Turning Point - Sekigahara: Toyotomi's Global Expansion and its Consequences

Phase 18 - Japan Becoming Imperialist

Under the Vienna System, Japan was considered an outlier among the great powers.

First of all, Japan was a nation of people with a different skin color and possessed nearly all the distant and peripheral lands in the eyes of European society, making it quite unusual. In terms of being an outlier, the Yamato Republic, a republic of people with a different skin color and a republican system, was even more of an outlier. However, Japan was even more of an outlier due to its remote capital, which was the farthest from Europe at the time, so apart from the United States, it was hardly dealt with.

Nevertheless, Japan was an entity that European society had to deal with, to some extent.

Russia shared borders with Japan in its peripheral areas. For Britain and other European powers, Japan was the strongest nation in East Asia.

Furthermore, Japan was one of the few countries in the world with an economic system based on the gold standard, so the entire world coveted its wealth. As a result, Japan easily acquired products of civilization, and diplomatic strategies like Britain's attempts at technological monopolies on a national scale and acquiring gold did not work well, as they were overshadowed by fellow countrymen and neighbors blinded by greed for gold.

. . .

However, Japan's path forward was not without its challenges.

One particularly grave issue was the famine that swept across the entire Japanese archipelago from 1833 to 1837. This famine was caused by a temporary climate change resulting from shifts in ocean currents, leading to poor harvests every year in Japan. Imports from various territories, Southeast Asian countries, and even the Yamato Republic, which had been working to improve relations, were insufficient to cope with the crisis. To address this, a large-scale migration plan to Australia and Shinkai was promoted instead of allowing people to leave for Yamato on their own. Over the course of 10 years, approximately three million people emigrated overseas. Despite these efforts, domestic food shortages persisted, leading to an estimated 500.000 deaths, primarily among the impoverished.

The fact that such a massive famine occurred despite advancements in civilization can be attributed to the influence of these very advancements.

Japan was entering the preparatory stages of the Industrial Revolution during the Congress of Vienna, with urbanization and population growth occurring around 1830. Furthermore, the population had been growing rapidly since the prosperous times of the Toyotomi era. By the early 19th century, the total population exceeded 40 million and had increased by more than five million in just a quarter of a century. Even after overseas expansion since the 17th century, a considerable portion of the population had emigrated. Additionally, from the mid-18th century onwards, more than 100.000 people emigrated overseas or to the Yamato Republic each year, so it can be said that Japan was coping relatively well with this level of population movement.

The damage caused by this famine and the expenses incurred by the migration program were significant setbacks that slowed down Japan's progress in industrialization. Nevertheless, developments continued, with the construction of the first railway line between Kyoto and Osaka commencing in 1833, albeit at a slower pace.

Japan had already successfully transformed into a constitutional monarchy and aspired to become a nation-state, with the will of the people driving its development. The active endeavors of modern capitalists further facilitated the overall progress in Japan.

However, setbacks were setbacks, and Japan, which had not expanded its influence significantly until then, would eventually push forward with European-style colonialism in Southeast Asia. This was primarily because Japan needed money. Yet, easy income was akin to a drug, and henceforth, authoritarian colonial management became the driving force behind imperialism in Japan.