Summoning Japan × The New Order: Last Days of Europe

Prologue: Economic Crisis

Note

This story is a crossover fanfiction between Summoning Japan written by Minorou and The New Order: Last Days of Europe (abbreviated as TNO), a fanmade mod for the strategy simulation game Hearts of Iron.

Due to the summoning of the Japanese Empire, which came from the darker TNO universe, the development will flow differently from the original. If you want to create the atmosphere of the TNO, you can also set the background to black and text to white on the PC version and the nighttime setting on the smartphone version.

The TNO is not intended to slander or libel any of the military or political figures who were active during the Pacific War and who appear in the story. In addition, some of the living people and real companies in TNO's works have been replaced with fictional ones according to our guidelines.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

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1962...

This is a world where World War II was won by the Axis of the Tripartite Pact of Germany, Italy, and Japan.

Nazi Germany controls most of Europe and raked in the wealth from the slave class by establishing Reichskommissariats in various parts of the country.

The Japanese Empire, which conquered vast tracts of land in Asia, as well as Sakhalin, Hawaii, Myanmar, and ports on the west coast of America, became the leader of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (GEACPS), a nation whose sun never sets.

Although defeated by the atomic bombing of Hawaii *1 during World War II, the United States of America has achieved economic recovery since then, becoming a powerful force on the North American Continent.

The world entered the era of the Cold War between the three countries of Japan, Germany, and the United States.

Of these, Japan, victorious in World War II and the Sino-Japanese War, reigned as Asia's foremost superpower. With the completion of the Japan-Korea Tunnel, access to the continent became easier, and the neon lights in the Imperial Capital of Tokyo, the economic center of Osaka, and the shipbuilding centers of Kure and Sasebo shone brightly day and night, almost as bright as those in New York.

In peace negotiations with the United States during World War II, Japan became the supreme power in the Pacific through the Treaty of Akagi, in which it ceded the Pacific Islands, including Hawaii, and leased the western American ports and military bases of San Fransisco and Los Angeles on the aircraft carrier Akagi.

In the economy, the four major zaibatsus led the Japanese economy and are extremely influential. In particular, they have generated enormous profits in economic trade in the GEACPS in Indonesia, Shōnan Island, *2 Manchuria, and southern China, and these profits have powered the economic power that is the heart of Japan.

Japan, the Land of the Rising Sun, led the world throughout the postwar period... supposedly.

However, the Japanese Empire that became a superpower was not without its problems.

The reality was a system of buying resources from China and Southeast Asian countries at cheap prices, processing them into commodities, and selling them at high prices, adopting a block economic circulation system completed within the GEACPS.

After World War II, the Asian countries were indeed granted national independence by Japan, but the reality is that they were conditioned to enter the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, and resources were preferentially sold to Japan at low prices. They have only taken a few whips away from colonial rule as the Western powers did in the past, only to be replaced by the Japanese, not the Caucasians, over them.

Furthermore, the economic circulation system within the GEACPS is showing cracks in places, and the economic growth rate is slowing down to the extent that the state and zaibatsu are taking the initiative in rewriting and window-dressing financial statements just to make the economic growth rate look better.

It has been pointed out that if these corrections are not made in time, it will only be a matter of time before the economy that supports the Empire collapses.

In the political arena, the Taisei Yokusankai (Imperial Rule Assistance Association), which has established a system of national unity, is still intact, but the reality is the turf wars between Reformists and Technocrats have intensified, and the current Diet is the scene of a political struggle in which political factions exercise black power rather than serving the nation, and scandals such as corruption and window dressing of business results are routinely committed.

The current Prime Minister is a Conservative but connected to the business world and has come to lust for the profits reaped from the economic shackles within the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere through the Yasuda Zaibatsu, one of the four major zaibatsu.

Since they are more preoccupied with oil field projects in Southern Karafuto and power struggles against conservative factions than with the anti-Japanese partisan uprisings occurring in Southeast Asia and Mongolia, they have begun to grow frustrated with the soldiers who are suffering from obstruction by the anti-Japanese movement and guerrilla warfare in various regions.

In the midst of all this, a murder at a port in a major city uncovers a large-scale corruption case unprecedented in Japanese history, involving the Japanese government, the upper echelons of the Imperial Army and Navy, the Yasuda Zaibatsu, and even the Prime Minister.

The public revelation of this case sent tremors through the political and economic circles within the GEACPS, including the Japanese mainland, and created chaos.

And to add insult to injury, the Japanese archipelago suddenly found itself cut off from the outside world...

Crash and fall.

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Notes

*1: In this world, the US garrison in Hawaii was destroyed on July 4, 1945, when an atomic bomb developed by Germany was dropped by Axis bombers launching from the Japanese-occupied island.

*2: This is Singapore, which was also called Shōnan Island during the Japanese occupation in OTL.