Why did no one in Japanese history ever depose the Imperial dynasty?

The reason is simple: Because Japan has never been conquered by foreigners.

>2
It would have been like a king killing the pope and declaring himself as as such.

Its a crude analogy but it works

The same reason no European king ever deposed the Pope.

The entire point of his existence was to legitimize their power to each other.

Poor example, Europeans did apoint anti-Popes and stuff.

Yeah, but to my knowledge they never actually marched on Rome to depose the "real" pope and anti-popes were more a way to bully their subjects than to try and influence other independent kings.

More importantly, why did Japanese navy suck? One would think they would realize they are living on an island and navy is their best protection

But thats exactly the point, you dont need to depose a figure whose legitimacy dont recognize.
And depsing a Pope is weird, is a elective position after all, they dont usually form dinasties.

Well they were never conquered, so it looks like a good navy wasn't necessary.

Granted i know shit about Japanese or generally Asian history, but i suppose they defended on land. If they had good navy, they could have ruled all the seas though.

Because the Imperial dynasty legitimized the powerful shogunate. You think the dynasty gave over power willingly? When the army is bearing down on your castle and threatens to kill you and your family line off, you bend the knee and give power to the shogun, and keep yourself alive. The shogun kept the Emperor alive because he was more useful as a rubber stamp than a dead man.

They did develop one when they modernized. And until WWII, that's exactly what happened.

During the Edo period they had no real imperial ambitions. They were extremely isolationist, looking inward. Why would they develop a large navy?

>It would have been like a king killing the pope and declaring himself as as such.

It's been done countless times in European history.

>Yeah, but to my knowledge they never actually marched on Rome to depose the "real" pope and anti-popes were more a way to bully their subjects than to try and influence other independent kings.

Early HRE emperors did march on Rome and deposed popes. The whole point of Gregorian reform was to put an end to that.

Emperor is a terrible translation. The office should have been called "pontifex maximus". It would be much closer to what the Japanese emperor really is.

Japanese demography (year - millions).
Official data:
1960 - 93.4
1910 - 50.9
Further extrapolation:
1860 - 27.8
1810 - 15.2
1760 - 8.3
1710 - 4.5
1660 - 2.4
1610 - 1.3
1560 - 0.7
1510 - 0.4

TEH 3000-YEARS EMPIRE.

When as a king declared himself pope?

Emperors were almost certainly assassinated, but no one outside the bloodline would have been put on the throne

>When the army is bearing down on your castle and threatens to kill you and your family line off, you bend the knee and give power to the shogun, and keep yourself alive.

Yeah no. It was a lot more subtle. Shoguns would just marry their daughters to the emperor and their sons to the emperor's daughter. After a few generations you get a situation where the newly enthroned emperor has a shogun who is his grandfather and ministers who are his uncle, nephews or step-brothers. The need to threaten the emperor to maintain the shogunate is not that necessary anymore.

Wait, you're using 20th century trends to extrapolate pre-modern population?

Japanese were steadily settling new lands till 1900. Lands were allmost empty, there werent resistance. 1900-1950 can be considered as last stage of settling. So trends were colonial.

Who needs a navy when you've got kamikaze on your side?

Their real value was as figureheads to legitimize shogunal (or sometimes Fujiwara or other Heian-era families) rule.

Also, Ashikaga Takauji effectively did, the northern court was a line of pliant puppets distantly related to emperor Go-Daigo, who actually tried to rule the country and lost.

Except popes have been disputed many times and some have even been deposed and replaced

excuse me?

A-are you Japanese? You might be onto something.

No reason to
Why bother deposing someone with 0 power especially if the people you rule over love the guy

Well that depends, if you mean depose the dynasty and set up a new one then no, but there were cases where you had rival claimants and shit, most famous one I know is en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanboku-chō_period

To answer your question they simply had little to no actual political power. The Emperors were divine figureheads who were useful in legitimizing a shogunate. There simply was no reason to depose them since odds are you'd have the genuine Shinto believers baying for your blood and the rival daimyo seeing a perfect excuse to topple your ass.

>IRRELEVANT

>Because Japan has never been conquered by foreigners
>laughsinmacarthur.png

>tfw no communist north japan and republican south japan

Thank fuck for that. We have enough problems keeping Germany in line.

>allowing the House of Baggins to continue ruling Japan
piggu disgusting

t. Japan, american puppet state

Yes we definitely need another north korea
Dumbass

It really is.
Modernity is a phase where nothing is respected.

So have japanese emperors.