Talk:Japanese Imperial State

Launch Facilities and Matagorda Island

The Tanegashima launch facility is operated by Hisato-Turner. Trans-Orbital launches spaceplanes from Matagorda Island (yotc.18). The Kagoshima launch pad is still operated by the Japanese government (yotc.19).

The two launch facilities, Tanegashima and Kagoshima, I believe are the same site. Tanegashima island is located in the Kagoshima prefecture. The only spaceport currently in Kagoshima, and in all of Japan for that matter, is the Tanegashima Space Center, which is also the headquarters for the NASDA, the Japanese version of NASA. This leaves three possibilities 1) Kagoshima is a new spaceport, built with in twenty years time (T:WL mentions that Shibata begins launching it's commerical satellites in 2023 from Kagoshima) in addition to Tanegashima; 2) Tanegashima Space Center is split. The heavy lift Yoshinbo tower is kept by the JIS, while the older and more commerically viable Osaki tower a few klicks away is sold off. 3) the JIS sell off the two launch towers, convert the entire southern complex few klicks away from a test range to a launch facility.

BTW, Matagorda Island is in the Gulf of Mexico (to be specific, it is in Matagorda Bay, but it's seperated by a pennisula from the Gulf of Mexico). It took me some fact checking, and I have not found anything about a Matagorda island ever being in the hands of the Japanese. It used to be a practice field and target range for the Army Air Corps. I'm going to move this based off this new information to either Aztlan or CAS/Texas articles, mostly like the CAS/Texas since it's an independent company.--YoungFreud 23:37, 21 Sep 2004 (Eastern Daylight Time)

Just be careful about breaking canon, and make it clear when you do. (yotc) should refer to the Year of the Comet sourcebook, which I don't have. I assume you're just moving the entry, and not the ownership of the island? --msde 12:19, 22 Sep 2004 (Eastern Daylight Time)

Correct. I'm going to keep Tanegashima and Kagoshima seperate for now. Trans-Orbital's Matagorda island pad, OTOH, will be moved. I can understand the confusion there. On pg19, there's talk about the runners up in launch pad operations industry: Fed-Boeing, Hisato-Turner, and Trans-Orbital. Fed-Boeing uses a mobile Sea Launch platform, while it's mentioned, both in the same paragraph, that Hisato-Turner operates the Tanegashima facility, and Trans-Orbital runs Matagorda island pad. Matagorda island is definitely in North America, as one of the Shadowtalkers mentions that he hitched a ride with T-O and their security is a bunch of New Jersey street samurai.

Kagoshima is mentioned in a section about nation-state operated spaceports that starts on the same page.--YoungFreud 18:18, 22 Sep 2004 (Eastern Daylight Time)

Government Type

k, I removed "Imperial state" as a government type, as Empire and Imperialism aren't a form of government, but a type of autonomy over a region. (Wikipedia's link to form of government should give an idea). JIS homeland's government is a constitutional monarchy, mainly because the government synopsis shown on YoTC, pg 100., is almost exactly the same breakdown you can find on Wikipedia or any encyclopedia entry on Japan, all of which describe it as a constitutional monarchy. However, this is why the JIS is an Empire: the JIS homeland is run differently, with a representative government etc., than it's annexed and conquered territories and protectorates are run by appointed governors stationed in the ruled country.--YoungFreud 01:06, 23 Sep 2004 (Eastern Daylight Time)

Flags

Wordman was using the modern Japanese flag instead of the Japanese Empire flag.

modern Japanese flag	File:FlagJapan.gif
Japanese Empire flag	File:FlagJIS.png

Is there a definitive answer to this that we can use as a footnote? --msde 03:58, 24 Sep 2004 (Eastern Daylight Time)

California Free State and the California Protectorate use the mix between the Imperial Japan standard shown here and the California state flag. You can find it on the official SR SoA flag page. Given this, I assumed that the old Imperial Japan war flag would come back in style. Hell, it's used today by the MSDF, and a eight-ray, gold border variant is used by the JGSDF.

Also, I believe, based off the snippet shown in an illustration in SoA, pg 41, the actual official Imperial Japan flag in SR is similar to the Imperial flag shown, except the rays do not connect to the sun disc. BTW, the flag shown on YoTC, pg 99, being held by I assume is Yasuhito (which bugs me; he's fourteen but the drawings make him look like he's 8 to 10) possibly follows the roundel used on Imperial military aircraft in WW2: if the flag is white, then the sun disc is red border by yellow. --YoungFreud 05:17, 24 Sep 2004 (Eastern Daylight Time)

Capital

I chose Kyoto for several reasons: it was the captial the Japanese gamers assigned to the JIS, there's a real history tied to the city as the capitol in the pre-Meiji era, and there has been talk in the RL Diet about moving from Tokyo due to congestion. Now, I was reading through Cyberpirates for the fifteenth time since posting here and found something that caught my eye. On page 75 of the book, last sentence on the page, the Huk pirate Cholo makes mention of talking about they are so wanted criminals, that if they showed their faces at a gas station, the JIS would have "our locations reported to Manila and Kyoto". Manila, of course, is the capital of the Philippines. Deducing this, if Cholo is making a reference to the seats of power in the Philippines and Japan, then this could be official evidence of Kyoto being the capital of the JIS. BTW, no mention of the capital is ever made in YoTC's JIS section.--YoungFreud 01:46, 25 Sep 2004 (Eastern Daylight Time)