Japan Gestalt

2.6% East Asian (Chinese, Korean, Taiwan Aborigine)

18.8% Buddhist

5.3% No Religion

2.6% Christian

### Government

Gestaltist single-party corporate democracy (pursuing a gestaltist society-state)

### Legislature

Popular Diet (unitary top-level legislature)

### Area

397,975 square kilometers (153,660 sq mi)

### Population

131 million (2150 official count)

**Japan** (Japanese: 日本, *Nippon* or *Nihon),* formally the **Japan Gestalt** (Japanese: 日本国体, *Nihon kokutai*) is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north toward the East China Sea, Philippine Sea, and Taiwan in the south. Japan is a part of the Ring of Fire, and spans an archipelago of 27,345 islands covering 397,975 square kilometers (153,660 sq mi); the five main islands are Hokkaido, Honshu (the "mainland"), Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa. The Tokyo Arcology, the largest in the world, is the nation's capital. Japan's largest cities are the Tokyohama and Kosaka megalopoli, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, and Kyoto, all of which are built around at least one major arcology.

Japan is the nineteenth most populous country in the world, as well as the most densely populated and urbanized. About three-fourths of the country's terrain is mountainous, concentrating its population of almost 140 million on narrow coastal plains. Constricted terrain and dense cities have driven Japan to become a world leader in arcology technology, with over 100 self-sufficient arcology towers housing over 40% of the country's total population. Japan is divided into 53 administrative prefectures and eight traditional regions. The Tokyohama Megalopolis is the most populous metropolitan area in the world, with more than 70 million residents across eighteen designated cities and nineteen arcologies.

Japan has been inhabited since the Upper Paleolithic period (30,000 BC), though the first written mention of the archipelago appears in a Chinese chronicle (the *Book of Han*) finished in the 2nd century AD. Between the 4th and 9th centuries, the kingdoms of Japan became unified under an emperor and the imperial court based in Heian-kyō. Beginning in the 12th century, political power was held by a series of military dictators (*shōgun*) and feudal lords (*daimyō*) and enforced by a class of warrior nobility (*samurai*). After a century-long period of civil war, the country was reunified in 1603 under the Tokugawa shogunate, which enacted an isolationist foreign policy. In 1854, a United States fleet forced Japan to open trade to the West, which led to the end of the shogunate and the restoration of imperial power in 1868.

In the Meiji period, the Empire of Japan adopted a Western-modeled constitution and pursued a program of industrialization and modernization. Amidst a rise in militarism and overseas colonization, Japan invaded China in 1937 and entered World War II as an Axis power in 1941. After suffering defeat in the Pacific War and two atomic bombings, Japan surrendered in 1945 and came under a seven-year Allied occupation, during which it adopted a new constitution and began a military alliance with the United States. Under the 1947 constitution, Japan maintained a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy with a bicameral legislature, the National Diet.

Following the period of turmoil at the beginning of the 21st century, Japan began a drift out of the American sphere. Rearmament followed the Russian invasion of Ukraine, ending over 80 years of official pacifism. A techno-political revolution beginning late in the 2020s revitalized the Japanese economy and ended the 40 year economic crisis of the Lost Decades by leaving behind the liberal-democratic model and embracing a noncapitalist distributed economic system. Via experimentation and slow reform, Japan has pioneered new forms of popular democracy, eventually creating an unprecedented corporate democratic model that devolves most of governance to the lowest possible levels via the use of nested, overlapping corporate units. These units then elect representatives to higher tiers of legislature, with these tiers working together to craft an ever-changing government structure that is both flexible and accountable. This form of government - democratic gestaltism - is near-unique to Japan, with only a few allies adopting something similar. The current Japanese system of government is enshrined in the Evolving Constitution (Japanese: 転身憲法, Tenshin kenpō), considered the first Gestaltist governing document.

Japan is a developed country and a great power. Its economy is the world's eighth-largest by nominal GDP and the fifteenth-largest by PPP, with its per capita income ranking at 19th highest in the world. Japan's military is one of the world's strongest terrestrially, though heavily committed to the defense of Japan and its allies in the Pacific and less capable of projecting power worldwide or in space than other major powers. After World War II, Japan experienced record growth in an economic miracle, becoming the second-largest economy in the world by 1972, but growth slowed then stagnated from 1995 to 2045 in what is referred to as the Lost Decades. These lost decades ended with the Kokutai Reforms of the proto-gestaltist governments of the 2020s and 2030s. Japan now has the world's highest life expectancy, and the generally-acclaimed highest standard of living, with the highest levels of industrial capacity and luxury goods production per capita of any major power. A global leader in the automotive, robotics, aerospace, electronics, and materials science industries, the country has made significant contributions to science and technology. The culture of Japan is well known around the world, including its art, cuisine, film, music, and popular culture, which encompasses prominent manga, anime and video game industries.

## Modern History

### 2020s-2040s

ongoing economic crises prompt a radical solution: japan's gestaltist faction (initially as the social welfare wing of the liberal democratic party before an ideological shift in the 2030s) becomes electorally dominant and pursues initial reforms, growing closer to china and reducing the influence of large foreign economic interests via targeted reform. culminates, in 2038, in the Japanese state's bankruptcy; japan declines foreign restructuring demands and instead defaults on all foreign debt, creating a major economic crisis and beginning Japan's isolation from the US-backed world economy. realignment towards china follows, though without creating a dependency - Japan's economy contracts substantially, but population and qol indicators begin to rise

### 2040s-2100s

three sets of sequential social reform programs, the digital, economic, and political kokutai reforms, transform japan into a gestaltist state via fundamental alteration of basic institutions. these reforms continue to isolate japan, but produce near self-sufficiency in many areas.

### 2100s-2140s

japan turns its attention to its neighboring countries with the goal of securing regional stability. reunified korea and china to the west are stable, but instability in the SWPA leads them to become militarily involved in both the malaysian (2114-2127) and indonesian (2112-2125) civil wars, primarily facing off against corporate proxy troops. late in the malaysian civil war, australian troops become directly involved, precipitating the first nusantara crisis in 2126 and a direct confrontation between japanese and australian troops. indirect US involvement as part of the Dust Wars forces japan to withdraw their naval forces, leading to an eventual australian victory in malaysia, though japan-backed gestaltists prevailed earlier in indonesia. 2140s onwards: japan works alongside regional allies (gestaltists) and partners (communists) to counter and roll back corporate influence. corporations respond by using australia as a proxy in ongoing conflicts. south-west pacific conflict officially begins in 2126 with the first nusantara crisis.

## Japanese Space Presence

centered around the noctis fossae, the japanese colonies are solely resource-extraction operations, with small research stations periodically established on a temporary basis. heavily automated and lightly manned, the colonies themselves (the areas claimed by japan) are relatively small, composed primarily of large depots for storing extracted resources to be shipped back to earth and a number of mass drivers for getting those resources into orbit. disposable mining and transportation robots constantly traverse the surrounding areas, however, bringing raw resources to the production and storage bases from the mining areas to be refined. every two years, a cycler drops by and collects all the accumulated resources, ensuring a constant and predictable supply at home, giving japan something approaching self-sufficiency in many materials. astronomically expensive in terms of resources, Japan is ruthless about eliminating inefficiency in the colonies, keeping the human presence extremely small and maximizing the use of self-replicating and local resources in keeping the colonies running. japanese duster culture descends from japanese "salaryman" culture of the late 20th and early 21st century, with a strong focus on long work hours, maximizing efficiency, and workplace cohesiveness. japanese colonists primarily work "office" jobs, such as drone management and remote surveying, and rarely leave their unified dwelling-workplace units, except the few maintenance workers. instead, they interact with the world around them via abstracted facts and figures, communicated to them via condensed summaries created by their automated management systems. this has contributed to a unique (and heavily-studied) culture, which leaves Japanese dusters often equally isolated from Terran Japanese culture and Martian duster culture. most Japanese colonists are the descendants of the first colonists, who arrived in the 2050s, with very little exchange between Earth and Mars except for Martian raw resources and medicine and other special commodities from Earth.

## Gestaltist International Organizations

### Gestaltist International

Open to all gestaltist parties (not just nations), the International is a forum to promote cooperation between all ideological allies in the Gestaltist space, from National Gestaltists to Democratic Gestaltists and everything in between. The Gestaltist International is explicitly allied to the Communist, Socialist, and Cosmist Internationals. The International includes parties from most major and many minor nations, with especially high membership in East Africa and the Americas.

### Council of Gestaltist Nations (CGN)

The CGN is a forum to promote cooperation and mutual benefit between Gestaltist Nations (including those governed by Gestaltist parties as part of compromises deemed acceptable by the Council's existing members). All members of the PSG, including Peru, are members of the CGN, as is MEDCOM.

### Pacific Supergestalt (PSG)

The military, political, and economic body unifying the efforts of the Pacific's Gestaltist nations towards the end of liberating the Pacific from neoimperialism and capitalist exploitation. Japan, Indonesia, and Vietnam, with Peru as an observer nation (which has thus far declined to fully join due to its remoteness).