The winds of change are blowing, Emperor Komei has died and Emperor Meiji has now ascended to the throne!
The Civil War has started in the United States and the CSA managed to start off with a few extra states, I wonder if that would make any difference in the war at all, I should probably support the rebels just to weaken the United States a bit more.
The emperor forces have rebelled against the Shogun! A war to unite the whole nation has started! Just as I was getting close to westernizing and avoiding the war too :-( but I guess war it is!
Just as a death stack the emperor forces formed was wrecking some of my troops, I managed to capture Kyoto and claim victory in the war!
And as soon as the war ends, I pick my last reform and step into Westernized territories! This will give us access to more political options and allow us to research technologies to expand our industrial and military capacities!
With our westernization process done, we have unlocked the options to secure the Island of Hokkaido and to inherit the Kingdom of Ryukyu (Okinawan Islands)!
One key decision is now available since we have advanced our technologies in the matters of state and governments, we are presented with the option of renaming a colonial region to Japanese names to encourage migration and integrate int deeply into our country, which is an obvious pick this of course its at the expense of the culture of the locals, but If I didn't took this regions, the Russians would have taken it and it would have been the same!
I decided to test the strenght of the nation unified against a punching bag.... Oh no sorry, my advisers report that it was not a punching bag, they said it was China, well whatever, they didn't stand a chance and got destroyed by the might of the rising sun! With this war we have finish the annexation of the Manchuria region! After the truces are over, we will proceed to the annexation of Taiwan!
Look at that beauty! The whole region unified under the Rising Sun!
I will leave it like this for today! But before I end, a small report on the rest of the world! Germany has unified in Europe and the Austrian and Hungarian crowns have united to form Austro-Hungary! On the other side of the world in north America, looks like the CSA actually managed to win the Civil War and there's a truce between the 2 nations, If the USA attacks them again and the South Wins, there might be a chance of the second American Civil War popping up, where the Northern States and the west of the country splits up even more, which would leave me a nice window of opportunity to capture California and have land of both sides of the Pacific!
USA Situation
THE END!
for now....