Write a realistic, plausible alternate history scenario in the form of a history book chapter completely set in the world of the alternate history scenario with absolutely no references to real life, OTL or that this is even an alternate history timeline at all, in which the following events all occur in this same timeline:

First Period [16th to 17th century]: Japan and North Asia

By the time European explorers arrived in the then-feudal hereditary military dictatorship of the side branch of the post-660 BC Japanese reigning imperial family, the main branch of the supposedly Shinto-pantheon descended, Japanese Imperial House of Great Yamato/Minamoto dynasty that was also a Japanese noble clan and samurai clan of the Ashikaga clan-ruled, post-1336, pre-1603 Ashikaga bakufu [tent government |bakufu|], [the bakufu] popularly [the bakufu] known as [the bakufu’s more popular name] the shogunate, [the bakufu] a system of government in Japan dominated [the bakufu] by a feudal military dictatorship exercised in the name of a sei-i taishōgun [“Commander-in-Chief of the Expeditionary Force Against the Barbarians” |sei-i taishōgun|, the military rulers of Japan |the sei-i taishōgun| during most of the period spanning from 1185 to 1868 in Japanese history who |the sei-i taishōgun| carried out |the sei-i taishōgun| the actual duties of administration in Japan during that time period who |the sei-i taishōgun| also |the sei-i taishōgun| enjoyed civil, military, diplomatic and judicial authority within Japan], [the sei-i taishōgun] more popularly known as [the sei-i taishōgun’s more famous name] a shogun or by the shogun himself, with the hierarchy that held the bakufu together being [the hierarchy holding the bakufu] reinforced [the hierarchy holding the bakufu] by [what reinforced the hierarchy holding the bakufu together] close ties of loyalty between the collection of various powers that supported the bakufu and the hereditary military nobility and officer caste of medieval and early-modern Japan from the late 12th century until their abolition in the late 1870s with high prestige and special privileges, the buke [military families |buke|], [the buke] better known [the buke] outside of Japan and East Asia as [the buke’s other, more famous name] the samurai, the powerful Japanese magnates, and feudal lords who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji period in the middle 19th century ruled most of Japan from their vast, hereditary land holdings despite being subordinate to the shogun/sei-i taishōgun and nominally to the clan head of the main branch of the Imperial House of Great Yamato reigning over Japan as Emperor or Empress of Japan, whom the buke/samurai served as well-paid retainers, the daimyō [large private land |daimyō]-ruled feudal Nihon [Japan |Nihon|] in 1547 AD, the country had been wracked by the warlord period known as the period in Japanese history in which civil wars and social upheavals took place almost continuously in the 15th and 16th centuries, known as the Sengoku Jidai [Warring States period] for 80 years of endless war. As nearly every clan fought each other for supremacy, the Empire’s central government was almost non-existent.

In theory, the Shogun held the real political power while the Emperor had almost no authority aside from partaking in specific rituals, but in practice the Ashikaga bakufu had almost no power at all, unable to wield authority outside of the imperial capital of Kyoto.

That being said, the Shogun still had a good deal of authority if not direct power, mostly in being able to direct the local Daimyo on how to interact with the outside world.

In particular, the Shogun declared that the Europeans, who came not just to trade but to play their political games and evangelize their people to their Christian faith, would be banned from trade in Nihon with two exceptions: the Portugese Most Serene House of Braganza-ruled, post-1139, pre-1910 feudal, unitary parliamentary semi-constitutional monarchy of the Kingdom of Portugal in Portugal, Brazil, Portuguese Africa [Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe and Equatorial Guinea] and the Swiss-German Imperial House of Hapsburg-Lorraine ruled, post-800 AD, pre-1807 elective feudal federalist imperial royal monarchy of the Holy Roman Empire ruling over Germany, Western Poland, and Russia’s Kaliningrad region, France’s Alsace-Lorraine region, the Netherlands, Belgium, the French region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais, Illryia [Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina], Greater Hungary [Hungary, Bačka, Baranja, Međimurje, Vojvodina and Prekmurje in Serbia, Transylvania and most of the Banat in Romania, Carpathian Ruthenia in Ukraine, Slovakia and Poland], Bohemia and Moravia [Czechia and Slovakia] and Galicia-Lodomeria in Ukraine and Poland, though they should not be seen as equals, as the Portuguese were allowed trade in only two ports, while the Holy Roman Empire under the Hapsburgs had access to seven.

And even with this, much would change.

While the Portuguese sought to expand both Christian influence and their own political influence in Nihon , the Austrians took an interest in the continuing situation of the war, documenting and reporting on every aspect of it, as well as Nihonese culture, history, and traditions.

This willingness to see the Nihon as equals captured the interest of both the Shogunate and the Emperor, both of whom invited Austrian ambassadors to their courts.

In 1557, Emperor Ōgimachi came to the throne at the age of 30 on the death of his father.

Having spent the last decade becoming familiar with the Western European ambassadors to the Nihonese, he was growing increasingly frustrated with the level of destruction that the endless civil war in Nihon had inflicted on the country.

Not long after his coronation, he met with them in secret, and gave them an offer: in exchange for their assistance in overthrowing the Shogun and reunifying the country under the Emperor’s rule, he would grant exclusive trading rights to the Holy Roman Empire and and become a partner to it in East Asia.

After the message was returned to then-Holy Roman Emperor Charles V of the Imperial House of Hapsburg-Lorraine, he was eager to accept if it meant having a partner in the Orient the way that the Poles had become their partners in Eastern Europe against the Rurikids and later on the Slavs.

For the next decade, advisers surreptitiously leaked knowledge, weapons, and supplies to the Imperial Court, all the while presenting a friendly face to the Shogun, who had instead begun a tentative partnership with the Portuguese.

In the year 1568 AD, as events in Europe began to spiral increasingly toward war between the Catholics and Reformists both in the RCC and the Protestant movement, the Austrians were increasingly focusing themselves on matters abroad, and the chance for Ōgimachi to strike had come.

That year, Shogun Yoshinaga had died unexpectedly after a 9 month reign, and an increasingly powerful Daimyo named Oda Nobunaga and his Tokugawa alles marched their armies victoriously into Kyoto to declare his allegiance to the Emperor.

The time to act had come.

Acting with both the support of the Holy Roman Empire and Oda, Ōgimachi issued an edict declaring Oda Nobunaga as the new Shogun, though reduced greatly in power from that of the Ashikaga, and immediately moved to quell dissent from forces that, despite nominally being loyal to the Emperor, saw the move as Oda Nobunaga trying to seize power through a puppet Emperor and thus moved against him.

For fifteen further years, the Sengoku Jidai entered into its endgame, though by now it was a much more solidly-defined civil war.

On one side was the Imperial Court, and on the other were the opposition Daimyo. After more than 100 years of fighting, the nation was exhausted, but after long last in 1583, the Emperor and his court were victorious.

For the first time in centuries, Nihon was truly under the authority of a civilian government, the last period having been the brief Kenmu Restoration in the 1310s AD.

With a triumvirate of Oda Nobunaga, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and Toyotomi Hideyoshi as Chancellor of the Realm, the head of the highest organ of the feudal Japanese government under the various bakufu ruling over Japan since the 12th century, the Great Council of State which handled all secular administrative affairs of Japan, while the Department of Worship, oversaw all matters regarding Shintō ritual, clergy, and shrines who [the Chancellor of the Realm] controlled the officers of the state, as well as four great councillors and three minor councillors, who then turn controlled other elements of the feudal Japanese government, [Hideyoshi being the then Japanese Chancellor of the Realm] along with being the then chief advisor for the then clan head of the main branch of the Imperial House of Great Yamato ruling over feudal Japan as Emperor of Japan, but was in practice the title of both first secretary and regent who assisted an adult Emperor of Japan, whose duties were were to convey to the Emperor the policies formulated by the Great Council of State and to convey the Emperor’s decisions to them, now working as civilian administrators subordinate to the Emperor, Ōgimachi would spend the waning years of his life reforming the Empire away from the feudal system of the old government to a new, more centralized model based off of Holy Roman and French lines, quelling the now powerless Daimyo the way the Holy Roman Empire had placated both the Old Romans and the German tribes by creating the Gikai, a parliament in which they would be allowed to represent themselves and their interests, but unlike the Holy Roman Imperial Diet it had little real authority as compared to the Emperor.

And now we arrive in the year 1600.

Ōgimachi is dead, replaced by the younger son of his only son, who now reigns as Hachijō, the 107th Emperor of Nihon.

Having been at peace for 17 years, the scars of the Sengoku Jidai, which had lasted for about 116 years, still run deep and are not easily healed.

The large-scale political reforms of the Ōgimachi Restoration are still in flux, with threats from Daimyo unhappy with their loss of authority, to Samurai demanding their traditional place as the Empire’s army be maintained, to a newly emboldened peasantry that has become resentful of the long-imposed caste system in Nihonese society.

True to their deal, the Nihonese have forbidden all European merchants save for the Holy Roman Empire from their ports, and now the Austrians prosper massively from trade in fine Nihonese silks, teas, and porcelains.

Europe, however, is not pleased, and seeks some means of wedging their foot in the door to re-open the nation to their merchants and missionaries. Perhaps most interestingly, however, is the growing plans of many in the Imperial Government.


In the course of the last 10 years the Empire of Nihon has seen an astronomical level of growth in all directions.

Not just has it managed to subjugate the post-1392, pre-1898 satelite state and tributary kingdom of both the the crypto-Sunni Muslim Han Chinese Imperial House of Zhu-ruled pre-1662, post-1368, absolute dynastic Imperial royal monarchy of the Great Ming State/Great Ming Empire/“Ming dynasty” ruling over the eighteen provinces of the Han dynasty, Yunnan and Cantonia and later on the post-1662, pre-1912 Manchu Imperial House of Aisin Gioro-ruled, Manchu-dominated imperial absolute dynastic federalist royal monarchy of the Great Qing Empire ruling [the Great Qing Empire] over Han China, Guangdong, Guangxi, Yunnan, East Turkestan, Tibet, Inner and Outer Mongolia and Tuva from [the Great Qing Empire’s stronghold] Inner and Outer Manchuria of the absolute royal dynastic monarchy of Great Joeson ruled by the partially Han Chinese Korean House of Jeonju Yi in the entire Korean peninsula, [Nihon subjectuating Joeson in Korea] but it has expanded its influence into all of the surrounding islands and even gone so far as to extend its influence across the entirety of the Pacific Ocean.

With the Sengoku Era now more than 60 years distant, Nihon’s reconstitution into a strong, unified empire is clearly paying off in spades.

The meteoric growth of Nihon as a rising power in East Asia is almost unprecedented.

Prior to the modern age Nihon had been a divided, feudal nation that had only briefly been involved in skirmishes with Korea and China, ultimately falling back to its home islands every time.

This period would die in the hundred year conflict of the Sengoku Era, when at the end Emperor Ogimachi re-asserted imperial control and broke the power of the Daimyo.

Now with its resources fully behind the ageing Emperor Hachijō’s projects to make Nihon the new arbiter of power in East Asia, it is well on its way to achieving such a goal.

Hideyoshi wins a surprising set of victories in his invasion of Korea, allowing him to annex the peninusla in its entirety by 1599.

Instead of taking the Joseon monarch as a vassal, Hideyoshi is forced to distribute land among the invading daimyos in order to keep their loyalty, effectively turning Korea into a new “island” of Japan.

Ming’s defeat in Korea sets off a series of internal conflicts within China that ultimately weakens both the Ming dynasty’s post-1368, pre-1644 combined ground warfare force and naval combat division, the Great Ming Army and the imperial secret police that served the reigning members of the Imperial House of Zhu as Emperors of Han China that was also a imperial military body of the Great Ming State, with the authority to overrule judicial proceedings in prosecutions with full autonomy in arresting, interrogating and punishing anyone, including nobles and the emperor’s relatives along with the authority to overrule judicial proceedings in prosecutions with full autonomy in arresting, interrogating and punishing anyone, including nobles and the emperor’s relatives, and also to overrule judicial proceedings in prosecuting those deemed as enemies of the state, granted with full autonomy in arresting, interrogating, detaining them without trial and punishing them, without going through due process, whose members were bound to the reigning members of the Imperial House of Zhu as Emperors of Han China and took direct orders from them [the reigning members of the Imperial House of Zhu as Emperors of Han China], also serving as political commissary of the Great Ming State’s combined ground combat force and naval warfare force, the Great Ming Army in times of war, the Jǐnyīwèi [brocade-clothing guard/Embroidered Uniform Guard]

Combined with a series of natural and agricultural disasters in the late 1590s, the Ming forces are unable to stop the Japanese advance on Beijing and later Nanjing.


The rest of its expansion has been relatively less dramatic. The islands of the wider Nihonese Archipelago are mostly smaller and less populated, dominated by the Ryukyuans in the south and the Aynu in the north.

To the north the islands of Chishima and Kitaezo were less subjugated by main force and more the local tribes being absorbed into the Imperial sphere through tribute missions and offers of protection.

Ryukyu meanwhile did involve some military action but this was largely a symbolic act, as Ryukyu had historically relied on China for protection but with the Ming rapidly deteriorating as the Jurchen tribes of Manchuria planned to claim the mandate of Heaven, King Shō Ken willingly agreed to submit to Nihonese overlordship as a vassal, saving his kingdom from prolonged military action.

Taiyowan [Taiwan and the Pengu Islands] is a different story.

Unlike the others, the island is further to the south from Nihon’s main territory and a much larger island with rougher terrain, particularly in the east. Initial landings began at the northern end in 1638, and the wider coastal plain facing the mainland was mostly captured within several months.

Most of the region’s population was made of the main indigenous people in Taiwan who also make up 70% of Taiwan’s population, the Han Chinese, or rather subgroup who speak Hokkien, a Southern Min language and/or trace their ancestry to southeastern Fujian in China, the Hoklo settlers from the provinces of Han China near Cantonia and a few Han Chinese, some of whom were resistant but enough joined as collaborators to the new administration to legitimize the occupation.

The real issue was the mountainous east, where many native Taiyowanese groups had taken refuge and actively fought against both Nihonese and Chinese alike, forcing the invasion force there to mire itself in a prolonged campaign against the Taiyowanese tactics of guerrilla warfare, using the mountains to constantly harass and Nihonese forces.