Nippon (KdM)

Nippon, Nihon, Japan or Zipang is an island country in East Asia situated in the West Pacific Ocean. It is bordered to the west by the Sea of Japan, and to the south by the East China Sea. Part of the Ring of Fire, the state exercises authority over an archipelago of over 7,000 islands, including its primary core islands of Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu, and Kansha. Its largest city and legislative capital is Edo; other major cities include Kyoto, Suginome-Pekkus, Niigata, Nagasaki, Taihoku and Shijin.
Nippon is one of the most populous countries in the world as of 1770, boasting a population of 23.21 million in its core territories and another 4.83 million in the extended Nipponese Empire; it is the densest country on Earth, with almost all of that population situated on flat coastal plains that straddle the three fifths of its land that consists of mountainous terrain. It is also demographically diverse, with Yamato, Southern Ainu and Min among its largest ethnic groups, as well as Tagalog, Cebuan, Indigenous Austronesian (Kansha), Ryukyuan, etc. 
Nippon has been inhabited since the late Paleolithic period, although the first written records of the archipelago date back to Koryoan writing from the 3rd century BCE. The ancestors of the modern Yamato migrated from the southern Koryoan peninsula at earliest during the 7th century BCE, contributing to the Yayoi expansion through the Japanese archipelago between the 3rd century BCE and 100 AD. From 176 AD to 843 AD, the state of Yamato engaged in a slow process of expansion and unification of the various Yayoi, Kumaso and Hayato states in the archipelago, culminating in the Emishi Wars between the 8th century and 10th century, where Yamato either subjugated or expelled various Emishi tribes in the Tohoku region, many of whom became the Southern Ainu. The period after was known as the Heian era, where a centralised monarchy presided over a period of naval expansion towards the South, first on the island of East Xia (Taiwan), then the subsequent settler-colonisation of the islands of the Syonanese Archipelago. Following the failed defence of Dai Viet in 1212, a period of intense levying of female warriors known as the onna-bugeisha followed, culminating in the Splendid Revolution of 1253, wherein a group of said warriors overtook the Nipponese government and culminated in an era of immense cultural and social change, as well as Nippon's social status as a mixed-matriarchal-matrilineal society.
Between the 14th century and the 15th century, said government slowly declined until a brief civil war from 1405-1414; this culminated in the instatement of brief unitary government under the Kamakura Shogunate and the subsequent Sengoku Jidai. During the Sengoku Jidai, the Nipponese Federation briefly united most of the country under a constitutional decentralised government before its recentralisation under the Oda Shogunate, which was nearly immediately replaced by the Toyotomi Shogunate. Under the Toyotomi Shogunate, Nippon experienced rapid industrialisation and colonial expansion during the First Nipponese Empire, and at its peak controlled most of Maritime East Asia; following the economic crisis of 1667, economic collapse caused the empire to split and collapse. After a brief period of political instability, the Toyotomi Shogunate was replaced with the Dictatorship of Nippon, which has controlled the country since.
Nippon is a great power and maintains relatively cordial relations with the larger superpowers of Cathay, Albion and Varangia; the Yosuko Territory serving as a free economic zone and port for entry between Cathay and Nippon. Its military, the Imperial Nipponese Army and Navy, maintains one of the strongest naval capacities in the world, and as an industrial and technological power, Nippon is a major manufacturer of rifles, industrial capital and other products. 
[WIP]