Chapter 485: Return to the Land of the Rising Sun
Following the end of the Great War the lines between Christian Europe and the Islamic near east were drawn at the borders of old Ionia. Directly east of these lands was the Republic of Turkey, smaller than in Bruno’s past life, and likely never to rise and become a great power again.
Meanwhile, further east was a Pan Arabic Empire that had formed from the collapse of the Ottomans, ruled beneath the authority of the Sharif of Mecca, and more or less following a federal semi-constitutional monarchy style modelled after that of both Germany and Russia in this timeline.
Beyond this fledgling Empire was the Shah of Iran, and further east was the British Raj, which while revolution had brew during the Great War as ultimately put down through brutal force by the British Empire after it withdrew from the war just early enough to begin dousing the flames across its own colonies in time to save them.
How much longer these lands would be ruled by the British was truly unknown. A revolutionary sentiment was not fully extinguished, merely suppressed by the might of the British Army.
However, there was another country facing revolts from its colonies, or territories, as they liked to call them. What exactly was the difference? Very little, it’s just that the American and their origins as a Constitutional Republic, didn’t like using the term "colonies" as it was a bit hypocritical.
Nevertheless, the Philippines was ripe for another insurrection, and small arms were plentiful these days. Old stockpiles from the Pacific theater of the war, waged by the Empire of Japan, and the Kingdom of Siam against the Allied territories in south-east Asia and the Pacific were flooding into insurgency groups that desired the Americans to leave their homes at once and for all.
However, in the Pacific Germany still held some colonies, and it was now a former ally that was eying them voraciously. The Imperial Japanese Army had proven its might during the Great War as an equal, if not superior to the British and French in the west.
Or at least on paper, the reality was that the Colonial forces were not nearly as well equipped or trained as their European counterparts, nevertheless, the current Emperor of Japan, Emperor Taishō felt that German held lands in Malaysia, New Guinea, and Micronesia were in contention for their overall plans of consolidation in the Pacific.
However, Germany was wholly unwilling to cede territory that was still theirs, even if they were in the process of decolonization across the board. So who do you send to negotiate with the Japanese?
The only German man to ever gain their respect and fear simultaneously. When Bruno stepped foot into the city of Tokyo, for the first time in decades, he could feel the clean and warm Pacific air filling his lungs.