Current Version: 1.1
Current Game Version: 1.7.6
House of the Rising Sun is a series of User Interface enhancements and overhauls to the Meiji Restoration focused on making gameplay more organic and intuitive to a blind playthrough, and creating a richer experience playing as Japan with the long term objective of continuing to cover Japanese history.
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For those of you who have never played 1.0, you'll notice a User Interface enhancement: The current Emperor is indicated in the Journal so you will know which Emperor will take over if you restore. The minimalist version of the mod includes only the UI and Hokkaido changes and plays like vanilla otherwise.
The first thing you will notice when you start up is that you have less than 300 diplomatic influence. This is less than the minimum to start trying to improve relations with a Great Power, and this is on purpose. While not completely locked out of diplomacy, you will largely be restricted to engaging with your immediate neighbors. When you lift Isolation, either by yourself or by force, an event will shortly follow which will slowly restore your influence to normal levels.
The Landowners' normal influence boosting trait will be restored after Japan is opened
That is not the only change you will encounter if you are forced to open, however. You might notice the opening event no longer gives you free Legitimacy points. Nor does it strengthen the Industrialists or Intellectuals, or weaken the Shogunate. While I understood the purpose of these modifiers it felt awfully blunt and represented a failure of the simulation to produce an organic outcome. The Legitimacy modifier especially. But do not be concerned, the Shogunate will still face a political crisis if Japan is forced to open that will accelerate the Meiji Restoration. Because it turns out, a revolution was always brewing in the background.
Throughout history, feudal and aristocratic societies have enforced strict hierarchies, even stratifying their nobilities into subclasses, and Tokugawa Japan is no exception. A centuries-old code dating back to the Sengoku Jidai governed the status of the Daimyo, with certain nobles being rewarded for their loyalty and alliance to the young Shogunate by being welcomed into the inner social circles of the regime, and other nobles who were seen as disloyal or subjugated outright banned from holding key government offices. These rules persisted across generations, long after the Sengoku Jidai passed into memory, and became the basis for resentment as even very independently wealthy and powerful aristocrats felt unjustly and arbitrarily held back by this archaic caste banning them from parties, jobs, and influence over the government. These resentments were the seed of the Japanese Revolution. Emperor Meiji was restored in a Coup D'etat against the Shogunate by nobles who had been denied positions in the government and court merely by their status in the class system. The failure of the Shogunate to defend Japan from foreigners reopened this class divide and created an opportunity for the historically snubbed nobles with little to lose, to seize power from the privileged nobles and take those positions in government and court for themselves to award on merit.
The Petite Bourgeoisie is an IG that, as it already exists, does well to represent lower-ranking nobles. Their flavor, their ideologies, and so on perfectly represent them. They are sentimental about the monarchy and national culture, but against decentralized power as they do not benefit from feudal autonomy but do benefit from increased security of a centralized state, and have less to lose from upending the current peerage system as ranking the populace by wealth alone give them more status than they have now. Even in Marxist literature they were the forefathers of the Industrial Bourgeoisie for these reasons. The Petite Bourgeoisie are the vanguard of anti-aristocratic revolution in countries like Japan, and they ought to play a larger role in this game in paving the way for the industrialists and intelligentsia and unions in countries that still have very powerful aristocracies.
In pursuant to this theory, the forced opening of Japan make this resentment will boil over and fracture the Aristocracy. The Petite Bourgeoisie will represent the interests of the disaffected aristocrats who have been legally excluded from government despite their wealth, influence, and nobility, and advocate for more meritocratic distribution of public offices, while the Landowners will continue to represent those aristocrats who benefit from the political status quo and want to reform japan without losing their privileges. Furthermore, the Petite Bourgeoisie are resentful to the shogunate for failing to defend Japan from foreigners, and will promote stronger National Security and Unity, making them ideal to then become nationalistic and authoritarian if unchecked. A problem Japan definitely faced. The only missing piece is Economic policy, and a Protectionist will complete that puzzle, as relative to Free Trade they are closed off and nationalistic, but relative to Traditionalism they are authoritarian-modernizers.
Typical example of a Restoration government
Notably, in the interest of keeping the game simple, this internecine split within the Aristocracy will naturally heal as it fades into irrelevance. Once the Petite Bourgeoisie successfully abolish the old feudal system, called the Han, and replace it with the modern Prefectures, the aristocracy will begin turning back to the landowners, but with greatly diminished power now that they have let the industrialist genies out of the bottle. The Restoration should proceed easily, and the terms to start it have been altered slightly. You can initiate it with a weaker anti-shogunate government if you are confident, but you'll pay for that in Radicals and perhaps even needing to resort to initiating the Boshin War, when waiting for the anti-shogunate government to naturally gain more legitimacy will take a little longer but be less risky.
There are other changes, for example once forcibly opened you cannot reform off of Free Trade until you are recognized. A full list of changes in this update is below, I consider this spoiler content since the mod is intended to be intuitive to blind playthroughs, but it's good practice to keep.
https://gist.github.com/lacedemonian/bc0f8d6fe337afbf0ce5dcafef6ea765
Steam mod page
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3263120225
Current Game Version: 1.7.6
House of the Rising Sun is a series of User Interface enhancements and overhauls to the Meiji Restoration focused on making gameplay more organic and intuitive to a blind playthrough, and creating a richer experience playing as Japan with the long term objective of continuing to cover Japanese history.
For those of you who have never played 1.0, you'll notice a User Interface enhancement: The current Emperor is indicated in the Journal so you will know which Emperor will take over if you restore. The minimalist version of the mod includes only the UI and Hokkaido changes and plays like vanilla otherwise.
The first thing you will notice when you start up is that you have less than 300 diplomatic influence. This is less than the minimum to start trying to improve relations with a Great Power, and this is on purpose. While not completely locked out of diplomacy, you will largely be restricted to engaging with your immediate neighbors. When you lift Isolation, either by yourself or by force, an event will shortly follow which will slowly restore your influence to normal levels.
The Landowners' normal influence boosting trait will be restored after Japan is opened
That is not the only change you will encounter if you are forced to open, however. You might notice the opening event no longer gives you free Legitimacy points. Nor does it strengthen the Industrialists or Intellectuals, or weaken the Shogunate. While I understood the purpose of these modifiers it felt awfully blunt and represented a failure of the simulation to produce an organic outcome. The Legitimacy modifier especially. But do not be concerned, the Shogunate will still face a political crisis if Japan is forced to open that will accelerate the Meiji Restoration. Because it turns out, a revolution was always brewing in the background.
Throughout history, feudal and aristocratic societies have enforced strict hierarchies, even stratifying their nobilities into subclasses, and Tokugawa Japan is no exception. A centuries-old code dating back to the Sengoku Jidai governed the status of the Daimyo, with certain nobles being rewarded for their loyalty and alliance to the young Shogunate by being welcomed into the inner social circles of the regime, and other nobles who were seen as disloyal or subjugated outright banned from holding key government offices. These rules persisted across generations, long after the Sengoku Jidai passed into memory, and became the basis for resentment as even very independently wealthy and powerful aristocrats felt unjustly and arbitrarily held back by this archaic caste banning them from parties, jobs, and influence over the government. These resentments were the seed of the Japanese Revolution. Emperor Meiji was restored in a Coup D'etat against the Shogunate by nobles who had been denied positions in the government and court merely by their status in the class system. The failure of the Shogunate to defend Japan from foreigners reopened this class divide and created an opportunity for the historically snubbed nobles with little to lose, to seize power from the privileged nobles and take those positions in government and court for themselves to award on merit.
The Petite Bourgeoisie is an IG that, as it already exists, does well to represent lower-ranking nobles. Their flavor, their ideologies, and so on perfectly represent them. They are sentimental about the monarchy and national culture, but against decentralized power as they do not benefit from feudal autonomy but do benefit from increased security of a centralized state, and have less to lose from upending the current peerage system as ranking the populace by wealth alone give them more status than they have now. Even in Marxist literature they were the forefathers of the Industrial Bourgeoisie for these reasons. The Petite Bourgeoisie are the vanguard of anti-aristocratic revolution in countries like Japan, and they ought to play a larger role in this game in paving the way for the industrialists and intelligentsia and unions in countries that still have very powerful aristocracies.
In pursuant to this theory, the forced opening of Japan make this resentment will boil over and fracture the Aristocracy. The Petite Bourgeoisie will represent the interests of the disaffected aristocrats who have been legally excluded from government despite their wealth, influence, and nobility, and advocate for more meritocratic distribution of public offices, while the Landowners will continue to represent those aristocrats who benefit from the political status quo and want to reform japan without losing their privileges. Furthermore, the Petite Bourgeoisie are resentful to the shogunate for failing to defend Japan from foreigners, and will promote stronger National Security and Unity, making them ideal to then become nationalistic and authoritarian if unchecked. A problem Japan definitely faced. The only missing piece is Economic policy, and a Protectionist will complete that puzzle, as relative to Free Trade they are closed off and nationalistic, but relative to Traditionalism they are authoritarian-modernizers.
Typical example of a Restoration government
Notably, in the interest of keeping the game simple, this internecine split within the Aristocracy will naturally heal as it fades into irrelevance. Once the Petite Bourgeoisie successfully abolish the old feudal system, called the Han, and replace it with the modern Prefectures, the aristocracy will begin turning back to the landowners, but with greatly diminished power now that they have let the industrialist genies out of the bottle. The Restoration should proceed easily, and the terms to start it have been altered slightly. You can initiate it with a weaker anti-shogunate government if you are confident, but you'll pay for that in Radicals and perhaps even needing to resort to initiating the Boshin War, when waiting for the anti-shogunate government to naturally gain more legitimacy will take a little longer but be less risky.
There are other changes, for example once forcibly opened you cannot reform off of Free Trade until you are recognized. A full list of changes in this update is below, I consider this spoiler content since the mod is intended to be intuitive to blind playthroughs, but it's good practice to keep.
https://gist.github.com/lacedemonian/bc0f8d6fe337afbf0ce5dcafef6ea765
Steam mod page
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3263120225
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