Japan is an ascendant phoenix. Though its spirit was thought evaporated in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it persevered thanks to the reconstruction and rapport-building efforts of Douglas MacArthur during the Allied occupation. Today, it stands as one of the great powers of the world, and in direct opposition to its once allied mortal rival, The People's Republic of China.
The Japanese are an ancient people, but it has almost always been divided between feudal lords. This changed with the Meiji Restoration of the 1860s, in which the newly empowered Emperor led a series of reforms resulting in the industrialisation, modernisation and ascension of Japan as a world power. This gave it a unique status as the only non-western industrial power; however, Japan aspired to a colonial empire much like that which its peers in the world stage had formed. Clouded in an ultranationalist zeal, the Empire of Japan began a number of successive wars against China and Korea, the last beginning in 1937; its objective was the complete subjugation of the Middle Kingdom. However, feeling its power in the Pacific threatened, the United States began an embargo on Japan, creating extreme shortages of industrial resources such as oil, iron, coal and rubber. Its political objectives being to ascend beyond the western powers in Asia, the Japanese Empire signed numerous trade and non-aggression treaties with Leon Trotsky's Soviet Union, giving them access to said resources. However, American rearmament plans did not go unnoticed. As such, Emperor Hirohito authorised a surprise attack on Hawaii; the Pearl Harbour Raid, and a number of amphibious operations in the Pacific against the Allied Nations, which America was supplying. As America awoke and the Soviets devoted an ever-increasing share of their resources to the war with Germany, the Empire lost ground in all domains. Only the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were able to convince the Emperor to offer an unconditional surrender.
Japan under Douglas MacArthur rebuilt itself, throwing away the title of "Empire". Factories for rifles were producing machine tools; those for tanks, consumer automobiles; those for fighters, commercial airliners; those for battleships, oil freighters. In 1951, on the eve of the Korean War, the Treaty of San Francisco returned sovereignty to the Emperor and the people of Japan, ending Allied occupation. Today, Japan stands as a western-aligned economic power on the rise, whose innovations in electronics and robotics are sure to change history. In fact, Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda's prime public directive is to double Japan's GDP in only one decade. Its armed forces have been reconstructed, once more challenging a rising China. However, the ghost of "Pan-Asian Liberation", better known as Social Imperialism by historians, still haunts its parliament, State Shintoist rallies still drawing hundreds of thousands to the streets of Tokyo. Was MacArthur perhaps too lenient? Time will tell.