Japanese Empire (the Symphony That Never Ends)

The dominant power in Shikaku-mon, the Japanese are said to rule "half the world." This popular phrase is too generous geographically; the empire extends across about 40% of the globe and contains less than a third of its land surface. In human terms, however, it underestimates: the six and one-half billion subjects of Emperor Yasuhiro make up 65% of the Earth's inhabitants, mostly in East and South Asia. The 750 million ethnic Japanese hold all political power.

The sheer size of the empire frightens the rest of the world. The Japanese navy is as large as those of any two of the other superpowers, and its army (only about one-1uarter ethnic Japanese) larger than all of the three together. When the empire pursued economic autarchy, their great family-owned zaibatsu corporations, exploiting only the domestic market, grew larger than any other companies except the very largest Brazilian megacorporations. Since they decided to enter the world economy in the 1980s, Japanese companies have been overwhelming markets around the world.

The empire is basically aristocratic, structured around the great families. The gigantic zaibatsu are family holdings, and the nouveau riche who control them were given equal status with the older landowning daimyo after the emperor began ennobling them. The great families continually intrigue against one another and even have private wars in some outlying territories of the empire ~ but those struggles are kept quiet. All know that they must present a united front if they are to retain control. Communication is maintained and alliances created by an informal network among the women of the families, whose role in setting policy has never been appreciated by their men. Lesser citizens enter service to the great families, or, best of all, the central government, hoping to climb the social ladder ~ rising to the upper ranks is extremely difficult but not impossible.

The Japanese state has comparatively weak control over its Japanese citizens, even though the legal rights of the emperor are almost unlimited in scope: for Japanese, the Control Rating is 4 in the islands and 3 in other areas of the empire. The Imperial Advisory Council is the ruling body of the empire, but it has grown so large that all its important business is done in informal meetings between members outside the Council chambers in the capitol of Chukyo. The central government provides a focus for public sentiment and a rallying point for the imperial elite.

## The Conversion of Japan

In 1549, the Jesuit St. Francis Xavier arrived in Japan to inaugurate the most successful mission his order would ever have in Asia. Forty years later, there were perhaps 150,000 Japanese Christians; by 1614, despite intermittent persecutions under Hideyoshi, there may have been as many as 300,000. This success worried the rulers of the newly reunited country. The Tokugawa shoguns attacked Japanese Christians ferociously, as part of their policy of isolation. The 1637 Shimabara rebellion sealed the fate of Christianity in Japan, which by the end of the century was reduced to a tiny underground remnant.

In Shikaku-Mon, however, St. Francis Xavier survived his fever of 1552 (apparently because of a Portuguese companion not present in Homeline, suspected to be an angel of the Shield), returned to Japan and led the mission for another 20 years. His letters persuaded the Pope to establish an archbishopric in Nagasaki independent of the Portuguese archbishop in Goa, and he personally ordained the first native Japanese Jesuit just before his death. Later Jesuits continued to draw heavily on the talents of Japanese converts.

Contemporary Shikaku-Mon historians do not accept the legend that a Japanese Christian saved Oda Nobunaga from assassination in 1582, but Homeline is not so sure and many celestials suspect it was again the action of an angel of the Shield (perhaps the same one). In any case, Nobunaga's longer life in this parallel forestalled the rule of Hideyoshi and the rise of the Tokugawas. The Odas' benevolent neutrality toward Christianity, as well as their continued interaction with European powers, allowed the Church to continue its explosive growth. By the time the pro-Christian Westernizer faction fought the Traditionalists at court in mid-century, Japanese Christianity probably could not have been destroyed no matter the outcome. The victory of the Westernizers ensured the complete evangelization of the empire.

## Who Really Rules the Empire?

Everyone knows that the emperor of Japan has had no real power for centuries. The Imperial Advisory Council ran the country for many years, but is now so decorous that it has become a rubber-stamp body. So who *does* rule Japan?

The startling truth is: nobody. The chief civil and military officials and the heads of the zaibatsu spend most of their time negotiating with each other, usually along lines set by interfamily politics. Policies somehow emerge out of these countless off-stage discussions and battles.

Official position so rarely corresponds to substantial power in Japan that it is often hard to tell who really sets policy on any given issue. Grain prices may be set by an Admiralty staff officer, if he happens to have the proper connections. The Agriculture Ministry may determine policy in the East Indies. And the two probably won't consult eah other.

This method of ruling produces the curiously hapless Japanese foreign policy. Without agreement on what is to be done, Japan usually wastes its strength pursuing half a dozen different, often incompatible, objectives. If the governing class does agree on a goal, the whole empire suddenly becomes an alarmingly efficient tool for its achievement, as in the Indian War or the atomic program.

## The Conquests

For many centuries, the Japanese divided themselves from subject peoples by language, customs, and religion. (The government discouraged Christian evangelization among non-Japanese without ever admitting it.) This system broke down in the 19th century as fairly large groups, especially among the Koreans and Malays, converted to Catholicism and became conversant with Japanese customs. Rather than admit such groups into Japanese society, the rulers of the empire turned to race.

Today, the subject peoples are held to be born inferior to Japanese, with innate incapacities that neither religion nor custom can mend. The Japanese do consider Europeans superior to common Asians, but during the last 50 years they have begun to rank themselves above Europeans as well. Intermarriage between Japanese and outsider ~ except the occasional European ~ is not illegal but is unthinkable.

Thus non-Japanese find assimilation into the ruling classes of the empire almost impossible, and at this late date they seldom bother to try. The Japanese are experts at making the local elites dependent on them, dividing the population from their leaders. Without loyalty to the empire or hope for liberty, apathy is widespread among the subject peoples.

Japan blatantly exploits all its conquests for economic gain, with large segments of the population coerced to grow crops that the government wants or to labor in factories for substandard wages. Their standard of living is kept deliberately low in order to discourage political activism by focusing attention on survival. The Control Rating is 5 for non-Japanese subjects.

China is better off than most of the other conquered areas, as the Japanese feel some lingering sentiment toward the country they thought was the center of the world for so many centuries. Resistance movements are strongest in Korea, Vietnam, and the parts of India conquered in the 20th century.

* Aoteara
* Japanese America

## Being Shikaku-Mon Japanese

Homeline Japanese find their counterparts in Shikaku-mon similar enough to be familiar but with very disturbing differences. They are more Westernized: the great change of Christianity matches other pervasive adaptations such as the use of the Latin alphabet in the place of Chinese characters or Japanese kana and the habit of placing the personal name before the family name, rather than after. Portuguese personal names are still fairly common.

Without the experience of the Tokugawa shogunate, Shikaku-mon Japanese are more outgoing and publicly self-willed. They value intense personal religiosity and are among the world's most devout Christians. Still, very few Japanese believe that religious scruples should be allowed to stand in the way of more worldly loyalties.

Many familiar aspects of Japanese culture do not exist in Shikaku-mon; the samurai ideal is no more influential than medieval knighthood is in Homeline, and the yakuza never came into existence at all. (Organized crime in the empire is Chinese.) Ninja still play a role in pop culture, but no contemporary Japanese assassin would dream of using medieval weapons.

Japanese society is preoccupied with etiquette. Custom, never publicly questioned, dictates everything from the use of stainless cutlery with shellfish instead of silver, to the requirement that a married woman avoid regular salaried employment. Curiously, freelance professions are considered acceptable for citizen women, despite the general condescension toward them. Japanese men believe that women are shallow and foolish, which leaves them vulnerable to the many female spies of the other powers as well as to their own relatives.

Japanese society is not the monolith that outsiders sometimes perceive. Although conforming elitists devoted to the imperial structure dominate the empire, dozens of groups wish to change contemporary Japanese culture. Some are religiously motivated: sometimes Buddhists, or even Shintoists, who believe Christianity was a mistake, more commonly Millennialists who have shifted their apocalyptic expectations to 2033. Synarchism is not a religion but sometimes acts like one. Reactionary nobles and their admirers have never reconciled themselves to the opening of the upper class to wealth and talent; a few of them even want to give real power to the emperor. Brazilophilia has declined since Red Tuesday; the same events have encouraged groups opposed to Western "decadence and disorder" and agrarian Luddites who dislike the "new" urban Japan. Such groups often blur with the antisemitic movements, which are remarkably popular considering that there are almost no Jews in Japan.

## Cities

Chukyo is the capitol of Japan. Edo was never the capitol and was never renamed Tokyo, but since it is the center of the Kanto plain, it still has a population of almost 13 million. Other large cities in Japan include Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Kawasaki, Kitakyushu, Sendai, and Sapporo. All have more than a million people and aspire to be smaller copies of Chukyo. The only city of Japan with serious pretensions to cultural independence is Nagasaki, with about 750,000 people due to strict zoning. Its Cardinal-Archbishop is the Primate of the Church in East Asia. It is the site of the University of Nagasaki, the only top school in Japan not run by the government.

The rest of the empire has almost 500 cities with a population of more than a million: one-third in China, two-fifths in India and Southeast Asia, and the rest mostly in the other Japanese lands. On the surface these are usually debased copies of Japanese cities ~ some seem to be all slums ~ with only religious buildings and interior decorations expressing the culture of the people who live within.