WI: British Colonial Japan

Japan never fell to colonial imperialism. We all know the story. It isolated itself, the Meiji Restoration and modernization in the European model, and all that. What if Japan had the fate of India, parts of China, and other territory in Asia, and had been occupied as part of the British Empire?
 

SsgtC

Banned
Part of the reason it never fell it's literally everyone wanted either access to Japan or part of it. Including a United States almost virulently opposed to imperialism. I think all the major powers likely came to a quiet understanding that Japan was a stupid reason to fight a war over and agreed to play nice
 
That and the rather centralized nature of the country combined with high population. You can't pull a divide and conquer like in India. At least not without the right POD ;)
 
Yup, Japan was a highly centralized, educated homogeneous society in the 19th. An Invasion was out of the question, and economic domination just like OTL would have been overturned. Meiji didn't just pop out of thin air, the society was ready for it.
 
A PoD that might make this achievable is the Mongol Attempted Invasions of Japan 1274. Delay the invasion by a day and the invasion very well could have succeeded. A successful invasion of the Japanese mainland would have probably led to an entirely different Japan. No Shogan, possibly no emperor, Japan would probably be much more open to the wider world. Quite possibly divided as well.
 
That and the rather centralized nature of the country combined with high population. You can't pull a divide and conquer like in India. At least not without the right POD ;)
Well, it worked for Vietnam which was fairly centralized and educated
 
I think you would need a Japan that was more concerned about domination from its neighbours, so that it would accept more influence from western nations in order to stave it off.

A Chinese Empire with a more muscular and imposing foreign policy, that sought to vigorously enforce the tributary system ( and with the political will and military might to match) in the face of western encroachment might be the best way to produce this.

Even then barring major social upheaval such as a second sengoku, or a sectarian civil war between Christians and Shintoists, I don't see the imposition of direct colonial rule as a likelihood. Rather that Japan would become akin to a princely state writ large, as it becomes economically and militarily dependant on Britain.

This state of affairs is unlikely to last long as I think Japan would begin to industrialise despite this, though perhaps slower. Once such efforts came to fruition though, Japan would inevitably drift away from the Empire. By the 1920s it would almost certainly be basically equivalent to a dominion. The OTL japonic craze, and respect for the Japanese as 'almost white' will probably aid this process.

The resulting Japanese state would however have much stronger economic and political ties to Britain.
 
A conventional invasion of Japan would work fine. Japan was never a centralized state until the Meiji period, Japan was still divided in a sense. The Tokugawa kept power by keeping a large alliance of their vassals who were originally loyal to them strong and those who weren't the tozama daimyo weak. Still, the Tokugawa needed these vassals to keep order as they had little power on their own to enforce the laws. The Tokugawa Shogunate was nothing more than a better run Ashikaga Shogunate still reliant on vassals to enforce their will, but the Tokugawa made attempts to curb the Daimyos as well.

Two the armed forces of Tokugawa basically atrophied immensely under their rule on purpose, gun making was prohibited, there hadn't been a conflict for several centuries, and the daimyo were largely stuck spending their resources on other things such as visits to Edo. While other nations had evolved militarily, Japan which at one point had a comparatively advanced army with most powers in the world was essentially more stuck in the past than China at this point.
 
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