Time Slip Reiwa Japan

A.D.2025 - 001 - The Time Slip and How it Happened

"It is very true that we ought to think of the happiness of others; but it is not often enough said that the best thing we can do for those who love us is to be happy ourselves."

Émile Auguste Chartier

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The year 2025.

In the 37th year of the Heisei era, the Japanese archipelago was transported back 100 years in time.

The reason for this was the outburst of a Spacetime Oscillation Munition developed by the People's Republic of China. The Spacetime Oscillation Munition was a superweapon developed by the PRC, which was unable to withstand the military pressure of Japan, the United States, and Taiwan, and was based on the theory of higher dimensions.

Far East Asia since Heisei 30 (2018) was under extreme tension. Since the beginning of the year, China, whose economic growth had slowed considerably, sought to expand its economy with its military, while Japan, in contrast, advocated aggressive pacifism by investing its 2% GDP quota and pushing forward with military expansion.

A confrontation of the dragon against the tiger.

On top of this, the United States also implemented serious military expansion. Japan and the US were jointly leveraging Taiwan.

Then the Korean Civil War broke out. The eruption of Mt. Paektu destabilized North Korea, and it asked for support from South Korea and the world. Upon receiving the request, the South Korean government tried to help North Korea that cut the budget of the South Korean military. In response, the upper echelons of the South Korean military lost their nerve, and a military coup d'état broke out. The North Koreans took advantage of the chaos in South Korea and raided the country for food in the name of humanitarian aid to their own people. When the main North Korean army moved south, some of the remaining troops in North Korea declared a rebellion. The Korean peninsula was divided into four parts, and a civil war began in which no one was happy.

The neighboring countries formulated a non-interference treaty. The borders were sealed. Those who still tried to flee the country were sent to humanitarian detention facilities on Jeju Island or the Kamchatka Peninsula.

Initially, Japan, the United States, Taiwan, China, and Russia in the Far East declared non-intervention and complied, but the situation changed when suddenly a pro-US faction, seeking American and Japanese intervention, bombed Tsushima Island with F-15 fighter planes disguised as legitimate Korean government forces. They flew civilian aircraft carrying refugees and the F-15s lurking behind them did the bombing, hitting an elementary school and the town hall of Tsushima. Nearly 200 people were killed or wounded, many of the dead, in particular, were children, elementary school children.

The pro-US faction that caused this tragedy conducted an intelligence operation and announced the reason for the bombing by disguising it as an internet bulletin of the legitimate Korean government. According to them, "We brought down the hammer on Japanese colonialism in Tsushima because young Korean women who fled the country were being used as sex slaves." The legitimate Korean government panicked, but after gaining public support on the internet, they got carried away and admitted the bombing. It then demanded an apology and compensation from Japan.

The Japanese government, encouraged by the rising public opinion, called a meeting of the UN Security Council and had it approved the establishment of a special air defense zone between the Tsushima Islands and the Korean Peninsula. It declared that anything that flies, military or civilian, will be shot down. It also declared that it would refuse to allow any South Korean vessels to enter Japanese territorial waters on the grounds that there was a strong possibility that the vessels were not navigating harmlessly.

However, this did not lead to war. The Japanese government did not retaliate immediately, but published details of the damage and invited the world's media to denounce the legitimate Korean government. It then demanded that the legitimate Korean government apologize, investigate the cause of the accident, and punish those responsible. They also froze the assets of the Korean government in Japan to compensate the victims.

So far, so good for China, because it would reduce Japan's power on the Korean peninsula, which is in direct opposition to China. It also hoped that Japan would implement a policy of reconciliation with China for the sake of the Korean peninsula. They made diplomatic contacts to that end. However, the pissed-off Japan went beyond China's expectations. It started to expand its military, adding a budget separate from the military buildup against China.

The National Defense Program was revised, and while the expansion of the size of the manpower was sluggish, the expansion of the equipment was remarkable. The Ground Self-Defense Force promoted heavy mechanization, mainly by procuring 2.000 AFVs of various types, and decided to develop large missiles for striking at strategic locations. The Air Self-Defense Force increased the production of F-3s and expanded the size of its air defense missile group. In the Maritime Self-Defense Force, the planned 40.000-ton multipurpose carrier was canceled, and a 70.000-ton aircraft carrier was built. In exchange for not going to war, the forces on the Korean peninsula would have to build forces they could not touch. China, panicked by Japan's overly bloodthirsty actions, sought a weapon to replace its single-signature regular army and harmless strategic nuclear missiles. That was the Spacetime Oscillation Munition.

Developed with great momentum, the Spacetime Oscillation Munition was intended to be detonated in space over the Pacific Ocean as both a threat and an experiment, but the rocket, which was poorly engineered, fell during the ascent. The Spacetime Oscillation Munition exploded over the Pacific Ocean. As a result, the Japanese archipelago and the island of Guam were transported 100 years back in time.

. . .

1925.

It was the time when the Taishō era was about to pass on to the Shōwa era. However, what comes instead is the Reiwa era.