Nihon

Flag of Nihon

**Nihon** (Yamato: 日本; *Nippon*, Na: 日本; *Jihon*, Kumaso: 日本; *Jiban*, Emishi: 日本; *Yapan*), is an island country in East Asia. It is in the northwest Pacific Ocean and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, extending from the Sea of Mosir in the north toward the East China Sea, and to the Phillippine Sea, and to the Kingdom of Okinawa in the south. Heavily susceptible to seismic activity, Nihon is a part of the Ring of Fire and spans an archipelago of 14,125 islands, with the four main islands being Hokkaido, Honshu (the "mainland"), Shikoku, and Kyushu. Nihon is a kingdom, and is made up of five constituent *koku* (countries); the Nippic-speaking Wakoku, Nakoku, and Kumakoku in the southwest, and the Jomonic-speaking Ezo and Southern Aynudao in the northeast. Edo is the nation's capital and largest city, followed by Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Kobe, and Kyoto.

   A Paleolithic culture from around 30,000 BC constitutes the first known habitation of the islands of Japan. This was followed from around 14,500 BC (the start of the Jomon period) by a Mesolithic to Neolithic semi-sedentary hunter-gatherer culture characterized by pit dwelling and rudimentary agriculture. Clay vessels from the period are among the oldest surviving examples of pottery. From around 700 BC, the Nippic-speaking Yayoi people began to enter the archipelago from the Korean Peninsula, intermingling with the Jomon; the Yayoi period saw the introduction of practices including wet-rice farming, a new style of pottery, and metallurgy from the Han Empire and other areas in mainland Zhonglu. According to legend, King Jimmu (grandson of Amaterasu) founded the Yamato kingdom of Wakoku in central Honshu in 660 BC, later establishing the capital at Heian-kyo. In the 200s and 300s, Wakoku repeatedly launched invasions of the raiding Jomonic Emishi tribes in the northern regions of Honshu, but failed to conquer them. The Emishi adopted Yayoi agricultural practices, and eventually formed a kingdom of their own in 340, which they called Ezo. Wakoku's expansion was more successful in the south; Nakoku was fully subjugated by Yamato armies circa 439. Unable to expand further into Kyushu, wherein the Kumaso people were thriving, Wakoku proposed a united kingdom with Nakoku to overcome the Kumaso. The proposal was accepted, and Wakoku and Nakoku formally united in 476 to form the Kingdom of Nihon, with promises of ethnic and linguistic autonomy for both peoples. In 502, the war with Kumaso finished and a truce was signed, which resulted in Kumaso becoming a protectorate of Nihon but retaining control over its internal affairs.
Shortly after the fall of the last Chinese dynasty, Nihon began to involve itself more with the affairs of mainland Zhonglu. Notably, Nippish relations with Chosun soured in the 1100s over Nihon's claim to Gaya, a Nippic-speaking region in southern Chosun from which both the Chosunese royal dynasty of Silla and Nippish royal dynasty of Yamato had distant familial links through the Hata clan. Seeking to unite all Nippic-peoples under one kingdom, the King of Nihon formally announced his claim to both the Gayan and Chosunese thrones in 1157, sent his armada, and initiated a hundred year war with the Kingdom of Chosun. Southern areas of Chosun, including the traditional regions of Silla, Baekje, Gaya, and Tamna were occupied by Nippish forces throughout the war. Troubles at home weakened the war effort; Yamato dominance over Nihon and led to revolts in Nakoku, Ezo, and especially Kumakoku, which had been strongarmed into uniting with Nihon in 1243. By 1262, all Nippish forces were expelled from mainland Chosun. Tamna (renamed Jeju) was finally reconquered by Chosun in 1409 during its declaration of war against Nippish piracy. This war also resulted in the loss of Tsushima (then the main outpost for Nippish pirates) to Chosun. Chosun offered to return Tsushima to Nihon in 1415 in return for the Nippish crown to drop its claim to Chosunese lands, but this was denied. Nihon did not formally relinquish its claim to the Chosunese throne until 1765.

    Seeking to counter the influence of both Chosun and the Celestial Chinese Empire (which sought to dominate and monopolize trade across the Silk Road), Nihon established an alliance with Buryad. Nippish navigators were funded by the state and given free reign in Siberia to conduct extensive exploration of previously-unseen lands in the far-north and establish trade with the Yakut, Eskimo, and Kamchatkan peoples in an attempt to establish quick naval route across the Pacific to quickly reach the legendary and resource-rich lands of Daqin and Jinan through the fabled Imakpik Strait. Sosuke Nagamasa led a fleet up north along the southeastern Siberian coastline, past Kamchatka and into the homeland of the Yupik people, who were the source of the stories about the land and people on the "other side" of the strait. Financed directly by the Yamato crown as a means to compete with Minguo-backed Yue explorers such as Zheng He, Nagamasa's crew of over 1,000 sailed with the Yupik across the Imakpik Strait in 1429 and arrived in the *new world* the next day. Nagamasa and his men attempted to explore the coastline and ventured south in search of arable land and the western empires, but within a year the whole crew died. As a result, Zhang He was initially credited with the discovery of the new world one year later and the continent was named in his honor. New evidence shifted the consensus to that of Nagamasa being the first man from Zhonglu to step foot in the continent known in Nihon as *Changzheng*, but the topic remains controversial, especially in discussions between Nippish and Yue nationalists. Nihon would send further colonists to the new world, who established the first colonies of the new Nippish Empire in 1501. Nihon fought colonial wars with Minguo and Chosun with varying degrees of success. During one of these wars, Nihon proper was unsuccessfully invaded in 1588 by a coalition of warships under the command of Minguo.

Harsh taxation and plundering of resources in 11 of Nihon's colonies led to the spread of ideas such as republicanism and libertarianism. Rebellions and protests against the Nippish colonial administration were often violently repressed, leading to a revolutionary war within the colonies in 1766, and a declaration of independence in 1768, which was recognized by the Nippish crown in 1770. Seeking to contain the spread of republicanism in other parts of the world, Nihon adopted yet another anti-Chosun stance due to Chosun's own revolution and alliance with the newly formed United States of Nagamasa. Nihon led the Heavenly Coalition to victory against Chosun's 10 *Freedom Wars* in 1815. However, during these wars, Nihon lost further territories in the new world to the United States. Nonetheless, Nihon began to ally itself with both Chosun and the United States as it began to establish colonies and trade outposts across the world, beginning with Parsa and Koweyt in the early 1800s, eventually spreading to cover over a quarter of the world's landmass by 1912 and coming to be known as the *empire of eternal sun*. By this point the strongest nation in the world, Nihon began to decline economically as a result of the Ainu Civil War, World War I, and World War II. Despite emerging victorious in the world wars, economic decline resumed due to wartime debt owed to Allied nations, which made the task of maintaining the colonies monetarily unfeasible by 1950. Nihon's last colony of Mons Calpe was ceded to Daqin when the negotiated lease ended in 1999 as per the treaty of 1899.

Nihon is a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy and consists of three distinct legal jurisdictions: Wakoku and Nakoku, Kumakoku, and Ezo, and Southern Aynudao. This is due to these areas retaining their existing legal systems even after joining Nihon. Since 1998, Kumakoku, Ezo, and Southern Aynudao also have their own devolved governments and legislatures, each with varying powers. Nihon has the world's sixth-largest economy by nominal gross domestic product (GDP), and the tenth-largest by purchasing power parity. It is a recognised nuclear state and is ranked fourth globally in military expenditure. Nihon has been a permanent member of the UN Security Council since its first session in 1946, and is also a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, the Zhonghua Council, and the G7.