Solar Empire of Japan (TUE)

**Dev. Status** | Conceptual

*"May your reign*

*Continue for a thousand,*
*Éight thousand generations,*

*Until the pebbles'*

*Grow into boulders*

*Lush with moss"*

- *"Kimigayo"* - *"Japanese National Anthem"*
The **Solar Empire of Japan**, also known as the **Empire**, the **Japanese**, or **Japan**, is the polity representing Japan and her Imperial Dominions . Though once far from the hearts and minds of the western world, coming out only to manage its relatively modest colonial empire and engage in trade; the Solar Empire fought with the Alliance in the second world war, dueling with the Socialists across the pacific and acquitting itself well; but after the limited defeat of the Alliance the Empire decided to break from the organization and hide itself away; focusing its efforts on growing the technological base it had been expanding since the year 1900, following Emperor Meiji's encounter with a strange phenomenom. The Empire would not return to the minds of the general public until it entered the third world war accompanied by a number of factions opposed to the current world order in the shape of the Axis of Powers, engaging in battle with the Alliance, Comintern, and the threats of the Dominion of Noxsylvania and its stooges in the Heart Washing Dynasty.

As the Axis that the Empire built fought four different world power blocs across every continent on the planet, the Empire eventually found that it had underestimated the resolve and the strength of its opponents. And even their fantastical technology and warrior spirit could not overcome the simple reality of them being gravely outnumbered by their enemies who had the reserves to recover from initial setbacks and strike blows the Empire could not easily recover from and forced them to sue for peace when some counterattacks by the Empire seemed promising. With the Crown Prince and Emperor dead in the wake of the third world war, the crown has passed to the young prince Naruhito, not even twenty two years old at the time. For now, the Empire seems content to try for economic supremacy and control in the world, using its fantastical technology to gain great wealth; but while the Empire has been humbled, it has not been broken, and millions of soldiers still stand ready to finish what had been started and its allies stir insurgent troubles across the planet..

## At a Glance

 **Intended Players** | "Pro" Players with high APM

## Background

### A strange land in strange times

The world's oldest monarchy has not always been in the limelight. For the longest time it was simply on the peripheries of Asian politics and not at all known by the peoples of the west or the near east. Though it made itself a name during the Imjin wars in its attempted conquest of Korea and beyond, the nation of Japan soon retreated back into isolationism when that endeavor failed. However, the opening of Japan to the wider world by Commodore Perry would send shockwaves throughout Japanese culture and society. The stark realization that Japan was tremendously vulnerable to European influence; already a topic of court discussion with the recent humblings of China by the Europeans and the steady carving up of Southern Asia between the European colonists; lead to a fanatic desire to modernize and develop so that Japan could be made safe. In an almost miraculous process of industrialization Japan transitioned from a primarily agrarian to an industrial economy in a few decades after the Meiji restoration saw the Shogunate buried in the ash heap of history.

Being a resource poor set of islands also meant that by the prevading logic of the time; Japan needed to have colonies, but with such a late entry into the colonial game there were but scraps to take. A brief war with China won Japan the island of Taiwan for its usage, its first colony; while further diplomatic pressures on China would gain it a number of legations and concessions from the moribound Qing Empire that Japan relentlessly pressured to ensure that China would not undergo a renaissance similar to its own. Ties of friendship were built with Siam, a fellow independent nation in Asia with a similarly esteemed monarchy, and together with Germany, Japan helped to build Thailand up to a level similar to itself (but ultimately inferior given their disparities in population) in the hopes of gaining it as an ally, and it gained further prestige hammering the Chinese in the boxer Rebellion. But the true test of the Empire would come with the defeat of Russia in the war to determine who would dominate Manchuria and Korea.

While Emperor Meiji was pleased by the victory, he himself had become obsessed with a chance encounter with "a strange circular door that hung in the air" that he encountered in his garden one day in the year 1900 alongside a number of accomplices. From it, the Empire retrieved some strange examples of high technology from the other side as well as the means to understand them, and he committed himself and his nation to studying the secrets of such technology. His son Taisho would continue this legacy of the advancement of technology after Meiji's death, with Japan ultimately being more focused on unlocking the secrets of what they had acquired than the first world war which seemed to be such a distant affair; with little to gain besides some isolated German possessions and concessions from Central Powers aligned Siam by fighting alongside Britain, France, and America. However the end of the first world war would bring something of great alarm to Japan's attention, the Formation of the Soviet Union.

Though the new Soviet Union would be a damaged and wartorn state for years to come, the liberalism of the Taisho period now found itself rocked by the surge of strength of Communist movements as Lenin spoke of a world revolution and the hammer and sickle loomed close to Japan. Further disasters such as a tremendous Earthquake in the twenties and the deterioration of relations with Britain and America and Japan gaining disappointingly little from its participation in the first world war would ensure that the liberalism of the Taisho period would perish as the fascism of the Showa era stepped to the front and center. For a time, Japan would continue to have poor relations with Britain; feeling insulted by being placed into the second tier category of navies in the Washington Naval treaty and looking at the colonies of Europe with desire; even facing censure for its acquisition of Manchuria as a colony, and its economy would be devastated by the Depression, but the winds would blow in the favour of the increasingly militaristic empire once again.

The United States of America, Japan's new great rival for the pacific, collapsed into civil war and revolution following the victory of the Worker's Communist Parties in the general elections of 1933. While the American reds would win in relatively short order; forming the Union of American socialist republics, the possessions of America in the pacific were now up for grabs in the midst of the confusion. Hawaii and the Aleutian islands and many smaller island territories of America were swiftly seized by Japan, while France occupied the Philippines and Britain looked to secure many strategic south pacific islands. The panicked Europeans now found themselves facing two tremendous communist powers in the pacific, and the fascist governments that took over in much of Europe turned to Japan and Siam as bulwarks against the rise of Communism. Now the Empire could flourish once again.

### The sun rises

The Empire of Japan entered the so called Alliance of Free States as German Dictator Adolf Hitler called forth a meeting of fascist leaders from around the world to form an anti-comintern pact and contain the spread of Bolshevism. Japan would find itself with an honored spot at the table as the details of the formation of the Alliance of Free-States that would create a "new world order" were hammered out. The opening of trade with its fellow fascist states and the flow of experts would bolster the strength of Japan, which was starting to crack some of the secrets of the devices they took from the door, building up a potent knowledge base around the research of their acquisitions. The Empire's military was increased tremendously in size across all metrics, new warships, new planes, new tanks, and new divisions were marshaled out as Japan underwent a second great period of industrialization.

For seventeen years, Japan would continue to build up and modernize, trying to match the build ups of its communist rivals in the parts of China governed by Wang Jingwei, the Soviet Union, America, and the pacific Latin American states alongside the fleet build ups of its European allies. The first primitive fruits of the Empire's research would be deployed against the Comintern when the second world war broke out in 1950; crude transforming mecha, primitive drones, and unconventional ideas for personal weapons and vehicles as Japan's contribution to the development of weapons technology in strange directions throughout the second world war. While the army dueled with the Chinese, Soviets, and Asian leftist insurgents throughout Asia and sent expeditionary forces to other fronts such as the Americas, the Navy fought ferocious duels with the navies of all pacific Comintern powers and its planes fought across the world.

Japan in particular sought to deal with the potential superiority of its opponents in terms of materiel with violent surprise attacks on its enemy's ports within minutes of war being declared. The Kido Butai assaulted the naval base at San Diego while its British and French counterparts made similar if smaller scale strikes elsewhere, which was followed by assaults on the Soviet and Chinese bases in the pacific as Japan launched a general offensive with a military bolstered by new production technologies. Even an invasion of Alaska was started, with the Sentai battling American arctic troops in tandem with Canadian commandos. But such a string of victories could not last forever. Though there were initial great successes pockmarked by the occasional frustrations and setbacks, the Alliance had not taken the proper measure of its enemies. The Communists began to slow down the alliance's advances before starting to stop various offensives in their tracks and then beginning to push back with a vengeance as the war went on.

Great victories like the first battle of the Bering Strait or the siege of Vladivostok and Seattle were now marred by defeats such as the battle of Easter Island and the Marshall Islands, the battle of Port town or the siege of Hainan. Triumphs like Otkhosk seemed quite distant as Isoruku Yamamoto wrote to Japanese high command to explain to them how most of the heavy ships of the ANZAC fleet ended up getting sent to the bottom of the sea at the battle of the Solomon Islands as Nimitz, Yumashev, and Merino's combined fleets dealt Japan and the British fleets a hard blow. Even as the Comintern's navies were fighting in the atlatnic and the arctic, plenty of force could be put forward to dealing with the Alliance in the pacific. However, the Empire could manage to continue to win a number of important victories or force stalemates even as the Alliance began to be pushed farther and farther back. While the overall Alliance was very much clearly on the backfoot despite the masses of reserves ready to continue to fight the war; Japan remained able to make some advances, such as the retaking of the Philipines from the Americans, Chileans, Chinese, and Mexicans when they pushed the French out.

When the war ended, the Japanese were able to negotiate a very favorable peace with the Comintern from a position of relative strength, though they were well aware that if they tried to drag out the war further it would most likely not end well. Though forced out of Alaska, China, and Siberia and out of about half of Korea, the Empire managed to hold onto a number of conquered islands and much of its empire. They had even managed to gain the Philippines in the process, and the overall mood of the brass of the Empire was high. Why would it not be? They had managed to gain a peace with honor and stand triumphant. But they found themselves having irreconcilable differences with the newly liberalizing Alliance, and having judged their former Allies; deemed that it could be possible to grow the Empire at their expense in the next war. They thus withdrew from the Alliance in 1958 and instead focused on developing themselves and building their own power bloc.

### The Corona builds

The Solar Empire contacted other groups following its departure from the Alliance. While the Pan-African Union had fought with the Comintern during the second world war, the PAU was incensed when many of the liberated African states adopted Communism and Socialism instead of their preferred model of a more rightist and paternalist vision of African nationalism. As such, the Empire's diplomats were able to woo their leaders to their side, with the Solar Empire pledging to help the Pan-African Union develop to high technological standards if it aligned with their bloc, and promising to respect Africa's sovereignity, proclaiming that their visions of Africa for Africans and Asia for Asians were compatible and that the talk of a divine destiny to rule the world was just that; talk. The Pan-African Union agreed and formed an Alliance with Japan, declaring the birth of the Axis of Powers.

More strange allies were also acquired; with the Guardians of Monarchy, a force that dwelled in cavorite powered flying cities and airship fleets and were diehard adherents to reactionaryism and had engaged in some battles in the second world war against the Communists, though shying away from a true total war commimtent, were also contacted. The Empire told the Guardians that the Solar would be a champion of traditional values and monarchism against the tides of liberalism and socialism and republicanist fascism. They offered to help maintain and upgrade their aging flying cities which had in many occasions aged to a quite sorry state with the difficulties in getting parts thanks to their antagonism to both the Alliance and the Comintern. The Guardians would also sign on with the Axis, joining with a new and formidable power bloc.

The Solar Empire hardly neglected its own military as its think tanks and strategic collectives debated how to wage the third world war. Japanese armoured formations had proven to be lackluster and uninspiring compared to their western Allies and the Comintern's mechanized war machines. However there was promise in their transforming machines, and automation via drones at the front and at home freed up significant amounts of manpower; and the first crude examples of nanotechnology had been a great boon for production. Thus these would be intensely focused on and developed; while new weapon systems like proper plasma cutters, wave motion weapons, and ETC devices were being rapidly advanced to give the Empire an advantage against its enemies. Power generation technology would advance as well, and the Empire joined the space race by the year 1965 with the launch of the Tengu satellite.

As artificial intelligence; whose crude first examples were used by most sides in the war as electronic assistants for commanders and to aid in the management of resources and the planning of war economies or even commanding some of the earliest non-Japanese drones, cyborg interfaces, or reducing crew compliments towards the end of the war; had proven so useful in the second world war, with Japan's computer technology now being at the top of the class; Emperor Hirohito ordered it developed as much as possible. These machines would help expand Japan's economy tremendously and aided in the efficient management of its vast empire, easily offsetting the loss of most of its holdings on the mainland of Asia. But while living standards increased, Japan's deeply conservative culture seemed almost frozen in traditionalism even as they lived in futuristic luxury; and the deeply authoritarian Japanese government never relented in its power.

As the years dragged on and minor conflicts pockmarked the fragile peace of the cold war; which most agreed became unsustainable when the technology to render mutually assured destruction a thing of the past; the Empire had built a massive army in secret. Not only of conventional soldiers but also of a large number of autonomous and self-aware robots who joined their organic counterparts in numerous parades and in numerous patrols and maneuvers while others assembled in deployment zones to await the order to attack. The Solar Empire was now a superpower to match the superpowers of America and the Soviets and to surpass any one great power of Europe. The rise of the Heart Washing Dynasty out of the ashes of the chinese civil war as Yan Xhishan drove out both the Communists and Nationalists from his country after world war two to create the building blocks of his own superpower was a cause for significant concern, but Chinese military might had left a distinctly unimpressive impression in the Japanese mind; though forces were deployed to wage war with the new China when Xishan started making his intent clear in the seventies after his heavy modernization of china. By the late 70s, all was ready for the Empire to bring the Kamikaze to all under heaven and make the vision of one sun, one earth, one empire, one Tenno possible.

### Kamikaze

The Solar Empire at first waited for its enemies to be fully embroiled in the third world war before making its move, watching as the Comintern and Alliance tore into one another all over the planet once again with both conventional armies and paramilitary irregulars. Then when the year was drawing to a close and the two sides were thoroughly committed to one another's annihilation the Empire and its Axis allies struck like a typhoon. All over the world there were reports of attacks by the Solar Empire, the Pan-African Union, and the Guardians of Monarchy as they launched simultaneous offensives against their designated targets with tremendous surprise and precision. The Empire's intelligence networks had worked well to keep the Axis' arsenals largely a secret and so the initial wave of attacks were a tremendous success, though the Axis was as much in the dark as anyone else when it came to the arsenal of the new China as it launched its own surprise attacks; which lead to a third sino-japanese war beginning as the Empire sought to hammer the Dynasty into submission.

However the Empire's own plans were snagged by an unforeseen element as the Dominion of Noxsylvania rose up out of the shadows to betray the embattled Alliance and begun massed attacks against the rest of the world and place it forevermore under the thumb of its transhuman aristocracy. How the Empire's network of spies had failed to account for this possibility quickly became a topic of furious debate within the command circles of the Solar Empire, but it was agreed that the traitorous ex-science division was a great threat to Japanese interests that had to be dealt with as soon as could be made practicable. Even the great advancements into psionic technology and biological engineering that the Empire had managed however; seemed to pale before the monstrosities that the Dominion could create. The vaunted psychics that the Empire had used to great success against its enemies were largely outmatched by the posthuman adepts of Noxsylvania, and the creatures that crawled out of Noxsylvania's biofactories made any creation of arctic amoebas or nanite enhancement seem measured.

The Empire and its allies launched their devastating attacks around the world with the intention of conquering it, with assaults occuring as far off as Gibraltar, Panama, and the Suez as the Solar Empire sought to bottle up the fleets of its enemies while its armies swept through the world. At the Zenith of the Solar Empire's success it had penetrated deep into the Indian subcontinent, ruled south east asia, had occupied large parts of the Chinese coast, had an iron grip on coastal Alaska and Siberia, had conquered nearly the entirety of Oceania, had landed in the American west coast; even going as far as to seize Vancouver and Los Angeles, and had even probed into the middle east and Africa while submarines prowled all the seas of the world. But the Empire soon found that whenever one faction seemed to reach an apogee in the third world war, the other four would focus upon it and push it back before someone else disturbed the equilibrium; a seesaw process that repeated for years as no continent was spared.

This, to the Solar Empire's horror, would include the home islands themselves as its enemies approached them, either launching raids against it as its widespread fleets were busy elsewhere or breaking through its cordon of fleets to launch brazen assaults. And as the Solar Empire's strength began to wither these attacks began to grow more frequent. Bombing raids from Siberia began once the Comintern drove the Japanese and the Guardians from there, and intensified when northern Korea was liberated from the tug of war between China and Japan. The Alliance's air raids began shortly as its airship fleets and Pykrete mega-carriers approached the home Islands. Even as the axis penetrated into Antarctica to battle Noxsylvania, the Dominion prepared its own assault on Kyushu and the Chinese prepared a forceful assault to break the stalemate the two had settled into over east Asia as the Axis hoped to unleash its own crippling strike against the Dynasty.

By the end of the war however, it was clear that the war had gone all so very wrong for the Empire. The Home Islands were beset by all manner of invaders; The Emperor perished in a comintern assault on Kyoto while the crown prince met his end in the Alliance invasion of Tokyo bay. Much of high command was killed in the Noxsylvanian invasion of Kyushu, and the heartwashing dynasty had launched a major assault on the Kansai region. While there were military successes elsewhere, including the Japanese capture of Shanghai, much of Southern California, and a major naval victory against the Alliance at the Java Sea; the crisis on the home islands and the general retreat of Japanese forces across the world forced the issue of surrender. Fortunately, both Noxsylvania and the Dynasty also agreed to come to the table; and the Alliance vs Comintern segment of the war ended the very next day when Stewart was disposed of in a coup.

Despite heavy destruction and loss of life, the Empire again managed to grow with the conquest of Indonesia and expanding the toehold in Alaska and its economy managed to grow substantially in the same year it was defeated, prompting many to wonder if the Empire's future lay in economic domination. While still maintaining its own independent bloc; the Empire has decided to be more open with the rest of the world, engaging in heavy trade and relaxing its draconian border policies. Its technologies have intermingled with those of other nations as a general exchange has commenced between the power blocs, and Japanese culture has become highly popular in the outside world. While the military has been rebuilt from its harsh lessons, the Empire's next great gambit may not require a single shot to be fired..

## Allies, Protectorates & Associated Organizations of Japan

### Kingdom of Hawaii

*The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness*

- Motto of the Kingdom of Hawaii