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Description

v1.0 (2013)

v2.0 (2017)

v3.0 (2020)

Overview | Wiki

I created Hatsunia in 2012 on the website NationStates, just for fun and to be a backdrop for a virtual space program in the flight simulator Orbiter (today, I am doing it in Kerbal Space Program with the Real Solar System mod ). It used to be a mixture of Japan, the US, and the United Federation of Planets, with a Hatsune Miku theme. Over time, I would make it more like Japan. In 2020, I wanted the islands to look more natural (because it was seen as a shitpost [low-effort joke]) while retaining the "twintail" shape. The consequence was that it had to become a "double Japan."

The history used to be vague, but started to be fleshed out in 2017, with the wiki page in 2018. It became a pseudo-alternate history (not meant to be plausible) involving an antithesis to Imperial Japan which didn't brutally oppress other Asians, and went straight into the post-war culture without having to lose WWII. This was not meant to endorse Japanese war crime denial (I was born in a country that was invaded by Imperial Japan in WWII), but was based on the idea that a government like Japan could have chosen not to be like the Nazis.

After an incident in NationStates on 2016 in which a far-right anime fan kept posting spammy messages about how Hatsunia should be a Catholic Anime Nazi country, I also wanted to distance myself from that crowd by making the country (mostly) non-imperialist with the exception of Micronesia (they have full citizenship like French Polynesia). It is also a member of the Mutual East Asian Cooperation Union , a.k.a. ASEAN+3 but more cohesive, or a genuine version of the "co-prosperity sphere."

Hatsunia also became a way of hypothetically addressing the hard-to-change social and economic issues that Japan is often criticized for, like xenophobia, overwork, sexism, and outdated technology (faxes and stamps). I was annoyed by those who idealize Japan by only looking at anime and ignoring its issues, and I didn't want everything to be about Miku or anime because Japan isn't always about that either . So I wanted Hatsunia to represent an "informed idealization" that acknowledges and repairs the problems in Japanese society.

Growing up in the 2000s, Japan seemed to be a center for futuristic technology (high speed rail, robots, consumer electronics), but more and more people realized this wasn't the case anymore in the 2010s. Hatsunia is like Japan if it didn't go into decades of economic stagnation in the 1990s, and had less risk-averse and more innovative businesses. I felt that the Hatsune Miku theme was appropriate in this case since she personifies a software, her name means "the first sound from the future," and Japan is said to have a relatively weak software industry.

Some people considered Hatsunia's lore to be too unrealistic. For example, although it is rightfully abhorred today, imperialism was considered natural and inevitable for great powers in the 19th century, especially resource-poor Japan (if I treated Hatsunia's current incarnation more realistically, such a double Japan could conquer Asia much easier, and most people would not want to live in that universe). And social progress doesn't just happen automatically and without struggle.

So with the help of some constructive feedback, Hatsunia was recently rewritten to be somewhat more nuanced: it isn't completely free of issues like racism or economic inequality, but was generally able to overcome most of it.

Description

v1.0 (2013)

v2.0 (2017)

v3.0 (2020)

Overview | Wiki

I created Hatsunia in 2012 on the website NationStates, just for fun and to be a backdrop for a virtual space program in the flight simulator Orbiter (today, I am doing it in Kerbal Space Program with the Real Solar System mod ). It used to be a mixture of Japan, the US, and the United Federation of Planets, with a Hatsune Miku theme. Over time, I would make it more like Japan. In 2020, I wanted the islands to look more natural (because it was seen as a shitpost [low-effort joke]) while retaining the "twintail" shape. The consequence was that it had to become a "double Japan."

The history used to be vague, but started to be fleshed out in 2017, with the wiki page in 2018. It became a pseudo-alternate history (not meant to be plausible) involving an antithesis to Imperial Japan which didn't brutally oppress other Asians, and went straight into the post-war culture without having to lose WWII. This was not meant to endorse Japanese war crime denial (I was born in a country that was invaded by Imperial Japan in WWII), but was based on the idea that a government like Japan could have chosen not to be like the Nazis.

After an incident in NationStates on 2016 in which a far-right anime fan kept posting spammy messages about how Hatsunia should be a Catholic Anime Nazi country, I also wanted to distance myself from that crowd by making the country (mostly) non-imperialist with the exception of Micronesia (they have full citizenship like French Polynesia). It is also a member of the Mutual East Asian Cooperation Union , a.k.a. ASEAN+3 but more cohesive, or a genuine version of the "co-prosperity sphere."

Hatsunia also became a way of hypothetically addressing the hard-to-change social and economic issues that Japan is often criticized for, like xenophobia, overwork, sexism, and outdated technology (faxes and stamps). I was annoyed by those who idealize Japan by only looking at anime and ignoring its issues, and I didn't want everything to be about Miku or anime because Japan isn't always about that either . So I wanted Hatsunia to represent an "informed idealization" that acknowledges and repairs the problems in Japanese society.

Growing up in the 2000s, Japan seemed to be a center for futuristic technology (high speed rail, robots, consumer electronics), but more and more people realized this wasn't the case anymore in the 2010s. Hatsunia is like Japan if it didn't go into decades of economic stagnation in the 1990s, and had less risk-averse and more innovative businesses. I felt that the Hatsune Miku theme was appropriate in this case since she personifies a software, her name means "the first sound from the future," and Japan is said to have a relatively weak software industry.

Some people considered Hatsunia's lore to be too unrealistic. For example, although it is rightfully abhorred today, imperialism was considered natural and inevitable for great powers in the 19th century, especially resource-poor Japan (if I treated Hatsunia's current incarnation more realistically, such a double Japan could conquer Asia much easier, and most people would not want to live in that universe). And social progress doesn't just happen automatically and without struggle.

So with the help of some constructive feedback, Hatsunia was recently rewritten to be somewhat more nuanced: it isn't completely free of issues like racism or economic inequality, but was generally able to overcome most of it.