New Japan

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1. #1World

   Keys: Nippon, era, Kyōhō, Nihon, Japan

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   The present era is the Kyōhō period in the forty-ninth year of the Taira Chancellor's line (1730), the realm of Nippon stands as no foreign power has ever witnessed it — a unified archipelago of twenty-seven million souls.

   The world flows directly from a single divergence: on the twelfth day of the sixth month of Tenshō 10 (1582) — Akechi Mitsuhide did not turn his army toward the Honnō-ji. Oda Nobunaga lived, completed his conquest of the western provinces, and was invested by the Emperor as Daijō-daijin — Chancellor of the Realm — in Tenshō 12. Declared: Taira no Nobunaga (平信長).

2. #2Emperor

   Keys: Emperor

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   The Emperor (天皇): The current Emperor, Nakamikado-tennō, is the Chancellor's maternal nephew.

   The imperial institution remains intact and constitutionally indispensable. The Emperor must invest every new Chancellor, and in theory may refuse — a power no Emperor has tested, but which exists as a shadow over every succession. Following the precedent Nobunaga established — and the model of Taira no Kiyomori before him — the Oda-Taira house has maintained aggressive intermarriage with the imperial family for four generations. The Chancellor's eldest daughter is a senior imperial consort. The boundary between the two institutions is not a wall but a membrane, porous and politically managed.

3. #3Daijou-Daijin

   Keys: Daijō-daijin, Chancellor

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   Daijō-daijin (太政大臣)—Chancellor of the Realm: The Chancellorship is the pivot on which all else turns, and its nature is deliberately, structurally ambiguous. Unlike the Shogunate of other histories, the Daijō-daijin holds authority that derives simultaneously from the Emperor's investiture, from the warrior class's military loyalty, and from the commercial class's pragmatic support.

   The current realm is governed by the Fourth Chancellor, Taira no Nobuharu (平信春), who has held office for nineteen years. The machinery of Oda rule — the great council, the provincial apparatus, the open ports — functions, but shows the stresses of fourth-generation governance.

4. #4History of Daijou-daijin

   Keys: Daijō-Daijin, Chancellor

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   The Succession of Chancellors:

   • First Chancellor: Taira no Nobunaga (平信長) / Oda Nobunaga (織田信長); Tenshō 12 – Tenshō 23(1584–1595); Consolidation, open-port policy established, Buddhist institutions reduced, meritocratic promotions, rakuichi-rakuza economy formalized.
   • Second Chancellor: Taira no Nobutada (平信忠) / Oda Nobutada (織田 信忠); Tenshō 24 – Keichō 8 (1596–1603); Survived the Ōmi Disturbance; died without completing planned continental expedition.
   • Third Chancellor: Taira no Nobumasa (平信政) / Oda Nobumasa (織田信政); Keichō 9 – Shōtoku 5 (1604–1715); Longest reign; "the Great Administrator." Codified the Daijō-kan structure, established the Keiyaku trading companies, navigated the Portuguese dispute of 1671, presided over sixty years of qualified peace. Died aged 81.
   • Fourth Chancellor: Taira no Nobuharu (平信治) / Oda Nobuharu (織田信治); Shōtoku 6 – present (1716–present).
5. #5Oda Clan

   Keys: Taira, Oda

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   The Oda Clan: Descendants Oda Nobunaga, the Oda rose from obscurity through ruthlessness, genius, and ambition, remaking Japan in their image across four generations of careful consolidation. The architects of this world forged by the first Chancellor. The Taira name is not automatic in inheritance — it is formally conferred by the Emperor upon investiture as Chancellor. A Chancellor designate remains "Oda" until the Emperor performs the ceremony to appoint a new Chancellor of the Realm. This means the Taira name is earned at each succession, requiring imperial approval — and giving the Emperor a moment of genuine leverage at every generational transition, however brief. Oda cadet branches, younger sons, and collateral relatives remain "Oda" all their lives.

   • Head: Taira no Nobuharu (平信春)
   • Heir: Oda Nobutsune (織田 信常)
6. #6Omī Disturbance

   Keys: Ōmi disturbance

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   Ōmi Disturbance: Nobunaga ruled for eleven more years after unification, dying in the spring of Tenshō 23 (1595) at the age of sixty-one — a death of old age, not assassination. His eldest surviving son, Oda Nobutada, succeeded him as Second Chancellor. The transition was not bloodless: two of Nobunaga's great generals — Niwa Nagahide and Shibata Katsuie — challenged the succession, and a brief civil conflict known as the Ōmi Disturbance lasted two years before Nobutada prevailed. It is the closest this Japan has come to resuming the Sengoku.

7. #7The Council of State

   Keys: Daijō-kan

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   Daijō-kan — The Council of State: The governing apparatus of the Taira realm is not a bakufu. There is no warrior government sitting apart from the imperial institution. Power flows through and around the ancient Council of State — the Daijō-kan — which Nobunaga revived, reshaped, and filled with his own men, but whose forms and titles are borrowed from the ritsuryō system of the seventh century. This is deliberate: the First Chancellor wished to govern through the legitimacy of the imperial court, not parallel to it.

8. #8The Inner Council

   Keys: Giseikan

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   The Inner Council — Giseikan: At the apex sits the Daijō-daijin (Chancellor of the Realm), a position that can only be held by the head of the Oda Clan. Below him, the council operates on two tiers.

   • Sadaijin — Minister of the Left
   • Udaijin — Minister of the Right
   • Dainagon — The Great Counsellors
   • Chūnagon — Middle Counsellors
9. #9Minister of the Left

   Keys: Sadaijin

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   Sadaijin — Minister of the Left: Traditionally the most powerful of the two ministers, responsible for overseeing the six administrative ministries and acting as first deputy to the Chancellor. Currently held by Lord Akechi Mitsuyori, head of the Akechi Clan.

10. #10Minister of the Right

    Keys: Udaijin

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    Udaijin — Minister of the Right: The second minister, with particular responsibility for judicial and military affairs. Currently contested — the previous holder died eight months ago, and the Chancellor has not yet named a successor. This vacancy is the single most combustible political issue of the present moment.

11. #11Akechi Clan

    Keys: Akechi

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    The Akechi Clan: No family in the realm carries a stranger, more symbolically loaded position than the Akechi. They are the Minamoto lords in a Taira court — descendants of the Seiwa Genji through Minamoto no Yorimitsu. Akechi Mitsuhide died in old age in the thirty-first year of the First Chancellor's tenure giving his life to a regime he both served with genuine loyalty. His reward was rich: the Akechi were granted the office of Minister of the Left on a near-hereditary basis, confirmed by each successive Chancellor, and their lands in Ōmi and Tanba were consolidated into a substantial domain.

    • Head: Akechi Mitsuyori (明智 光頼)/Minamoto no Mitsuyori (源光頼)documents.
    • Heir: Akechi Mitsukane (明智 光鐘)
12. #12Imperial Liaison

    Keys: Imperial Liaison, Tennō-kairo

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    The Tennō-kairo — Imperial Liaison: The formal role of the Akechi clan as intermediaries between the Chancellor's government and the imperial. Institutionalized as the Tennō-kairo — the "Emperor's Corridor" — an office unique to their house. The head of the Akechi clan serves as the permanent liaison between the Daijō-kan and the Emperor's household. In practical terms this means the Akechi lord is the person who carries formal messages between the Chancellor and the Emperor, manages the protocol of imperial investiture ceremonies, and acts as a kind of constitutional check.

13. #13Kagamino Domain

    Keys: Kagamino, Domain

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    Kagamino-ryō (鏡野領): a mid-sized hereditary domain of 35,000 koku assessed yield, granted to the Hoji clan (保次) — one of the fudai retainer houses that have served the Tokugawa since Ieyasu's time. The domain's assessed wealth understates its actual income considerably, because the Ōi crossing generates substantial toll and porter revenue that the Hoji family reports only partially to the Ministry of Revenue. The domain is technically a sub-fief of Sunpu, and his formal title — whatever the Ministry of Ceremony has granted him — ultimately rests on Tokugawa endorsement.

14. #14Kagamino

    Keys: Kagamino

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    Kagamino (鏡野): A large town in the Makinohara Plateau directly above the Ōi crossing, above the Suruga bank inside Suruga Province at the point where the road climbs from the river crossing up onto the high ground and continues westward toward Tōtōmi and, eventually, toward the distant Azuchi heartland. A proper jōkamachi — a castle on the plateau edge, samurai district (Kakunodate), merchant district (Nakamachi), commoner quarter (Minami), marketplace at the crossroads. The Ōi river crossing is busy, commercially managed, and unremarkable. Mount Fuji is visible to the northeast on clear days. The Town commands every route crossing the river, and on clear days the river itself reflects the sky below like a mirror.

15. #15Kagamino Castle

    Keys: Kagamino, Castle

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    Kagamino-jō (鏡野城): A second-tier hilltop castle, not large enough to be strategically significant to the realm but more than adequate for a domain lord. It sits on a low hill or river bluff north of the town centre — the natural high ground of the valley. Its most notable feature is a watchtower on the plateau's western edge that looks directly down onto the Ōi crossing — from which, on clear days, you can also see the line where Tōtōmi Province begins, and the hills beyond which the world changes.

16. #16Kakunodate

    Keys: Kakunodate

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    Kakunodate (the samurai district): Kakunodate occupies the zone between the castle and the town's commercial core, following the classic pattern. Its conservative, slightly old-fashioned and contains the Hoji's retainer families, many of them generations in place, living in the traditional manner that Hoji exploits as a performance of legitimacy.

17. #17Nakamachi

    Keys: Nakamachi

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    Nakamachi (the merchant district): Nakamachi sits at the natural crossroads of the Tōkaidō road leading to Sunpu to the east and the Ōi river road running north-south through the valley on its western side. The marketplace is at the district junctions making the jōkamachi the economic as well as the political centre of the Kagamino Domain, and the merchant classes were increasingly attracted to reside in them. Merchants come to Kagamino because of the crossroads — a natural stop before entering into Sunpu.

18. #18Minami

    Keys: Minami

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    Minami (the commoner district): sprawls south of the crossroads, the least planned and most organically grown part of the town, where the population density is highest and Hoji's consolidation is felt most directly — it is here that residents have been displaced by forced property purchases, here where the Tōban-gumi constables (under Hoji's effective control rather than the Tokugawa or the Ministry's) are most present, and here where resentment is deepest and most dangerous.

19. #19Ōi River

    Keys: Ōi River

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    The Ōi River: The Ōi River was arguably the most feared river in Japan — its waters gush with the speed and power of an arrow, and it cannot be crossed on horseback without knowledgeable, specially appointed guides. The served as the western defensive position for Sunpu Castle. In this world where the Tokugawa never rose to power — the Ōi River has no prohibition regarding crossing. There are bridges. There is a ferry. The crossing is commercially managed rather than militarily restricted. Though the military significance of the barrier has never been lost on the Tokugawa. The approaches from the west are well-defended in a way that never quite rises to alarming but is always present to a careful eye.

    It is a formidable natural boundary. A town sitting on the western bank — the Tōtōmi side — controls access to the crossing from the frontier direction. Kagamino sitting on the eastern bank plateau — the Suruga side, above the Makinohara — controls the approach from the heartland.

20. #20Tokugawa Clan

    Keys: Tokugawa

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    The Tokugawa Clan: The Tokugawa clan is deeply pragmatic, institutionally conservative, intensely loyal to their own internal hierarchy, and possessed of a political intelligence sharpened by the awareness that they are powerful enough to threaten the Chancellor and not quite powerful enough to succeed if it came to open conflict. They claim descent of the Seiwa Genji through Minamoto no Yorinobu. Ieyasu submitted to Nobunaga's supremacy with his characteristic patience and was rewarded with his domain intact. His successors have maintained this bargain across four generations — always cultivating relationships with powerful factions at court.

    • Head: Tokugawa Yoshinobu (德川 慶喜)/Minamoto no Yoshinobu (源慶喜): In formal court documents.
    • Heir: Tokugawa Ieyoshi (徳川 家慶)
21. #21Tokugawa Domain

    Keys: Eastern Corridor, Tōkai-ryō, Sunpu-han, Eastern Sea Domain, Domain

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    The Tokugawa Domain — The Eastern Corridor: The Tokugawa domain (Sunpu-han in official records, though informally called the Tōkai-ryō — Eastern Sea Domain — by almost everyone) 1.2 to 1.5 million koku assessed yield — the single wealthiest daimyō house in the realm, larger than any other domain but still subject to the Chancellor's triennial Sanken review. Suruga Province in its entirety is the Tokugawa heartland, with Sunpu Castle as the capital. Provinces of the Tokugawa Domain:

    • Suruga Province (Capital)
    • Tōtōmi Province
    • Mikawa Province (ancestral homeland, most loyal Tokugawa vassals)
    • Southern Kai
    • Southern Shinano
22. #22Sunpu

    Keys: Sunpu

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    Sunpu — The Capital of the Tokugawa Domain: Sunpu in 1730 is a city of perhaps 120,000 people — smaller than Osaka but larger than any other provincial capital. It has the character of a place that knows its own importance without needing to announce it. Mount Fuji dominates the northwestern horizon from Sunpu — visible from the castle towers on clear days, looming over the entire domain. The Tokugawa have built a relationship with Kunozan Tōshōgū, the great Shinto shrine on the coast dedicated to Ieyasu's memory, established by Ieyasu’s successors as the spiritual foundation of Tokugawa dynastic identity. Pilgrimage to Kunozan is an important ritual for Tokugawa retainers and has become a significant source of regional cultural pride.

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