The Shogunate of Mars (RAR!)

[Zor]

For this scenario we'll start in the 1930s when faint incoherent radio emissions are detected from Mars. This spurs some interest by astronomers and science fiction writers but little else. In 1963 the Mars 1 Probe detects these in greater detail before communications are lost, as does several other Mars flyby missions both Soviet and American, even though most of the planet seems cold and desolate until 1971, when Mariner 9 and Mars 3 both find something strange in and around Valles Marineris region. There are over a thousand dome shaped structures (these come in two sizes: those that are 2.5km wide and 500 meters tall and those 400 meters wide and 100 meters tall) surrounded by black fields with thermal readings, where the Soviets send the Mars 3 Lander touches down safely. The first images of the martian surface shows a vast field of solar panels on tower like pivots with cables running from them. After a few hours it and it's rover are collected by a humanoid figure in a spacesuit and contact is lost, though it is indistinct. A circular patch on the chest shows a symbol with four large circles surrounding a smaller one. The Viking Lander has greater success and carries some equipment for opening a dialogue. There was preparation for creatures that communicated through sign language, luminescence, radio waves and other such exotic forms and working out a dialogue with mathmatics and words. What they don't expect to find is a human talking to them in a variant of Japanese.

The story goes like this: around 1575 some 6,200 Japanese people were taken from Honshu during the Sengoku Jidai and relocated to Mars by some alien beings they refer to as the Star-Kami who (obviously) gave them the requisite tools to survive on the red planet and instructional materials on how to operate them. The most basic of these were Domes. The larger domes are habitats able to maintain a viable population on mars: each dome has twelve "stories" forty meters apart with ceilings lined with grow lights for hydroponic farms cases in soil farms that provide food, fibers, bamboo and other such things. They also have a subterranian support level. Fertilizer is provided by a bio-reactor which processes waste organic material and purifies drinking water. Livestock are also raised, mostly pigs, poultry and fish (the lowest non mechanical level is often given over to aquaculture and seaweed cultivation) level but some horses are also raised at considerable expense. Most Hab Domes are given over mainly to agriculture and can support up to 15,000 people if given over simply to turning out staple crops like rice, soy, fish and kelp, though not all of them are simply geared towards producing raw foodstuffs. Some land is given over to building villages for habitation. Several have become cities, with little to no agriculture but a lot of people engaged in various tasks. Domes are connected by maglev trains capable of speeds of 300 km per hour. Each habitat also has a few airlocks at it's base

The smaller domes are industrial nodes, home to automated fabricators which produce equipment with a few pressurized sections. These machines are pretty straightforward in their operation: put material in, input commands and finished products come out. Among these are spacesuits which adjust to the user's body with built in radio communication systems. Horse space suits, solar panels (which supplement the power produced by the dome's fusion reactors, which produce about 320MW, the components for new domes, growlights, batteries (11MJ per kilo affairs), oxygen recycles, liquid plastics that can be made into a variety of forms, oxygen recyclers, the components for new domes, trains, railway equipment, robo-dozers, hotplates, metal ingots, electric furnaces, power frames and assembler drones. Power Frames are 4.8 meter tall biofeedback controlled exosuits with pressurized cabins. Assembler drones are 4 meter long two tonne robots with four legs with deployable wheels and a turreted arm which can be fitted with a variety of tools, most notably a four fingered gripper, digger mouths, jack hammers, a rivet gun and arc welder which can be ordered to assemble components into new domes and railways. Robo-Dozers are 12 ton robotic bulldozers which are also involved in Dome construction as well as pulling wagons around. Each dome has a theater with a number of instructional videos. For all of that they still make do with a lot of more primitive technology made by artisans, much of which is at a roughly 18th to 19th century level of development. The most sophisticated items they have put together are basic radios based off study of suit radios and simple electric cars for use outside using batteries.

In addition to the Domes there are also subterranean settlements dug into martian rock sprayed with sealant and outfitted with air locks, oxygen recyclers, water recyclers, grow lights and other such affairs. These have only begun to catch on in the 20th century an accommodate only about 5% of the population in 1975.

Initially there was a cluster of four habitat domes and one industrial dome arranged in a square 8km to a side with an industrial dome in the center surrounded by solar panels extending 8km from that. After a brief power struggle over pecking order the Samurai managed to work out a government broadly similar to that of the Tokugawa Shogunate, with government offices held by Samurai and each of the Hab-Domes being the Domain of a local Daimyo operating under the rule of the Tamija Dynasty which holds the office of Shogun. A fifth Hab Dome was built between 1615 and 1623 about ten kilometers to the east of the initial site, a sixth was made between 1648 and 1655 and an seventh between 1669 and 1676. From 1678 to 1680 a second Industrial Dome was built to provide additional power and productive capacity. Most of the the new Industrial Nodes Domes would be kept near to the center of the growing empire to keep the new Daimyo in line. Without external threats the history of the Tamija Shogunate has mostly been a peaceful one, gradually establishing new domes. There have been a few brief armed conflicts over the past few centuries but the Shogunate was able to quell these by sending in forces of Samurai clad in armored spacesuits and using Power Frames armed with Katanas, Tanegashima firearms (initially matchlocks, but eventually upgraded to electric ignition) and cannons suppressed them fairly quickly and the rebels being executed. By 1975 the population of Mars is around 17 million and continuing to grow. They've speculated about what was going on back on earth (with several books being written on the subject), but did not expect something akin to probes from Barbarian nations that did not exist before their displacement, though they are curious about affairs on earth.

How does this affect history?

Zor

[LadyTevar]

Horses would be a waste of resources.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Is John Blackthorne in xharge?

[Zor]

Horses would be a waste of resources.

They don't have many of them. There are maybe 12,000 Horses on Mars in 1975.

Zor

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Besides, they're more status symbol than anything else.

To answer Zor's question, it would likely jumpstart Japan's own space program, or at least spur Japanese investment in the US Apollo program so that the Japanese can visit and do business with their long-lost brethren...who will be shocked and appalled that modern day Japan is definitely not the land of their forefathers, while there will be a segment of the Japanese population who will look up to their Lunar brethren as an idea to regressaspire to. There may even be those conservatives in Japan who may want to get their Lunar brethren involved in politics to take their country back to where they think they ought to be.

And, yes, the UN will likely consider this Lunar enclave as sovereign Japanese soil.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Also, Sunrise will make some major coin on the anime based on this.