Yi's death doesn't erase the righteous armies that were making hell for Japanese land logistics on Korea to begin with, meaning Japan can't really use the advantage of "safe" sea passages as they would be unable to supply a bigger army anyways.
Indeed, Yi's, and thus the Joseon navy's, absence does make the Ming army's logistics more difficult to sort out. Harder to resupply by sea, after all, in this case.
There's this video I watched sometimes ago that went something like this. The Japanese most impressive advantage by far was their speed.
While as people have pointed out here, even without guns outnumbered Ming Army was defeating the Japanese, Korean righteous armies were causing hell and sabotaging the Japanese along with the Chinese, If the Yi dies before the Japanese invasion, then the Japanese can definitely make take Korea in less than a year and make it to Beijing(supplied along the way by a Navy in the Yellow Sea) from Northern Korea in less than 3 months, probably even less than a month.
It took the Ming 3 months to organize an army to deal with pirates in the South and deal with the Japanese in Korea, so the Japanese would be able to make it to Beijing while they are busy trying to organize an army in the country side.
It would be interesting to see a timeline where the Japanese basically kill the Ming Emperor or at least torch Beijing.
Whether they'll be able to take the eventual Chinese retaliation or Korean righteous army uprisings is a different thing I don't know enough to comment about.
The main thing to remember here is that the Japanese had speed, sure, but they focused on rushing through the peninsula than actually establishing control. They captured the capitol before securing the southwestern province and never fully brought the hills and mountains under control. Overextended as they were already, marching on the Ming without securing all of Korea would've been inviting disaster. Admiral Yi's greatest victories happened after the Ming intervention began, so it's not like his absence means the Japanese take all of Korea and secure it before the Ming enter.
Mind, the Japanese navy was not very suited for naval combat (some of the reasons Yi did so well were knowledge of the tides along Korea's coastline and having bigger ships with more artillery than the Japanese, who had more ramming style ships than artillery focused ships). It's unlikely the Japanese navy will overpower the Ming navy to the point resupplying is easy. Not to mention the fact that the Jurchen under Nurhaci offered to assist the Ming (in return for more recognition, IIRC), it's doubtful the Japanese can make it to Beijing in short order.
I definitely want to see a Japanese pull off an Alexander the Great-style campaign and begin a kind of Age of Exploration Diadochi period, as I've expressed before. Imagine the Japanese aligning with the Jurchens and kicking off the Fall of the Ming a few decades early, causing China to see warlordism and a new regionalism, with competition getting them to rise to the challenge of Europe.
We've had this discussion before, and you'd need vastly different leadership than Hideyoshi and Nurhaci to be able to accommodate such a situation. The Japanese as they were in the Imjin War would not have been able to hold Korea for an extended period of time, between Japan's own instability (Sekigahara and Osaka happening within 20 years of the Imjin War) and the Korean populace being up in arms against the Japanese. The moment the Japanese begin infighting again, Korea will be lost to them.
As for regionalism and warlordism, India's example make it apparent that that's not the key ingredient for resisting European encroachment or competing with Europe itself.
I mean, they'll be pretty safe supplying contingents on the coast.
If the Japanese can get local collaborators like the Jurchen did or begin recruiting in natives like the Mongols did then they might stand a chance against Ming's numbers. However, I still don't see them winning.
Ming won't last forever but China will. I see no reason Qing won't require the historic Vassal of Korea nor why the Koreans won't happily invite in their aid.
Naval Japanese seems like an interesting timeline but... why should Qing not collab with Korean rebels to get Korea back and maybe even make it a territory
You know, what do you think would happen with the Daimyos and generals in Korea and China, would they turn over to the Tokugawa or rebel in favour of the Previous dynasty.
Yeah, with China nar their Capital threatened they could prepare more and better but the Japanese advanced so fast in Korea that I could see them similarly advancing to fast in China that while some general is busy organizing troops for Korea in the country side, the Japanese are already besieging Beijing.
This can be resolved by a naval supply line.
The Japanese didn't operate like the Jurchen did is the main thing, and they didn't need to. The Jurchen didn't have the numbers to contest the Ming and they had long term relationships prior to hostilities with the leadership in the Northeast that could be leveraged to turn them. They had to make concessions or get buried under the numbers. The Japanese weren't willing to make concessions (as evidenced by negotiations with the Ming and massacring the Korean peasantry), had a massive army that wouldn't require turncoats, and they'd need long standing relationships/existing collaborators for Ming leadership and troops to actually trust the Japanese to not backstab them when defecting.
As for the supply issue, best comparison is the US in Afghanistan, I think. Sure, the US had control of the seas and the skies and could resupply in key locations. They still got bled out in the central regions and it was too expensive to maintain a presence. Korea, after the war, was devastated and would've been a liability at best, an open sore at worst for the Japanese.
if what you are talking about happens
1-tokugawa will not be able to go into isolation
2-this vengeful ming will collapse before doing any revenge.
3- Korea is decimated (I guess at least half of the population will die if not more)
4- the jurchen take china more easily
Righteous Armies aren't armies, they're rebellious peasants. I don't see serious problems for the Japanese armies in this regard.Adding this to the famine that will occur in korea.
Who will win in this fight between japan, ming and jurchen I don't know. But the Ming dynasty is dead. Tokugawa may not be able to retreat from Korea without looking weak. So in theory after the unification of the new shogunate, japan will take part of korea
1. The Tokugawa would want isolationism just to shut out the Christian powers and prevent the southern daimyos from eclipsing them via the wealth of trade. With or without Korea, they can forbid trade with Portugal and Spain.
2. The Ming required decades more mismanagement, natural disasters like floods and famine, horrific military defeats at the hands of the Jurchen/Manchu, and several massive rebellions to finally collapse. Japan on their doorstep isn't at the same level as all those combined.
3. And if Korea is decimated, what food do the Japanese have to feed their own troops? Sure, they can ship some over, but can they feed hundreds of thousands of active soldiers? If the peasantry is up in arms, they aren't farming and the Japanese still need to fight to secure their holdings. Otherwise, what was the point of fighting? Taking some empty plots of land that can't be cultivated because they'll just get raided or burnt? The Japanese military prowess was impressive, yes, but there's no point to the invasion if the land they take is barren.
4. Or a new, more energetic rebel dynasty rises up and replaces the Ming and shut out the Jurchen before they have a chance to unify. The Manchu had a series of very specific events that allowed them to conquer China, it wasn't apparent they'd be able to do it until decades after the Imjin War.
As for the Righteous Armies, they were the actual army after 1593. They don't need to win against the Japanese on the field, though they did in the Battle of Haengju, for example. They just need to bleed them out. And they weren't just peasants; yangban civil officials and generals lacking troops led the Righteous Armies in battle. The peasants in turn weren't strangers to conflict; generations of fighting seaborne raiders (wokou) meant the peasants had some experience with fighting. And the Ming and Jurchen have a vested interest in seeing the Japanese fail. The US in Vietnam parallel is a bit tired, but it's along the same lines, frankly.
Also worth noting, Council of Elders right after Hideyoshi's death did indeed retreat from Korea. In the event of an alt Battle of Sekigahara, the Toyotomi aligned daimyo will be the ones with the most gains from the war, so Tokugawa Ieyasu will not have much reason himself to retain Korean holdings, which will be burnt, restless, and an overall expense to Japan.
Hmm. Part of me wants to see the Spaniards form an alliance with a Japanese state instead of Catholicism getting completely expelled. Like, maybe the Shinto-Buddhists debating Catholicism with Indian philosophical stuff they import straight from India.
Same issue with the Japanese trying to make an alliance with the Jurchen. The Spanish are convinced of their own supremacy and are far too aggressive (the Spanish invasion of Cambodia, for example). And then there's the issue of which Japanese state they back, since all the other daimyo are going to be nervous about Oda Nobunaga part 2 (again, part of why the Tokugawa shut out Christianity in the first place).
en.wikipedia.org
