Taiwan Is China: Part 02: 1455-1460: War for Japan

I still had a war with Shiba to finish while war with Ashikaga was ongoing. This war can't end in white peace - either I take over Kyoto and become the new shogun, or I become independent country, with no real hope for unifying Japan.

There was zero chance of winning on land, so I sunk their boats. Ashikaga helpfully managed to trap itself on Shikoku without me even doing anything, so it was me vs their vassals. Which was still too much to actually win, but I needed just Kyoto and nothing else.

Once I took Kyoto, situation was like this:

• 8 daimyos - half of them truly hating me
• 2 inherited wars with other daimyos
• 23k rebels
• Ashikaga being independent daimyo

Not too bad.

I got an event that spawned 9th daimyo for me in one of my provinces. It's probably a bad idea but I took it. I conquered the rest, and by the time wars ended I was at over 10 war exhaustion.

Situation in Japan:

• me - 152dev - shogun
• Hosokawa - 90dev
• Uesugi - 45dev
• Date - 23dev
• Hatakeyama - 16dev
• Tokugawa - 16dev
• Ando - 10dev
• Shoni - 9dev
• Takeda - 9dev
• Akamatsu - 9dev
• Ashikaga - 8dev - independent grand daimyo
• Ainu - 9dev - barbarian tribe in dire need of civilizing

As far as I understand the only way I can unite Japan is by diploannexing them one by one. There's a change that Hosokawa could challenge me for the shogunate, especially once it conquers a bit more land from other daimyos. I can't really stop them if they wanted to do so.

Meanwhile Ming got itself into negative mandate without any obvious reason. They didn't reform or have any obvious disaster. Maybe it's those events when fighting Oirats? I definitely contributed a bit by devastating their coastline with my raiding, but it's maybe 20% of their mandate problems.

I'm purple. Hosokawa is green.

Due to all the fighting I had no opportunity to dev push for Renaissance. I'll need to do that and start exploring the new world to have a chance of getting Colonialism.

In 1478 I can start diplo-annexing loyal daimyo, so should be done by 1500 or so.

It's slower to unite Japan diplomatically as shogun than by force as a daimyo.