to prove its superiority to all other nations. But military conquest wouldn’t work, and economic domination was too quiet, so they decided to go down another road: Japan would be the first nation to reach the stars, or at least the moon and the inner planets. Given a similar dedication to this endeavour as the nation showed to their attempts at Asian conquest, how far could they actually get?
After the Meiji revolution, Japan felt a need to prove its superiority to all other nations. But military conquest wouldn’t work, and economic domination was too quiet, so they decided to go down another road: Japan would be the first nation to reach the stars, or at least the moon and the inner planets. Given a similar dedication to this endeavour as the nation showed to their attempts at Asian conquest, how far could they actually get?