Qing Conquest of Japan

[Venocara]

Is there any plausible way to get this event to happen, and if so what is the latest possible POD that could allow this to happen? Were there any OTL Qing Emperors interested in extending Chinese dominion over Japan?

 

[SinghSong]

Well, you'd almost certainly need a Qing Conquest of Korea first. Or, thinking about it, what about an alternate First Sino-Japanese War, breaking out after a different outcome of the Gapsin Coup? IOTL, the briefly successful coup was attempted half a year after half of the Chinese troops were withdrawn from Korea in August 1884, in response to the Sino-French War breaking out over control of Annam. And it was carried out with the help of the Japanese minister Takezoe Shinichiro, who promised to mobilize Japanese legation guards to provide assistance. And after the abortive coup, the Japanese dispatched two battalions and seven warships to Korea in a show of gunboat diplomacy, yielding the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1885- which restored diplomatic relations between the two nations, and forced the Korean government to pay the Japanese ¥100,000 for damages to their legation, as well as providing a site and buildings for a new legation.

Prime minister Ito Hirobumi visited China to discuss the matter with his Chinese counterpart, Li Hongzhang, who was more preoccupied with the ongoing conflict against the French, and the two parties concluded the Convention of Tianjin on May 31, 1885. In it, both Qing China and Japan pledging to withdraw their troops from Korea within four months, as well as to give prior notification to the other party if troops were to be sent to Korea in the future- with the Korean government's request for Chinese assistance in ending the Donghak peasant revolt 9yrs later giving Japan a thin pretext to military intervene directly, citing a violation of this Convention.

So then, what if-
A) the Sino-French War had never broken out, but the members of the Gaehwapa had gone ahead with staging their scheduled coup regardless, failing in a more violent version of the coup, and with a full-blown war between Qing China and Japan breaking out over it in the absence of another simultaneous conflict to divide Qing China's strength (and devastate its naval power)? Or alternatively-
B) French PM Jules Ferry's request to the French ambassador in Japan, to approach the Japanese government with an offer of an alliance in the immediate aftermath of the Gapsin Coup is actually carried out by Ambassador Sienkiewicz ITTL (instead of being deliberately not being forwarded as IOTL), and the Franco-Japanese alliance comes to fruition, bringing the enthusiastic Japanese into the war. However, as French interest fades, and Ferry's ministry falls, the Qing reach a (potentially more concessionary- perhaps conceding Taiwan and/or Penghu to the French as well?) peace agreement with the French, who then abandon the Japanese to face the Qing Chinese alone?

 

[SenatorChickpea]

That's a decent scenario for continued Chinese hegemony in Korea, and a much needed shot in the arm for the Qing.

What it doesn't do is address the terrible state of the Qing navy, or get the Qing interested in- much less committed to- exercising dominion over Japan.

I don't have a better suggestion for a POD, I'm afraid- but my gut is that you need Japan to stay more engaged in the Sinic world system in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. Perhaps a more successful invasion of Korea, which still fails to stop the Qing taking China- but does succeed in marking the Shogunate as a competitor and enemy to the Great Qing.

 

[Makemakean]

Problem to a great extent is that there really isn't much of a reason for the Qing to want to take Japan. Japan is nowhere near as good as China for agriculture, and as for raw materials and so forth, there's very little to be had, hence why China has traditionally always looked Southward for expansion as opposed to Eastward. Because of the buffer that is Korea, the Japanese had prior to the late 19th century never been a threat to China. Not even Hideyoshi was ever much cause for concern. The enemies to fear have always been the Turkic peoples in the North and in the West.

 

[Venocara]

What it doesn't do is address the terrible state of the Qing navy, or get the Qing interested in- much less committed to- exercising dominion over Japan.

Is it possible that an earlier Sino-Japanese War and an earlier, perhaps more serious defeat for the Qing could lead to a revanchist faction arising in the Qing Court, dedicating itself to the destruction of the Japanese Empire?

Problem to a great extent is that there really isn't much of a reason for the Qing to want to take Japan. Japan is nowhere near as good as China for agriculture, and as for raw materials and so forth, there's very little to be had, hence why China has traditionally always looked Southward for expansion as opposed to Eastward. Because of the buffer that is Korea, the Japanese had prior to the late 19th century never been a threat to China. Not even Hideyoshi was ever much cause for concern. The enemies to fear have always been the Turkic peoples in the North and in the West.

Alternatively, how about an earlier modernisation of Japan; say if someone manages to open them up in the 1790s or 1800s (be it the Revolutionary French, British, Americans or Russians), which could lead to conflict between Japan and China which causes the Qing enough problems to motivate them enough to go for complete conquest?

 

[Makemakean]

Alternatively, how about an earlier modernisation of Japan; say if someone manages to open them up in the 1790s or 1800s (be it the Revolutionary French, British, Americans or Russians), which could lead to conflict between Japan and China which causes the Qing enough problems to motivate them enough to go for complete conquest?

The thing about the Opening of Japan was that it didn't happen in a vacuum. As noted, Japan is very low on natural resources and agricultural potential, so you might wonder, why did the great powers of the mid-19th century want to open the country at all? Well, it had to do with the fact that China had been opened up a couple of decades earlier, and China was the one gem that European powers had had their eyes set on opening up for centuries. After the humiliating defeats in the Opium Wars, the European powers wasted no time in setting up shop in China to get their hands on its resources and produce, there was an explosion of trade and imperialist power grabbing, and it was in this context that Japan suddenly became interesting, not as a promising candidate for colonization, not even as a proper client state, but as a useful stepping-stone, a base for further trade in China and to help fascilitate trade with the Middle Kingdom. Basically, it was good if Japan were to be a place where you could do business.

If China hasn't already been opened up, if there isn't already all kinds of western powers vying for political influence there, there is really no reason to open up Japan. And by the late 18th century, not even the Royal Navy was in a condition to take on the Qing, and prevailing opinion in Britain and Europe at the time among the political classes was that China was a behemoth of an empire that they could not hope to defeat in a war if it came to it. The idea of China as the sick man of Asia came first much later.

Further, there is the matter of, even leaving all the above aside, one cannot really draw a straight line of inevitability between Japan being opened up to it being rapidly modernized, nor can you even draw one between Japan being rapidly modernized to it going on colonialist adventures.

Is it possible that an earlier Sino-Japanese War and an earlier, perhaps more serious defeat for the Qing could lead to a revanchist faction arising in the Qing Court, dedicating itself to the destruction of the Japanese Empire?

More serious?

The defeat of the Qing in the Sino-Japanese War was basically as serious as it possibly could be. It managed to be an even more humiliating defeat than the one the Qing had been handed in the Opium Wars, for whereas Britain was this mysterious country far beyond the sea, the Chinese had known about the Japanese for well over fifteen hundred years, and had throughout that time regarded them as basically uncivilized brutes and barbarians, far inferior to them in terms of government, infrastructure, civilization, philosophy, everything. And the Japanese would have agreed. China was the shining star, and Japan but a pale reflection. And now the Japanese had defeated the mighty Qing, annexed Korea (which had prior been a Chinese vassal), Taiwan (which had been Chinese for centuries upon centuries), and Liaodong (which had been part of the empire founded by the Qin two thousand years prior).

It wasn't that there wasn't enough of a desire for revenge in the Qing Court. It was that the Qing Court was at a complete and total loss at figuring out a way to obtain a revenge with the cards that they'd been handed.

 

[Venocara]

If China hasn't already been opened up, if there isn't already all kinds of western powers vying for political influence there, there is really no reason to open up Japan.

In all fairness, the Russians had expressed interest in opening up Japan as early as 1778 and the Americans had tried in 1803. Perhaps there could be some sort of incident leading to a sort of Opium War situation?

I do recognise that an earlier opening of Japan doesn't mean that they'll trying to conquer everything in sight within twenty years, but it is a possibility with their lack of natural resources that they would still seek them elsewhere through imperialist exploits.

It wasn't that there wasn't enough of a desire for revenge in the Qing Court. It was that the Qing Court was at a complete and total loss at figuring out a way to obtain a revenge with the cards that they'd been handed.

So with an earlier war and perhaps more time to reform the Qing state is it possible that they could try for a conquest?

 

[Makemakean]

In all fairness, the Russians had expressed interest in opening up Japan as early as 1778 and the Americans had tried in 1803. Perhaps there could be some sort of incident leading to a sort of Opium War situation?

If by opening up, you merely mean, send a trading vessel over to Japan with some diplomat and try to persuade the Japanese to sign some sort of trade agreement so the Dutch doesn't have monopoly, then, yes, two prior attempts had been made by the Russians in the late 18th century. (I don't know of this episode in 1803 by the Americans though).

The opening up by Commodore Perry was quite different. It involved sending a fleet of warship to what is now Tokyo bay, have them refuse to leave until communications with the Shogun had been established, and fire cannons so that the entire city of Edo can hear that they mean business. Gunboat diplomacy in its purest form. That was not what the Russians had tried to do in the 18th century.

So with an earlier war and perhaps more time to reform the Qing state is it possible that they could try for a conquest?

It's going to be difficult to get a war much earlier. The Meiji Restoration didn't properly get started until 1866, and even though the Boshin War (1868-9) put an end to the Tokugawa shogunate, military reform would take another decade and was a very difficult process, resulting in uprisings, like the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877.

But even so, the notion that the Qing would try to conquer Japan after having first a Sino-Japanese War (and that somehow even more seriously than in OTL) is a bit, well, ambitious. They'd likely just go for trying to reclaim (some of) what they lost or go for better terms. To conquer Japan, they're going to need a considerable navy, and the means to bring over countless soldiers to the Japanese islands. China isn't really in a position to start building such a thing in the 1880s-1890s.

 

[Venocara]

If by opening up, you merely mean, send a trading vessel over to Japan with some diplomat and try to persuade the Japanese to sign some sort of trade agreement so the Dutch doesn't have monopoly, then, yes, two prior attempts had been made by the Russians in the late 18th century

I was think that if something had gone awry in either of these attempts that the Russians could deem it necessary to send a more.. substantial force.

I don't know of this episode in 1803 by the Americans though

Captain William Robert Stewart entered Nagasaki harbour and tried to start trade through Dejima, and Captain John Derby had tried to begin an opium trade with Japan I believe in the same year. Again, perhaps if something went awry some sort of conflict could arise?

But even so, the notion that the Qing would try to conquer Japan after having first a Sino-Japanese War (and that somehow even more seriously than in OTL) is a bit, well, ambitious.

The reason why I said it should be more serious in TTL is so that the Chinese would feel sufficiently aggrieved that they would go for total conquest. If the scale of OTL's defeat would be enough to give rise to these sentiments then that's fine, I just assumed they wouldn't be.

To conquer Japan, they're going to need a considerable navy, and the means to bring over countless soldiers to the Japanese islands. China isn't really in a position to start building such a thing in the 1880s-1890s.

Do you think it is something they could aim for in the long term, perhaps in time for an ATL Russo-Japanese War or WW1?

 

[SinghSong]

It's going to be difficult to get a war much earlier. The Meiji Restoration didn't properly get started until 1866, and even though the Boshin War (1868-9) put an end to the Tokugawa shogunate, military reform would take another decade and was a very difficult process, resulting in uprisings, like the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877.

But even so, the notion that the Qing would try to conquer Japan after having first a Sino-Japanese War (and that somehow even more seriously than in OTL) is a bit, well, ambitious. They'd likely just go for trying to reclaim (some of) what they lost or go for better terms. To conquer Japan, they're going to need a considerable navy, and the means to bring over countless soldiers to the Japanese islands. China isn't really in a position to start building such a thing in the 1880s-1890s.

China did have such a thing in the 1880s though, with their navy, on paper, having been significantly stronger and more powerful than the Japanese Navy. And going into the late 1880s, the Beiyang Fleet became increasingly powerful, becoming the largest fleet in Asia and the 8th in the world during the late 1880s in terms of tonnage- with its two brand-new modern battleships, Dingyuan and Zhenyuan, having been commissioned and constructed to order in German shipyards. These battleships were completed in May 1883 and April 1884 respectively, but it was originally agreed that delivery would be delayed until both were ready, and in the interim, with the Sino-French War looming, the French persuaded the German government to delay their release until after the conclusion of the conflict.

And also, shortly after the year in which the Sino-French War and Gapsin Coup both took place, in 1888, the construction of new ships was almost completely stopped by the Qing, with this attributed to the Qing dynasty's high expenditures in other fields, and to Grand Tutor Weng Tonghe's advice to the Guangxu Emperor to cut all funding to the navy and army- peace had been reached with the French, and Japan was deemed far too weak and insignificant to pose a true threat. And during the early 1890s, there were several natural disasters which the emperor considered it far more pressing to expend funds on, with the training of the fleet and personnel essentially coming to a standstill as a result, which eventually contributed to its defeat in the Battle of the Yalu River against Japan.

Hence my original assessment that this period, in the mid to late 1880's, presented by far the best window of opportunity for China to maintain its naval superiority over Japan. And that the easiest way to do this would ironically be to have Japan and the Gaehwapa achieve greater, slightly more lasting success in the Gapsin Coup, and its initial foray into Korea; since the Qing would at the very least have been forced to assess the Japanese threat to China as being significantly greater than IOTL, and actually maintain its naval supremacy, rather than simply giving up on new naval construction and development only a few years later, and leaving its navy with an early-mover disadvantage by the time the Japanese did decide to wage war against it (in a manner akin to Italy in WW2).

And if the French do forge their military alliance with the Japanese, as PM Ferry had given the order for his ambassador to Japan to secure (only for the ambassador to deliberately refuse to pass the request on to the Japanese, having held the opinion that it'd only bring about Japan's demise and fall to the Qing), with the subsequent fall of Ferry's government and secret talks between the French and Chinese still being held in Paris in February and March 1885, to bring an end to the war between the two, Qing China and Japan would still be at war with one another. Would the new French administration be able (or in any way inclined) to keep blocking the delivery of the Beiyang Fleet's two delayed German Battleships? Or to go to war with the Qing Chinese, yet again so soon, just to protect and defend their briefest ally-of-convenience, Japan, from facing retribution? Or would they (and the British, and the other European colonial powers) be more interested in seeing both nations expend their military strength fighting each other to the bitter end, and then swooping in to strip whatever territories they could conquer or extort from the weakened parties?

Perhaps even with France itself covertly aspiring for Japan's defeat to be as total as possible, setting the end-goal of attempting to secure Japan for itself as a French protectorate, in a similar manner to Tonkin and Annam? Course, if the (at the time, still more modernized, equally well-trained and funded, and far more powerful than the IJN) Beiyang Fleet, with the aid of its belatedly delivered German battleships, does emerge triumphant in its battles, securing total naval superiority for the Qing and opening up the possibility of a wholesale invasion of the Japanese home islands at this juncture, the French and any other European powers aiming for Japan may well be disappointed in this regard.

 

[Makemakean]

I was think that if something had gone awry in either of these attempts that the Russians could deem it necessary to send a more.. substantial force.

In the late 18th century?

Not really.

There isn't a Russian navy in the Far East (Vladivostok won't be founded until 1860), and the few Russians who do live there are basically all fur trappers. You'd have to send a fleet all the way round the Cape of Good Hope, once they arrive, they'll have no real place to pick up more supplies. But let's say they do make it all the way up to Japan on this mission anyway. I mean, Paul I was hardly a genius for logistics. If the Japanese just ignore them long enough (as was what the Japanese tended to do with foreigners not coming to the port city of Nagasaki), eventually the Russians will be forced to turn back.

Captain William Robert Stewart entered Nagasaki harbour and tried to start trade through Dejima, and Captain John Derby had tried to begin an opium trade with Japan I believe in the same year. Again, perhaps if something went awry some sort of conflict could arise?

The American Navy in the Age of Jefferson most definitely is in no position to send a substantial force to the Far East.

The reason why I said it should be more serious in TTL is so that the Chinese would feel sufficiently aggrieved that they would go for total conquest. If the scale of OTL's defeat would be enough to give rise to these sentiments then that's fine, I just assumed they wouldn't be.

Do you think it is something they could aim for in the long term, perhaps in time for an ATL Russo-Japanese War or WW1?

With the time frames that you're looking at it just isn't anywhere near logistically feasible, I'm afraid. You cannot have China go from suffering an even worse defeat at the hands of Japan in an alternate Sino-Japanese War (even if you place it in the 1880s) to being able to conquer the entire archipelago by the 1910s. The governmental infrastructure isn't there. The technology isn't there. The military organization isn't there.

 

[Makemakean]

China did have such a thing in the 1880s though, with their navy, on paper, having been significantly stronger and more powerful than the Japanese Navy. And going into the late 1880s, the Beiyang Fleet became increasingly powerful, becoming the largest fleet in Asia and the 8th in the world during the late 1880s in terms of tonnage- with its two brand-new modern battleships, Dingyuan and Zhenyuan, having been commissioned and constructed to order in German shipyards. These battleships were completed in May 1883 and April 1884 respectively, but it was originally agreed that delivery would be delayed until both were ready, and in the interim, with the Sino-French War looming, the French persuaded the German government to delay their release until after the conclusion of the conflict.

And also, shortly after the year in which the Sino-French War and Gapsin Coup both took place, in 1888, the construction of new ships was almost completely stopped by the Qing, with this attributed to the Qing dynasty's high expenditures in other fields, and to Grand Tutor Weng Tonghe's advice to the Guangxu Emperor to cut all funding to the navy and army- peace had been reached with the French, and Japan was deemed far too weak and insignificant to pose a true threat. And during the early 1890s, there were several natural disasters which the emperor considered it far more pressing to expend funds on, with the training of the fleet and personnel essentially coming to a standstill as a result, which eventually contributed to its defeat in the Battle of the Yalu River against Japan.

Hence my original assessment that this period, in the mid to late 1880's, presented by far the best window of opportunity for China to maintain its naval superiority over Japan. And that the easiest way to do this would ironically be to have Japan and the Gaehwapa achieve greater, slightly more lasting success in the Gapsin Coup, and its initial foray into Korea; since the Qing would at the very least have been forced to assess the Japanese threat to China as being significantly greater than IOTL, and actually maintain its naval supremacy, rather than simply giving up on new naval construction and development only a few years later, and leaving its navy with an early-mover disadvantage by the time the Japanese did decide to wage war against it (in a manner akin to Italy in WW2).

And if the French do forge their military alliance with the Japanese, as PM Ferry had given the order for his ambassador to Japan to so (only for the ambassador to deliberately refuse to pass the request on to the Japanese, having held the opinion that it'd only bring about Japan's demise and fall to the Qing), with the subsequent fall of Ferry's government and secret talks between the French and Chinese still being held in Paris in February and March 1885, to bring an end to the war between the two, Qing China and Japan would still be at war with one another. And would the French be able to (or want to) keep blocking the delivery of the Beiyang Fleet's two delayed German Battleships? Or to go to war with the Qing Chinese, yet again, so soon, just to protect and defend their ally-of-convenience, Japan from facing retribution?

Or would they (and the British, and the other European colonial powers) be more interested in seeing both nations expend their military strength fighting each other to the bitter end, and then swooping in to strip whatever territories they could conquer or extort from the weakened parties? Perhaps even with France itself covertly aspiring for Japan's defeat to be as total as possible, setting the end-goal of attempting to secure Japan for itself as a French protectorate, in a similar manner to Tonkin and Annam?

We're not talking about mere naval superiority here.

Nor are we talking about a navy that might be big enough to conquer Okinawa.

We're not even talking about a navy that would be big enough to have the Japanese agree to some concessions on Kyushu.

We're talking about a navy big enough to conquer the entire Japanese archipelago.

The Chinese could never have achieved that level of superiority between the 1880s and the 1910s.

 

[SinghSong]

We're not talking about mere naval superiority here.

Nor are we talking about a navy that might be big enough to conquer Okinawa.

We're not even talking about a navy that would be big enough to have the Japanese agree to some concessions on Kyushu.

We're talking about a navy big enough to conquer the entire Japanese archipelago.

The Chinese could never have achieved that level of superiority between the 1880s and the 1910s.

Of course they couldn't have- and it'd take some divergence for the Qing Chinese Navy to retain its early lead over the Imperial Japanese Navy, let alone overtake them again from behind, without major structural and governmental changes. But either of the first two of those (conquest of Okinawa, or concessions on Kyushu) could well be realistic stepping stones to the eventual conquest of the entire archipelago. Particularly when/if said 'conquest' merely involves the establishment/restoration of a similar relationship to that which had already established between Qing China and Korea in October 1882- forcing its government to sign a new similar new set of trade regulations permitting Chinese merchants to trade in Korea and giving them substantial advantages over the Westerners, as well as granting the Chinese unilateral extraterritoriality privileges in civil and criminal cases, effectively rendering them a semi-colony of Qing China, and indisputably placing them under Qing Chinese dominion.

Annexation of Japan via total military occupation by the Qing Chinese would indeed be nigh-on impossible, IMHO; but it's not really required to meet this challenge. Forcing Japan to sign a near-identical treaty to the one that they'd coerced the Koreans to sign a few years earlier in 1882, after narrowly winning a few pivotal naval battles, landing a moderately sized invasion force on Okinawa or Kyushu, and then using gunboat diplomacy by keeping one of their shiny new battleships moored in or just outside Edo Bay during peace negotiations, sounds far more plausible, IMHO. And of course, the challenge didn't mention anything about how long Japan would remain nominally under Qing Chinese dominion either, before choosing to revoke the terms of said signed treaty and fully restoring its independence from Qing China...

 

[Venocara]

If the Japanese just ignore them long enough (as was what the Japanese tended to do with foreigners not coming to the port city of Nagasaki), eventually the Russians will be forced to turn back.

If the Russians are looking for a conflict would it really be possible for the Japanese to ignore them? I feel like something must be possible here, @Thande made it work in LTTW.

With the time frames that you're looking at it just isn't anywhere near logistically feasible, I'm afraid. You cannot have China go from suffering an even worse defeat at the hands of Japan in an alternate Sino-Japanese War (even if you place it in the 1880s) to being able to conquer the entire archipelago by the 1910s. The governmental infrastructure isn't there. The technology isn't there. The military organization isn't there.

The Chinese could never have achieved that level of superiority between the 1880s and the 1910s.

How long did you think it would take them? Alternatively could there be some sort of internal conflict in Japan during the 19th century that would have made things substantially easier for the Qing?

Annexation of Japan via total military occupation by the Qing Chinese would indeed be nigh-on impossible, IMHO; but it's not really required to meet this challenge.

I can't lie, I did mean the annexation of Japan via military occupation.

 

[Makemakean]

Of course they couldn't have- and it'd take some divergence for the Qing Chinese Navy to retain its early lead over the Imperial Japanese Navy, let alone overtake them again from behind, without major structural and governmental changes. But either of the first two of those (conquest of Okinawa, or concessions on Kyushu) could well be realistic stepping stones to the eventual conquest of the entire archipelago.

I'd say that any concessions vis-a-vis Kyushu are nigh-on impossible, and that for any and all realistic purposes, for them to take Okinawa, that would still require Palmerstonian levels of luck.

Annexation of Japan via total military occupation by the Qing Chinese would indeed be nigh-on impossible, IMHO; but it's not really required to meet this challenge. Forcing Japan to sign a near-identical treaty to the one that they'd coerced the Koreans to sign a few years earlier in 1882, after narrowly winning a few pivotal naval battles, landing a moderately sized invasion force on Okinawa or Kyushu, and then using gunboat diplomacy by keeping one of their shiny new battleships moored in or just outside Edo Bay during peace negotiations, sounds far more plausible, IMHO. And of course, the challenge didn't mention anything about how long Japan would remain nominally under Qing Chinese dominion either, before choosing to revoke the terms of said signed treaty and fully restoring its independence from Qing China...

I think that the scenario you posit remains incredibly unlikely in my view, though it is of course far from the levels of nigh-on impossibility that an annexation via military occupation would be. It is doable, though you need to have an awful lot of clocks striking twelve at the exact same moment. Not just will you need a stronger Chinese Imperial Navy, you also need some rather significant structural reforms for the government to be able to carry out such a war, you need a strong enough economy to manage it, you need... well, I'm sure you can figure it out.

How long did you think it would take them?

To actually conquer all of Japan...? With the PoD being an earlier Sino-Japanese War in the 1880s?

Err... Definitely not before nuclear weaponry has already been invented.

Alternatively could there be some sort of internal conflict in Japan during the 19th century that would have made things substantially easier for the Qing?

But then we're back at why would they want to conquer the place? The whole notion of revanchism makes the Chinese government start planning for wholesale annexation of Japan is just... it's not particularly plausible.

Back in the Old Country, there was this example which was brought up as an "impossible challenge": have Napoleon Bonaparte become Emperor of Japan with a PoD in 1789. Is it truly impossible? Who knows? If David Deutsch is correct and every collapse of a wave function creates new universes in the multiverse, or if Max Tegmark is correct and every mathematically consistent universe necessarily must exist in the multiverse, there might very well exist timelines out there where that happened. At the very least, you cannot disprove it. But it certainly is virtually impossible to come up with a plausible-sounding scenario culminating in that actually happening.

Under the conditions currently put forward, you are, I'm afraid, looking at an Emperor Napoleon of Japan. ナポレオン天皇.

 

[SenatorChickpea]

I concur with m'learned Swedish colleague.

On reflection, I think one of the key problems is that any China strong enough to conquer Japan is a China whose place in the world has never been challenged enough that Japan would be seen as a target of conquest.

 

[I Saw A Red Sky]

Qing can win a war with the right circumstances in the 19th c and keep them out of Korea maybe, but there's no possibility or desire for significant territorial expansion to Japan itself. As a pure wargaming thing removed from reality doesn't seem really possible either.

 

[Roger II]

Ass-dumb Q: does this question change very much if we look at any sort of post-Yuan conquest of Japan?

 

[Makemakean]

Ass-dumb Q: does this question change very much if we look at any sort of post-Yuan conquest of Japan?

Oh, that's much easier. Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (in my opinion one of the best shoguns Japan has ever had, though his legacy has suffered due to both the Tokugawa and later the Meiji finding it ideologically prudent to smear him as a traitor) had initiated a very open policy during the early 15th century in order to spur the Japanese economy to growth as well as to bring in cultural and technological innovation from the continent. For this purpose, he had actually on paper made Japan a vassal of the Ming dynasty, and recognized the supremacy of the Jianwen Emperor. This wasn't really that much of a concern politically, since the Chinese were perfectly happy to let the Japanese run their own affairs however they wanted, just provided they theoretically subscribed to being subservient to the Ming Emperor.

Now, the early Ming very much pursued a policy of openness, of expanding their influence overseas with trade, exploration, political intrigue, etc. They were the ones who sent out Zheng He, after all, who went all the way to Africa in ships far surpassing the engineering skills in Europe at the time. However, after about half a century of such an open policy, the Ming made a drastic 180 degree turn and became far more inward-looking, a policy that was based more on the whims of the Emperor and the court than it was based on concerns over any domestic problems that really necessitated China curbing its commitments overseas to focus on more pressing matters at home.

If you can figure out a way to have the Ming continue their original open policy, and if you still have the Ashikaga shogunate fall and bring about a Sengoku period (which isn't difficult at all, the economic and political system on which the Ashikaga were operating were a ticking time bomb that was inevitably going to go off at some point, the Onin War was more the occasion than the cause), you can easily have the Chinese begin to get more intimately involved in Japanese politics.

Naturally, it won't be the Ming Emperor just going, "Looks like Japan is ripe for the taking, boys! Prepare the ships, we're going a-conquering!" Rather, what I would envision is that the Ashikaga and other regional warlords will begin appealing to the Chinese for help, on the grounds that Japan does fall within the Chinese sphere of influence. Troops, technology, provisions, aid of some sort, with some goodies to come, promising of favours to be repaid, and the Chinese agreeing, and in doing so piecemeal establishing more or a hold and vassalage over regional Japanese warlords, Chinese military and political advisors in the various courts, etc., and things go step by step, and perhaps, after a hundred and fifty years or so, you actually see a conquest.

 

[Makemakean]

As a final comment to end on an optimistic note.

I think that there are many possible and interesting scenarios that you can come up with that would culminate in the annexation of the Land of the Rising Sun into the Middle Kingdom. What I do think is important to keep in mind while charting these is that there is a reason why there was very little interest in actually taking Japan from the various Chinese dynasties. Even the Yuan, the only dynasty to really have taken an interest in extending Chinese influence to the Japanese islands, were essentially just trying to make Japan a vassal, and they were motivated mainly by shortsighted extreme expansionism. The Tang, who the Japanese feared were planning an invasion, never actually did have their eyes on them, and were always far more interested in the west and the south, where trade opportunities with the Middle East and Europe and considerable farmland were to be found. Japan was essentially little more than a deadend backwater. The Ming, who actually had an opportunity to exert influence over Japan, essentially paid it no interest. The moment that the Shogun had, on paper, agreed that the and the Japanese Emperor were under the suzerainty of the Ming, the Chinese were perfectly happy to let them handle their own affairs with complete liberty.

The Japanese never posed a military threat to the Chinese prior to the late 19th century on account of the whole Korean peninsula standing in the way. Sending a ship directly from the Chinese mainland to Japan (and vice versa) is actually quite a difficult task, the East China Sea being a far more treacherous mistress than either the Baltic or the Mediterranean. When Hideyoshi in the late 16th century set out to actually conquer China while the Ming were going through some serious internal problems and Japan was united and stronger than it had ever been, he ended up posing no significant threat at all, and just found himself bogged down in a protracted quagmire in Korea.

That is why I think that if you want to have China take Japan, it's going to have to be a long process, and the process pretty much necessarily has to be initiated with the Japanese being the ones inviting China into Japan to take an active role in the islands' politics. Your best opportunity is during the Sengoku era, though you're going to need to have significant changes in both China and Japan to facilitate this.