Why do fantasy worlds based on Europe always have a Japan analogue? There are sometimes China, Arabia, India, and so on...

Why do fantasy worlds based on Europe always have a Japan analogue? There are sometimes China, Arabia, India, and so on, but you can always find a Japan.

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Because that's part of Europe.

Europeans lived with knowledge of the Orient. That's why when you play a Japan-like setting you have the Gaijin element. That's why when you play space Scotland you also have filthy Space english.

The outside is part of the spiritual identity of Europe, unless you're doing it very locally and specifically, like somewhere in Bohemia in 1404, in which case cumans murdering your parents are the foreign element.

Fucking cumans.

Depends wildly on the setting

>Because that's part of Europe.
Europeans had more knowledge of the Middle-East, but it still shows up less in fantasy fiction than Japan.

Why do steppe cultures rarely make an appearance in fantasy?

Unlike other Asian countries that were outright dominated or annexed by Europeans Japan maintained a level of mystery by remaining isolated. They were also the first Asian country that was also to "westernize" and start doing what Europeans had done in Asia and the first Asian nation to defeat a European nation in open war.

Chinks btfo again

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Where else will you get generic horselords to terrorize the free people of the West?

Nerds that play fantasy games and nerds that are weebs overlap.

Because they already know the Middle-East. Japan strikes the mind of the European medieval scholar because it's that far away and mysterious.

Because it's the "non-Western" fantasy setting that people actually know about and take an interest in whole-scale, in comparison to the more obscure fantasies of China, Arabia, India, etc.

Nerds tend to have an unhealthy fascination with Japan. Also see: anime.

China and India were way more important to Europeans at that time than Japan which was just some backwater island.

Because Japan was the first non-western country to industrialize, thereby becoming the equal of the West. It has fascinated westerners ever since.

Weebs

Orcs have dibs on their niche.

Gygax forced Japan super hard when RPGs were just starting out. Dude liked Samurai.

Europeans didn't know a terribly large amount about Japan until some of them started going there in the 1500s, well past medieval times.

Literally just because they need a representation of the orient, and Japan is cool and most familiar to the audience.

Fantasy worlds are made for nerds.
Nerds are most likely to be at least superficially familiar with Japan as opposed to Persia, China, Indonesia, India, Levant, Egypt, Arabia, North Africa,...

Baloney. Arabian nights shows up far more consistently and prominently in fantasy settings than animeland.

The Japanese were not a super hostile empire and many western powers found common ground with them.

Too boring.