What if the Japanese Home Islands teleported away right at the start of the 2nd Mongol invasion of 1280?

[raharris1973]

What if the Japanese Home Islands teleported away right at the start of the 2nd Mongol invasion of 1280?

What if when the during the Mongol invasion of Nagato, in Honshu, when the the first Mongol arrow that is fired from a Mongol ship clears the surf and touches the beach or anything or anyone on it, all of Japan's four major islands, Honshu, Hokkaido, Shikoku, and Kyushu, and their minor surrounding islands, and Japanese ships offshore, are surrounded in a blinding flash or red and yellow light and puffs of smoke for a few moments, and when it dissipates, they are vanished, replaced by open ocean as far as they eye can see?

The Mongol Eastern fleet, and the approaching Southern Fleet, and its crewmen and soldiers aboard, can't believe their lyin' eyes, but Japan, once there, is no more. The Eastern Fleet continues to reconnoiter the nearby waters for hours, finding nothing, before turning back. The Southern Fleet does the same for a couple days, unless it rendezvous with Eastern Fleet units sooner.

The Mongol Eastern Fleet Admiral, poor sap, eventually needs to head back to the mainland, and report to an irate and incredulous Kublai Khan. That 1) Japan that he was supposed to conquer disappeared, and answering, "how in the heavens that happened?", 2) I guess our archer blew it up. After he's beheaded or stomped to death under carpet or whatever, the famous archer, and everybody points fingers at him, is told to demonstrate his magic arrows, and when he demonstrates no magic, the same stuff is done to him. More witnesses who don't recant or don't make up stories satisfying to the Khan lose their heads, but in any case, eventually the Khan reaches acceptance an invasion of Japan just isn't happening.

How does a Japan-less Asia develop from 1280 AD onward develop? That is one fewer trading partner for the Asian mainland, especially China and Korea. The original source of the wokou pirate plague of the centuries ahead is gone. If piracy does start, it will have to come from totally different indigenous Chinese sources. Japan's absence will mean one less major source of silver for China. One less source of devastation to Korea. The coast of northeast Asia, Korea and Primorye in particular, should be more exposed to typhoons and tsunamis, but also should have their continental climates more moderated by ocean breezes.

As for Japan, I am imagining two different scenarios:

Scenario 1) Japan teleports to the Central Pacific - it keeps its identical latitude, but but moves to a longitude east of Midway island and west of Kauai and Maui, and aligned with the Aleutian Islands. It's weather and climate remains similar overall, and it takes its continental shelf for at least 100 miles out with it.

We will assume in this new location it remains pretty isolated from either the Asian or North American continent, although in the centuries ahead, contact with the Hawaiian islands is plausible.

Since its latitudes were not covered by the circumnavigations of Ferdinand Magellan for Francis Drake, nor the Manila galleon route, nor the Russian exploration of Alaska, I assume that Japan, newly cut off from its familiar trades with Korea and Japan after 1280 AD, not only remains cut off from them, but remains unconnected by westerners until Captain Cook's voyage in 1770. How is Japan likely to develop in these nearly 500 years in isolation? And how will it adapt to contact with the wider world once established?


Scenario 2) Japan teleports to the Western Atlantic - it keeps its identical latitude, but but moves to a longitude just east of North America. This Japan, looking to resume trade, or to conduct piratical activity, against China and Korea, would soon find North America instead, to its great surprise.

ASBs intervene to ensure the Gulf Stream-North Atlantic drift waters flow around Japan properly to continue on to Europe to keep European temperatures/climate within historic norms.

It would possess demographic, epidemiogogical, technological and military superiority over the societies it encounters there after 1280 AD, and likely significantly expand on the mainland and in the Caribbean, and certainly influence natives wherever they may not be displaced. How would Japan and the Americas impact each other over the next two centuries, while both in all likelihood remain undiscovered by other countries in Europe or Asia.

If not a little earlier, perhaps in Newfoundland or Brazil, a voyage by Christopher Columbus to the Caribbean would almost certainly find a Japanese colonized Bahamas and Hispaniola. How do trans-Atlantic trade and other contacts work after the initial encounter?

 

[raharris1973]

Map for scenario #1

 

[raharris1973]

Map for scenario #2

 

[Buba]

Hokkaido - Ezo at that time, does not count as Japan at that time, IMO.
Japan in the North Pacific Gyre stays isolated by geography and currents. But it is almost certain to make contact with misguided galleons (as such contact is 99% certain for the Hawaian Islands) and posibly cheerfully trade with the Spanish. Sakoku is almost certain to never happen.

Japan off the Great Banks? I agree that North America becomes Japanese. They genocide the locals - both by arms or germs - and swamp it with settlers. Surving Amerindians get "absorbed" into the eta hereditary underclass.


In either scenario East Asia is starved of Japanese silver - in 16-17th centuries this was 1/3rd of world production, most sucked in by China.

 

[gral]

Wouldn't the Gulf Stream path be affected by Scenario #2? If so, Europe(the British Islands and Scandinavia in particular) gets much colder.

 

[Buba]

Wouldn't the Gulf Stream path be affected by Scenario #2? If so, Europe(the British Islands and Scandinavia in particular) gets much colder.

See:

ASBs intervene to ensure the Gulf Stream-North Atlantic drift waters flow around Japan properly to continue on to Europe to keep European temperatures/climate within historic norms.

Using the OP map IMO keeping Ezo where it was would leave a gap big enough for the Gulf Stream.
The GS can squeeze between Cuba and Florida after all ...

 

[gral]

See:

Oh, yeah. Missed that.

Using the OP map IMO keeping Enzo where it was would leave a gap big enough for the Gulf Stream.

Ezo. Enzo is an Italian male name(also, a very popular name male name in Brazil in the 2000s and early 2010s, to the point that 'Raising Enzo' became a byword for marrying a single mother and being saddled with her son).

You don't even need to do away with Ezo(so you'll still raise him), just moving the whole lot slightly to the East would do it.

Another thing that just came up to me is you just PO'd a lot of Basque fishermen, as Japan is just sitting on the Great Banks fishing grounds(you have also eliminated the French Navy training grounds as well, but 4-5 centuries of butterflies means the future French Navy would be different).

 

[Buba]

The only Enzo I can think off was Schiffo - a Belgian meio-campista of Italian origin.
Me bad - will correct Ezo.

 

[raharris1973]

Well, maybe if I amended both makes to leave Ezo (or we could call it Hokkaido, just not Enzo) in its original position, since yes, at this time it was not Yamato peopled nor Yamato governed, but Ainu, that could create some desired effects.

In scenario one, maybe it enlarges the water gap between Japanese Honshu and the Aleutians enough that the Japanese don't find the Aleutians. And in scenario 2 it allows the Gulf Stream to slide on out to Europe between Honshu and Newfoundland without any extra magic. Or it permits us to "slide" the more southerly Japanese islands including Honshu, closer to the US east coast without running directly into the North American mainland.

 

[raharris1973]

You don't even need to do away with Ezo(so you'll still raise him), just moving the whole lot slightly to the East would do it.

If you do that it starts to get too close to the Azores and makes a pretty early contact and discovery of Europe too likely.

But it is almost certain to make contact with misguided galleons (as such contact is 99% certain for the Hawaian Islands)

Why is Spanish galleon contact with the Hawaiian islands or moved Japan so certain? We don't have any Spanish records of Hawaii from pre-Cook times.

Sakoku is almost certain to never happen.

Well after contact from Cook or whomever makes contact in the latter half of the 1700s? I would not think so either. But supernatural acts of the Gods/Kami whatever are putting Japan in an isolation from Eurasia that is earlier and more thorough than OTL's, and not likely to be punctured by Europe particularly early.

Japan off the Great Banks? I agree that North America becomes Japanese. They genocide the locals - both by arms or germs - and swamp it with settlers. Surving Amerindians get "absorbed" into the eta hereditary underclass.

Regarding this one, in what parts of the opposing shores of North America and the Caribbean can the Japanese grow. their staple crop, rice? In areas where they cannot grow rice, what do they grow for staple food crops instead?

 

[Buba]

The Japanese grow ramen
Soyabeans, etc.

 

[ATP]

Well, maybe if I amended both makes to leave Ezo (or we could call it Hokkaido, just not Enzo) in its original position, since yes, at this time it was not Yamato peopled nor Yamato governed, but Ainu, that could create some desired effects.

In scenario one, maybe it enlarges the water gap between Japanese Honshu and the Aleutians enough that the Japanese don't find the Aleutians. And in scenario 2 it allows the Gulf Stream to slide on out to Europe between Honshu and Newfoundland without any extra magic. Or it permits us to "slide" the more southerly Japanese islands including Honshu, closer to the US east coast without running directly into the North American mainland.

That better,leave Ainu people in peace.

Scenario 1 - notching happen till 1770,but,thanks to some wrecked spanish galleons,japaneese would have muskets.
After that - till about 1850 they remain independent,later samebody/probably England/ colonize them.

Scenario 2 - they take over North and Central America,Colimbes meet them.Spain could take Carribeans from them,but notching more - no Cortez here.
But,becouse Peru would be not affected,Pizzarro still take it with its gold and silver.

Result - weaker Spain,no european colonization of Americas,at least till 1800 or later.England here COULD colonize Japan about 1850,too - but not conqer japaneese in America.

 

[raharris1973]

In either scenario East Asia is starved of Japanese silver - in 16-17th centuries this was 1/3rd of world production, most sucked in by China.

This is an important effect. Spanish silver is all the more important to China. But, with lower volumes of silver circulating all along, does China never move to a system of only accepting tax payments in silver, (which was a change from earlier, in-kind taxation)?

What about other effects on the Far East? With no Japan present there, are westerners, like Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, later English and French, more aggressive about trying to make trade and contact with Korea than OTL?

Korea seemed more closed off than Japan, although not 100%. For example there were some converts to Catholicism. Korean pottery and crafts would be of interest to western dealers. Without the Imjin War, Korea should be a less battered, stronger country, better able to defend itself from the Jurchen, and protect itself from contact with westerners if it wishes, but, one the other hand, without the Imjin War, and the preceding centuries of wokou piracy against its shares, Korea may be a more optimistic, less xenophobic country.

If Korea gets a greater degree of western attention and contact in the late 1500s and 1600s in the absence of Japan, I'm not certain about the land's relative "ripeness" for Christian proselytizing compared to Japan. Korea had Confucian and Buddhist and native traditions, but an aspect of its native religious tradition that centuries later turned out to be conducive to Christian conversion was belief in a single, overarching deity.

Ming China could be significantly affected not only by the absence of its expensive intervention in the Imjin War, but also by the absence of the prior two centuries of wokou Japanese pirate raids. Could this possibly lead to fewer sea bans and coastal evacuations and more continuous, uninterrupted development of the coastal trading economy?

 

[ATP]

This is an important effect. Spanish silver is all the more important to China. But, with lower volumes of silver circulating all along, does China never move to a system of only accepting tax payments in silver, (which was a change from earlier, in-kind taxation)?

What about other effects on the Far East? With no Japan present there, are westerners, like Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, later English and French, more aggressive about trying to make trade and contact with Korea than OTL?

Korea seemed more closed off than Japan, although not 100%. For example there were some converts to Catholicism. Korean pottery and crafts would be of interest to western dealers. Without the Imjin War, Korea should be a less battered, stronger country, better able to defend itself from the Jurchen, and protect itself from contact with westerners if it wishes, but, one the other hand, without the Imjin War, and the preceding centuries of wokou piracy against its shares, Korea may be a more optimistic, less xenophobic country.

If Korea gets a greater degree of western attention and contact in the late 1500s and 1600s in the absence of Japan, I'm not certain about the land's relative "ripeness" for Christian proselytizing compared to Japan. Korea had Confucian and Buddhist and native traditions, but an aspect of its native religious tradition that centuries later turned out to be conducive to Christian conversion was belief in a single, overarching deity.

Ming China could be significantly affected not only by the absence of its expensive intervention in the Imjin War, but also by the absence of the prior two centuries of wokou Japanese pirate raids. Could this possibly lead to fewer sea bans and coastal evacuations and more continuous, uninterrupted development of the coastal trading economy?

I once book about Ming fleet discovering both America and Australia,now they could made colonies there.
Ming dynasty could become catholic, survive,or both.Maybe Catholic China fighting Manchur confucianist China for next 300 years ?

P.S it is Gavin Menzies "1421 year when China discovered America" book.
Look interesting,but since in next book he claim that chineese get to Italy,too,and started reneissance,i started think twice about that.