Dr. Mashirito’s teleportation device proved somewhat useless as a means of transportation, since objects sent point-to-point within the earth’s atmosphere tended to suffer massive internal damage as a result of some of their molecules occupying the same space as air molecules, dust particles, etc., after the object – living or otherwise – finished rotating through the
tau dimension.
However, it soon proved a very efficient weapon, which Japan rather desperately needed in the spring of 1945. Although it strained available electrical capabilities, it proved possible to rotate a 10-ton chunk of iron...which when appearing in solid rock made a quite satisfying bang. Some weeks later, a couple dozen of its cities pockmarked with 200-foot craters, the US sued for terms.
Although some of the more fanatical members of the army and government wanted a US and Soviet unconditional surrender, cooler heads prevailed: war-battered Japan was in no shape to carry out an occupation of such huge and well-armed countries, and indeed it was uncertain how long Japan could hold out if the enemies dispersed their populations and just kept fighting: after all, it was almost impossible to target ships at sea with airplane spotters and patchy radio, and hitting a submarine or a moving plane was at the time absurd.
In the end, the US was forced to withdraw east of Hawaii, carrying out an evacuation on a massive scale (few Japanese Hawaiians were willing to stay, to the surprise of more pallid folk), while the British were forced to withdrawn west of India, where a Japanese-backed government led by Subhas Chandra Bhose soon came to power (Gandhi ended up dying in a rather suspicious car accident). The Soviet Union, on the other hand, was forced to withdraw west of Lake Baikal.
An atom bomb was detonated on a small Japanese offshore island in August, demonstrating that the Americans had their own super-weapon. Although the Japanese could have inflicted
far more damage than the US, with its tiny bomb-production capacity at the time, the Japanese leadership did not know that, and it put an end to plans for further impositions and demands on the US, especially after a second bomb proved the first explosion was not a one-off.
The US atom bomb also led to compromise in Europe: although under Japanese pressure US and Soviet forces withdrew from the territory of Japan’s German and Italian allies, pressures to restore the German empire of early ’41 were ignored: not that this could have been accomplished in any event without the active cooperation of the now armed and belligerent French. (Indeed, it was only with difficulty that the Germans were able to prevent a communist takeover in Italy).
The US and Soviet union were essentially allied against Japan from 1945-1960, by which time rapid growth in the Soviet atomic arsenal and increasingly noisy competition for influence in the decolonizing third world, plus basically irresolvable ideological differences led to a split-up as painful as that between China and the USSR OTL.
In the meantime, after a decade of trial and error, and the aid of German rocket scientists, Japan in 1956 successfully put the sunburst flag on the Moon, having had to worry only about the last 500 miles of the trip on the way out.
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In the year 1976, the Japanese Empire is considered, in combination with its allies, the world’s greatest power, although still outperformed by the US economically. Although the USSR and the US both have massive, planet-killing nuclear arsenals, Japan still has the fundamental advantage, besides its untouchable space-based second strike capacity, in that it can attack _instantly_ anywhere on the planet, and both the US and USSR have therefore invested far more in mobile missile carriers, atomic bombers constantly in the air, and missile subs at sea. Earth orbit is full of spying Japanese space bases and satellites (and smaller but still respectable numbers of US and USSR ones) and paranoia is a constant in the three-way cold war that currently exists.
Japan rules East Asia either through civilian "colonial" rule, through puppet regimes (Pu Yi was “promoted” from puppet ruler of Manchuria to that of China proper in 1949), or in case of the Chinese east coast, closely integrated into the Japanese economy, through a mix of military fiefdoms and civilian rule. Rebellion is common, and put down with extreme ruthlessness: the destruction of entire cities is not unknown, since there is far less atomic radiation produced that in nuclear explosions of comparable effect. There are rather more Japanese than OTL, large families being a matter of patriotic duty (and failure to be patriotic brings the attention of the Kempeitai).
Japan also rules outer space, having sent men to all the planets and moons, and has sent automated probes to the stars (only receiving messages back from the nearer ones so far, since although the passage is instant from the “viewpoint” of the rotated object, it is still limited by light-speed from the viewpoint of the outside universe).
Siberia, Australia and New Zealand have been slowly cleansed of round-eyes and resettled with Japanese: on the positive side, immigrants have strengthened the British Commonwealth relative to OTL: on the down side, they have also extended white rule in Kenya and South Africa, which is becoming increasingly an embarrassment to the US and its allies (some South Africans are talking alliance with Japan if the US and UK keep poking them on the Kaffir thing, but so far such talk is nixed by voters who came from Australia and New Zealand).
The US and a reduced Western Europe form a closer union than OTL, a true “Atlantic community”: US manufacturers complain about competition from French automobile-builders rather than Japanese ones. Albania, Yugoslavia, and Finland are all tightly within the Soviet grip, while rump Poland, Romania and Bulgaria have been assimilated outright: the US turned a blind eye to Soviet activity in Eastern Europe while they were allies vs. the Japanese Menace, although they did nix the Communization of Greece.
The USSR, the weakest of the Big Three, is currently being wooed by both the Japanese and the US to join/rejoin their alliance: the cunning SOB who presently holds the Secretary-General seat plays both off against each other in hopes of getting the best deal for his nation: oil prices are lower than OTL 1976, and the Soviet economy is beginning to get a bit sluggish, although the situation is not as yet desperate.
The Germans are currently run by an alliance between the army and the National Rebirth party, a coalition of right-wing groups including a lot of relabeled Nazis: Hitler failed to live to see the Japanese victory, and most Germans were uninterested in fully restoring the vision of the man who had led them to disaster. Some, indeed, are beginning to (quietly) suggest that they do what the Italians did and dump their alliance with the Japanese: Germans are annoyed at the Japanese failure to share their teleportation technology (Germany is stuck with a mere nuclear arsenal), and if they are doomed to be junior partners with someone, it might as well be the (mostly white) Americans.
Meanwhile, in a lab somewhere in New Mexico, a steel ball bearing has just disappeared from one evacuated chamber and appeared in another some twenty feet away...
Bruce