Nihon (KdM Map Game)

Nihon, officially the Empire of Nihon (Yamatai Mandarin Kanji: 大日本帝國, Yamato: Dai-Nihon Teikoku, Ainu: Uweyairamikashure-Yamato) is a state in Northeast Asia based around the Japanese Isles, OTL Taiwan, and the Ryukyu Islands. It is a federal monarchical imperial state based from the cities of Kyoto and Edo.

The precursor to the Nihonese state traces its roots to Yayoi migration from the southernmost end of the Korean peninsula at the tail end of the 2000s BCE; a series of varied kingdoms systematically expelled Jomon peoples northerly towards Tohoku and the island of Hokkaido. After experiencing the spread of a bronze and iron culture from the Korean peninsula in circa. 900 BCE, the Southern Yayoi states slowly coalesced from smaller city-state and mountainous entities into larger entities such as the Kingdom of Hayato. This saw their evolution and intermixing with the Jomon to become the Yamatai states, based primarily around the Southern Japanese isles. Economic and political conquest saw the Kingdom of Yamato overtake the rest of the Yayoi states via an alliance with the Southern Ainu and Emishi and establish the United Kingdoms of Nihon by 1089 AD, which participated in the settler-colonisation of the OTL Philippine Isles and Taiwan, which was conquered from the former Yamatai ally of Xia.

During the late 1100s, the United Kingdoms experienced a severe economic crisis under the Cholan conquest of Indochina; after over-extension on an unsuccessful military campaign in the Southern Chinese Sea, most of its various clans resorted to overburdening the onna-bugeisha system of female warriors. This culminated in a series of rebellions and a revolution in the mid-1200s under the Yamatai leader Tomoe Gozen, who proceeded to extensively overhaul the Nihonese legal system under the Splendid Directory after her victory in the Southern Campaign of 1253; Nihon experienced a rapid shift from a traditionally patriarchal society to a matrilineal-matriarchal one. The state avoided conquest during the Daevite campaign of Xia and became the only major East Asian state to avoid conquest by the Second Daevite Empire.

Afterwards, it experienced extreme military strain following which the traditional feudal system evolved into a complicated bureaucratic web under a semi-professional military force; the second collapse of the Nihonese state in 1412 saw the country enter a period of brief civil war followed by a Nihonese 'Silver Age', which ended with a prolonged feudal conflict by the mid-1490s known as the Sengoku Jidai. This saw a brief democratic attempt known as the Nihonese Federation before the establishment of the Oda Shogunate then the Toyotomi Shogunate in 1582, which saw Nihon enter a period of rapid urbanisation and regional conquest under Shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi, as well as the formation of modern capitalism. After Hideyoshi's death, the Nihonese Empire would continue to expand rapidly, taking Utsul (OTL Hainan), a series of Southern protectorates and the establishment of the Japonic Sphere around East Asia, projecting its economic and political power back to Europe.

Nihon is one of the most densely-populated and urbanised countries in the world, as well as one with huge ethnic diversity; its majority population of Yamato only encompasses roughly 57% of its total population, while its Ainu, Emishi, Ryukyuan and Joseonese populations maintain a significant presence in the country. Its culture has been extensively influenced by the states of the Korean peninsula as well as Ainu and Tagalog Indigenous peoples; not to mention the numerous Chinese dynasties throughout history. Its wider Empire encompasses much of Southeast China and the Melakan Peninsula.

[WIP]