WI Japan tried to intervene again in mainland during Ming-Qing transition?

raharris1973

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Could Japan have given another try at invading the Asian mainland during the Ming collapse of the 1630s and 1640s? At least another invasion of Korea? Possible partition of Korea, seizing the south during one of the Jurchens wars with Korea in the 1630s.

Certainly the 1590s attempt did not succeed (although the Japanese were loath to admit it to themselves). But over a generation later in the 1600s after further Ming decay conditions might be seen as more auspicious.

Was Japan drastically demilitarized by the 1630s compared with the 1590s? How were the Korean and Japanese navies of the 1630s comparing to those of 40 years earlier?
 
Japan under the Bakufu underwent a rapid and aggressive demilitarization. It was not the juggernaut of the Post-Sengoku period. Sailing technology was mediocre at best, western ideal were churned.
 
The Japanese Navy would be crap no matter what considering they didn't have that many ships it would be suited for anything better than coastal fighting.

As for the army in 1590 you're talking about a period when you had a very large army of battle hardened veterans, by the 1630s and 40s most of them would either be dead or old men.

Even if that somehow wasn't the case, the Tokugawa were all about preserving stability, going to war wouldn't preserve it.
 

raharris1973

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Even if that somehow wasn't the case, the Tokugawa were all about preserving stability, going to war wouldn't preserve it.

Funny how the Imjin War of the 1590s is often explained by the need to siphon off instability by directing it outward, yet in the 1600s going to war would be *bad* for stability.
 
Funny how the Imjin War of the 1590s is often explained by the need to siphon off instability by directing it outward, yet in the 1600s going to war would be *bad* for stability.

Depends on who you talk to you, Hideyoshi's invasion of Korea was done because as a peasant Hideyoshi could never be Shogun and held the unorthodox of his late lord Oda Nobunaga to conquer China. Instability wasn't as much of a factor because unlike Ieyasu, Hideyoshi actually conquered Japan. Which leads to why the Tokugawa were so big on stability the Tokugawa ruled off a system of alliances and supporting friendly clans, while weakening the ones that opposed them, all on top of a system to weaken the power of the Daimyo as a whole.

If the Tokugawa miscalculated with something as stupid as getting involved in the Ming-Qing conflict then, they could risk everything, after all, the biggest supporters of the Emperor's restoration to power in OTK were those clans slighted by the Tokugawa.
 

raharris1973

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This is a 50-60 year difference in time. So why is it funny?

You're right Faeelin, it's not really "funny" it is just a major shift over two generations, but countries are known to have those from time to time.

I was trying to look a little more into the Tokugawa demilitarization that Sceonn mentions.

My initial guess was that this was about demilitarizing peasant troops rather than Samurai at first. Some martial skills probably were transferred to the next generation, or could have been had the rulers wished to do something militaristic. Where remilitarization probably becomes tricky is a decade or more into the Tokugawa, when they started to load down the Samurai with bureaucratic duties, martial training was becoming martial "arts", and the one castle per domain and daimyo hostage systems got rolling.

Once that was the Tokugawa set up, I could see how forming warriors back into ready to fight units and dispatching them to fight would undo much of the Tokugawa work and reduce the grip the regime had on the country.
 
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