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What would happen if Tokugawa never took over?

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  • What would happen if Tokugawa never took over?

    For those of you who know Japanese History during the Sengoku period we all know what Toyotomi Started before his death a little Imperialism when he sent invasions of both Korea (Lost) and China (Won) shortly before his death. Now the question is if Tokugawa would have never tooken over and isolated the nation what could have happened? I mean if we view it from a guess if Toyotomi's kid was to have grown up into a full blown Shogun we could have guessed that he would have went with following his fathers ambitions and sending more forces into taking more lands overseas along with the revolutionary gathering of more modernized weopened and technologies.
    So lets just go 100 years after this event never occured.
    China could have possibly been under complete control of Japan, Korea would have probably have fallen soon after, more land would have been taken from other random nations aswell as more trading would have occured between European nations and Japan.

    Still I wonder if this happened how would this affect both world wars that were to occur would they even occure to begin with? I mean you give a Expansionist Crazy country like Japan was with the large recource reserved of China and you basicly have Godzilla destroying Tokyo on a world stage version.

    Also lets not forget I think Japan would have went with teh Nuke instead of the "Death Ray" If they still were dragged into WWII :/

  • #2
    Toyotomi Hideyoshi invaded Korea but he never sent army to China.

    In 16th century, there are Japanese invaded China. But they are not national army. They are just pirates. These pirates are very intrepid and moved fast so they always won Chinese army. This situation lasted for half century. I think that's why you mentioned "Japan won China".

    The Japanese troop is normally several hundred members. They can won Chinese army in small scale battles but they never occupied any cities and beachheads. That is why they are called pirates.

    Another reason Japanese can win is they had an important ally, Chinese pirates. Although these Chinese pirates did not have much battle effectiveness, they knew the weakness of Chinese army.

    Finally the effective way China defended Japan was to attack Chinese pirates which are easy to vanquish. Since Japanese lost this ally, they cannot defeat Chinese army anymore. Then they disappeared gradually.

    Toyotomi Hideyoshi sent 200,000 invasions to Korea in 1592 and quickly occupied Seoul and Pyongyang. But Japanese are also quickly defeated by Yi Sun-sin's Korean navy in 1593. China also sent 50,000 land troops to assist Korea.

    So even if Toyotomi Hideyoshi had not dead, Japan could not conquer China and Korea in 16th century.

    If Tokugawa Ieyasu never took over, there would be other Shogons took over. After all the inheritor Toyotomi Hideyori is only 6 years old. The boy can not control the Five Elders and Five Commissioners.

    If (too many if) Toyotomi Hideyori was grown up, say 26 years old. Nobody know what kind of Shogon he would be. The only thing we know is he has perfect handwriting.

    So if, the most probably situation is Japan came back to Sengoku period.

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    • #3
      A oldish thread, but one worth addressing.

      First off, like Newbee said above, Toyotomi Hideyoshi never send a invasion into China, his invasion of Korea was supposedly intended to be a stepping ground for a later invasion into China, but he never actually got pass that. Pirates with Japanese ties (and /or participatian) were a serious problem in the Ming dynasty but it was actually over a couple of decades before the Imjin war occured.

      The Japanese army met little resistence in it's initial stages of war, because the Chosen dynasty in Korea had not see any real war in nearly a century , and had basically completely forgot how to fight wars. and what little military capacity they did have were left up on the northern borders to defend against the Machurian tribes that sometimes raid into Korean territories. The Korean government forces basically put up no resistence as the Japanese armies moved up and captured pretty much every important city up to Pyong Yang.

      But after that things got tough for the Japanese armies, most problematic of all was that Yi Sun Sin's navy was simply light years ahead of the Japanese. and their logistics from Japan itself was seriously hampered by his efforts. the Korean people, realizing that their government were completely useless, took matters into their own hand and formed numerous milita forces throughout the region. which made occupying the area a tough task. and the final straw was that the Ming dynasty send a pretty significant army into Korea (they first send a party of 1 thousand men into Korea due to the faulty information the Chosen King provided, that ended in disastor, afterwards the Ming send their own spies and figured out that the Japanese invasion was much bigger than what the Chosen government told them, so they send roughly 50,000 in their first expedition, 70,000 in the second and more navy support , Toyotomi 's forces were roughly 150,000 in both expeditions.)

      Records vary dramatically between the Japanese records and Chinese / Korean, though the later two seem to match up pretty well ,and also more consistent with the other facts. which seem to suggest that they're closer to being accurate. for example in the battle of Pyokje (which was the first serious field battle between the Ming and Japanese), the Ming and Korean records said that the Ming general personally lead an advance party (they were chasing after the Japanese force that they had recently beaten out of Pyong Yang) and was caught by a much larger Japanese army, who were reinforcing their defeated allies. the Ming army made a defensive stand on a hill until their own reinforcement arrived. battle fought was inconclusive and both side pulled back (Ming to Pyong Yang, Japanese to Seoul).

      Some Japanese records however said that the Ming was utterly crushed and lost 20k + ... which doesn't seem to match up with the fact that A. the Ming only had 50K at best at that time, given the surprise nature of the battle it is unlikely that they even had 20k present at the battle , let alone taking that much casualty. B. the Ming army remained intact afterwards, in fact the Japanese sued for negotiation immediately after this battle. (which marked the end of the first invasion.)

      Korea records said that both side lose a few hundred, Ming records said that the Ming lost 2500 while the Japanese lost 8000. different Japanese records go as high as 5000-20,000 for the Ming casualties, which is really suspect.

      what's more, that particular battle was lead on the Japanese side by Tachibana Muneshige, who was a very famous Daiymo and was once called by Hideyoshi as "the best samuria in western Japan"


      It is hard to say that the Japanese had any significant upper hand on the Ming forces despite having a larger force (of course to be fair, they also had to commit a far greater portion of men to garrison than the Ming. ) .

      In the first invasion, the first major encounter of the two forces was in the seige of PyongYang, where the Ming forces took back the city in a single day siege... against a numerically equal opponent (which either suggest that the Ming army was really good at seige or that the Japanese were really bad at defending, or that the city defensese were built like crap) in the second invasion once the Ming reinforcement arrived they were virtually locked into the south eastern province of Gyeongsang. with only a brief break out. the most significant "victory" for them appeared to have been when the Ming seige engineers accidently blew up their own gunpowder cash during the seige of Sacheon at the very late stages of the war (which caused the Ming forces to fall into chaos, and the Japanese defenders took the opportunity and sallied forth on the disoriented and now unprepared Ming forces).
      Last edited by RollingWave; 21 Jan 10,, 08:17.

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      • #4
        If we are to speculate, we might as well consider that had Nobunaga not died of treachery but instead lived. There is little information available on Nobutada but he did not seem to be as incompetent as his younger brothers and would have probably made a decent successor.

        In the Azuchi-Momoyama period, there are a few features to be noted. First is the trend towards unification with the consolidation of smaller domains into larger ones. The second is the appearance of Christianity. While there is genuine conversion (as opposed to conversion in order to gain favour and help from the Nanban), there is tension between the converts and adherents to the established. When Buddhism was first introduced in Japan, it coexisted and even blended quite well with the native Shinto, although conflicts between different sects continued to exist. On the other hand, Christianity is unlikely to blend in like Buddhism did. It will always exist as a separate religion, and a "foreign" one. There lies the rub.

        Consider even Nobunaga, who was reputed to be quite tolerant towards foreigners and their religious doctrine. Even if he did lived to establish his own dynasty (not necessarily as Shogun) and social order, it is unlikely that the state of affairs would continue, with Daimyos divided into Christian and Buddhist/Shinto camps. With the active proselytising by the Jesuits, you will have a similar reaction as the Chinese did prior to the Boxer Rebellion. Note also that the Christian daimyos are mainly in the south (eg. Kyushu) and the powers that rise in central Japan tend to take a dim view of their loyalty in the first place.

        The fight can go either way, although it is more likely for the traditionalists to prevail. When that happens, a Tokugawa style close door policy is probably to be expected.

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        • #5
          Nobunaga was pretty indifferent to religions by all account, he massacered countless buddist followres of Ishiyama Hongan-ji . but he seem to have only limited interest in christianity as well, he seem to be pretty much a atheist type.

          It would be hard to say, but Nobunaga's sons were fairly incompetent to begin with. even if he died a decade later it seems questionable that his sons would be able to hold the fort. (though part of the problem is that unlike the Tokugawa clan and Takeda clan, the Oda were still a lot less centralized. )

          Though I suppose if Nobonaga lived longer and had his inheritenace more properly set up, then I think the end result might be the extention of the Sengoku period. where the Oda won't collapse that quickly but will have trouble keeping their legitimacy intact.

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