If the Spanish empire had tried to help the Japanese Christians during Sengoku jidai...

The Spanish didn't know about Japan until the end of mid to end of 16th century. Right around the end of Sengoku Jidai. What little forces they have in the Asia of the time is very minuscule. Right around that time Spanish empire itself was already in war with multiple European fronts and have no steady allies in Europe.

However what little they could help, might change the course of Japan. The portugese merchants gave a handful of musket guns to the Japanese and the Japanese blacksmiths managed to mass produce and improve upon the design within 10 years. This changed the way battles were fought in Sengoku Era.

So lets say there was a time when Spanish Empire acted quickly on Xavier's missions. What could they do? They certainly can't send material goods in excess, but maybe they can give the "okay" for some blueprints. Maybe giving them cannons? But Portuguese were already supplying them cannons. So maybe ship schematics.

The problem here is resources of the Japanese Christians and Spanish Empire is very limited. The ones that controlled the resources in the course of history usually already had something going for them. If the Spanish Empire gave some blueprints on stronger ships, most likely it would be taken or burned by the Nobunaga or Tokugawa after.

There's also the contention of Portuguese against the Spanish in trying to get the most lucrative deals in Japan. They would try to shut out the Spanish by offering ever better deals with the main ruling Japanese daimyos. Which would mean they could get some exclusive rights in Japan. Japan is in a very lucrative place right about now since Europe was in its Japanphilia/Orientalism phase.

The Gesuites told the japanese what happened to the native Americans, the Japanese then proceded to slaughter all the Christians that were in Japan

>Japan is in a very lucrative place right about now since Europe was in its Japanphilia/Orientalism phase.
yeah """japanphilia"""

>1555. Sebastian of Portugal feared that this was having a negative effect on Catholic proselytization since the slave trade in Japanese was growing to massive proportions, so he commanded that it be banned in 1571.[5][6] Japanese slave women were even sold as concubines to Asian lascar and African crewmembers, along with their European counterparts serving on Portuguese ships trading in Japan, mentioned by Luis Cerqueira, a Portuguese Jesuit, in a 1598 document.[7] Japanese slaves were brought by the Portuguese to Macau, where some of them not only ended up being enslaved to Portuguese, but as slaves to other slaves, with the Portuguese owning Malay and African slaves, who in turn owned Japanese slaves of their own.[8][9]

And he was right. During the civil war and confusion, the Portuguese took advantage of the Japanese factions and took in slaves. It was rightly so that Europeans elites understood this concern and banned the practice of owning and selling Japanese/Chinese slaves. However the merchants/pirates are just that, merchants/pirates. They live for profit and have very little morals. You have to understand that this is the time period where Europeans would regularly kidnap and enslave non-whites and sell them offshore without impunity. Japan/China were big players and messing with them would eventually fuck them over as they have the resources/the knowledge/the history/the governance/etc to "express" their grievances. If given enough push, both empires might come around to ban/regulate the entirety of European trades in Asia. On the present note, it is happening today with the rise of China.

Right after the unification, Japan banned all foreigners and limited them to a small island. Tokugawa was distrustful with the slave trades of Japanese women by Portuguese and by extension the Japanese Christians who were participating in this role. Tokugawa also banned all Christians for their barbaric influences. Europeans had barbaric practices during the time, but so did Japanese. Both were of different nature.

Japanese castles were basically built and rebuilt continuously due to earthquake damage (and fires, fires all day erry day). Outer walls aside they were basically tall houses, wood paper and plaster.
Even the walls were little better than stacked stone, because why fucking bother? However they tended to be quite thick, because sloping walls endured tremors lots better. Accidentally this made them also rather good against artillery. But then, a couple hotshots at the castle itself are gonna burn down the whole internal complex, so eh.

The bulk of jap armies were made from farmers than were conscripted (in Europe of the time, they were mercs or semi-Mercs like the Spanish tercios), armed be teh daimiyo and generally would bolt at the least problem and all daimyo knew it, the true bushi were more rare and only at the latest period had gear equivalent to Euro ones, and even then they cavalry was too small to be a threat to heavy cavalry or even the ming ones, and were used mainly as taxis (only the takeda and later the red devil of li from the tokugawa could be called shock cavalry) . That made farmers a lot more deadly and were able to tackle Samuray than did incursion in small numbers tough, bamboo spears were no joke.
Pikes also were used in a bash/chop way as youtube.com/watch?v=Un8c1UV1QBI, but probably with more grace.

The main part of himeji, meaning the tower, is just a symbol of power to been seen by the natives living nearby to maintain order. The only important part in war is the walls around the outer grounds that could contain barracks and fields to muster troops.

Reminds me of those early Norman Donjon's

>he thinks the japs didn't build their forts to withstand cannon fire
due to their high earthquake risk, Japanese Castles were some of the sturdiest in the world. The superstructure is literally just a house.

This. Jap castles were still developing when European guns were introduced, so they were designed to deal with them. I've read that they share many features with contemporary European bastion forts, also designed specifically to deal with heavy artillery. Low, stable bulwarks built of earth and rubble which can absorb fire, rather than tall masonry walls which cannon would just blow apart.

An early modern European invasion of Japan would be pretty much doomed to failure because they'd lack most or all of the advantages which made early modern imperialism possible elsewhere in Asia. Europeans always had small numbers but made up for them with naval power (European ships were superior to anything in Asia), artillery and fortification. But even with these advantages their rule rarely extended beyond coastal regions. In China they lost their naval advantage in coastal waters, where smaller local ships were more maneuverable, and presumably the same would occur in Japan. Even if they did have slightly superior firepower, that already small advantage would be minimised by Japanese fortifications. Keep in mind there were literally thousands of these things.

Basically, just like China, Japan could never have seriously been treatened by Europeans before the Industrial Age. Without significant advantages, they'd be hugely outnumbered. Maybe if a full sized European army had invaded there would be a chance of victory, but that wasn't a realistic option.

One of the main reason for not being able to fully take control of Japan/China is cultural unity.

India is just as large as China but there is little unity when the British tookover. The Muslims vs India, the North vs South, the East vs West, etc. Division between the Indian states allowed British mercenaries/gov to takeover India by buying/bribing local powers.

The same wont happen in China or Japan, maybe to a small extent like buying local Christian groups, but just like with China and Japan, they both controlled their little Christian groups due to a much stronger central and united government.

Yeah, I agree with that to an extent. European rule in the Americas was mostly made possible by a lack of cohesive resistance between different ethnicities, and Dutch rule in Java came about almost accidentally as a result of frequent interventions in local dynastic conflicts. But that said, cultural unity doesn't always mean cohesive resistance. It was internal Chinese conflict that let the Manchus takeover there, and the Javanese let European Christians take over despite being Muslims and almost universally considering them to be uncouth barbarians. So I'm not sure the extent to which cultural unity would have made a difference in Japan, especially if we're talking about the period before unification. I'm sure it would have posed a challenge, but I'm not sure it would matter as much as the other factors.

Chinese/Japanese unity is meme. There werent such states in 1800, and even Chinese "empire" of 1900 was HRE-tier conglomerate of real states ("provinces").
Europeans coudnt colonise Japan and China due to opposition of USA.

You're incredibly I'll informed.

>There werent such states in 1800
Japan was unified in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Though it wasn't a modern state and the daimyos retained some autonomy, they all answered to the Tokugawa government which could effectively issue edicts to be obeyed throughout the country. They controlled foreign relations, economic policy and social policy in a highly centralized fashion.

>Chinese "empire" of 1900 was HRE-tier conglomerate of real states ("provinces")
Not sure about 1900 (shortly before the Qing's collapse), but this is completely untrue for the majority of the early modern period. Ming and Qing China were highly centralised states for their time with the imperial government directly controlling the provinces, their military, their laws, etc. The Emperor could effectively mobilise provincial armies against threats such as the Wokou, the Portuguese or the Mongols. Unity only broke down in times of civil war. It doesn't even come close to the decentralization of the HRE, especially in the early modern period.

>Europeans coudnt colonise Japan and China due to opposition of USA.
The USA didn't exist in the early modern period.

>and would just meme around the coasts a bit

>Implying I couldn't storm these beaches if I wanted to.
>Problem, emperor?
>Cortez did literally nothing wrong.
>Two nukes weren't enough.

>Sbane
>sailing an invasion fleet to Japan
>when they couldn't even get one to Britain

Is this another one of /pol/'s "alternative history"?

Pure kekery here.

>Armada Invencible
>Want to land in Britain

40 tercios fucked over a 1000 japanese warriors. If such movilization across the continents was possible, then yes. Spain would have crushed them.

sauce plz

unbelievable-facts.com/2017/05/cagayan-battles.html/amp

The problem would have been the mobilization of the troops. Spain was having problems on multiple fronts already. And to be complete honest, colonization of Japan would probably have been a net negative.

Initial the numbers of spanish soldiers vs japanese raiders were manageable level, not 40 vs 1000. But rather 40 well armed/experienced/trained soliders vs roughly equal amount (probably max of 100) of Japanese pirates wearing rag tag armors. pirates lost the morals and started fleeing.

Then later on once they defeated the early pirate groups, the spaniards holed up and used artillery to chase away the pirates reinforcement.

It wasn't a battle to the death, but rather battle till loss of morals/incentives. The pirates mainly wanted gold/money/resources, while the spaniards defended to the death. When the japanese pirates lost morales amist losing grounds, they fled.

Japan would be easily conquered by the Spanish, no doubt.

How can you be so sure?

From the 1500s to the 1700s, Spain had its hands full just trying to run the Philippines- which was really more of a collection of allied tribes rather than a fully controlled Spanish colony- and stamp out muslim and Wokou pirates in the islands.

It can't do shit to other non-tribal people. Hell in the 1500s, Spain lost to THE DECLINING KHMER EMPIRE of all people.

The japanese actually produced more guns than any european country after they were introduced by the portuguese, so barring plate armor and naval ships there wouldn't be much of a technological discrepancy.

>Tercios
There were no Tercios in the Philippines.

The average """Spanish""" soldier of 1500s Philippines was basically a few hundred Europeans from Habsburg territories armed as light infantry, followed by perhaps a few thousand Latin American halfbreeds and indians- also lightly armored- with the rest of the colonial military staffed by native Filipino warrior classes still bearing their own gear. Albeit this time with Spanish/Catholic heraldry.

Large pike formations like in Europe's battlefields barely existed in the Philippines. The halberd was far more in use than a pike. In addition most people pretty much were jack of all trades, operating muskets, crossbows, and other missile weapons, then just closing in with swords, spontoons, axes, and halberds.

Such was the tiny scale of fights in the Flip Islands.

/thread

That's about it. In a time when the Japanese fielded armies numbering in the hundreds of thousands, Spain could have done jack shit on land.

Oh yeah I should add: there's also hundreds of Japanese and Chinese soldiers as well in the Colonial Spanish Military in the Philippines ca 1500-1600.

Chinks were often sailors and oarsmen in the junks that the Spanish navy operated in the Philippines, while Japs were composed of exiles from Japan and Christian ronin.

These were found in the wreck of the San Diego, the most famous galleon wreck in the Philippines.

>40 tercios fucked over a 1000 japanese warriors.
The Spanish account heavily exaggerated the numerical superiority of their foes.

The Spanish had an unknown amount of native laborers/seaman with 60 marines. The Japanese pirates attacked with 18 sampans,which at maximum capacity would be around 180 men.
historum.com/speculative-history/83765-spanish-conquset-ming-china-27.html

Neither side is representative of standard militaries while the Wokou are a far cry from the standing armies that ravaged Korea.

If anything has the right idea. The numerical disparity between the Spaniards and native forces made them a tertiary power in the region.

You want to try that again, in coherent English, you fucking scumbag phoneposter?

That is way too far of a supply line for that time period for a country that despite its size has that many armies on it.

Depends. Do they get to introduce foreign diseases to the local population? It could help quite a bit.

fuck off brit

>another thread about spics we wuzzing

tell me more about Japanese. did the damiyo involved in it? How is the value of Japanese slave compare to other races? What is the majority function like prostitution or education?

>Japan's population was wild and little
population of japan was 8 000 000 by the lowest estimate, which is more less the same as Spain at 1500