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With the end of the Second World War imminent, few had expected a communist coup in Japan. Support for the Emperor was still high, and the country was gripped with a hypernationalist fervor that seemed poised to plunge Japan into the depths of Hell before it surrendered to the Allies. Even Stalin, who had planned communist influence in Japan (the northern occupation zone most realistically, potentially all of Japan at best), had expected such a feat impossible. And yet the day before the United States was prepared to drop an atomic weapon on the city of Hiroshima, a communist coup surrounded the Diet, the Imperial Palace, and forced Kantarō Suzuki to resign as Prime Minister before also forcing Emperor Hirohito to broadcast a statement rejecting his divinity, and announcing his abdication. Kyuichi Tokuda, held at Abashiri Prison since 1934, was released and invited to be Prime Minister, announcing that same morning the immediate surrender of the Japanese Empire.

The world looked on with confusion and apprehension, and the bombings were postponed. The new Kyuichi government seemed genuine, with the Emperor's abdication affirmed by the next morning and army units across the Empire laying down their weapons. So, rather unexpectedly, US forces moved to negotiate the surrender of Japan. Within the week, the Greater Japanese Empire was abolished and replaced by the new People's State of Japan, handing over former Imperial officials to the Americans to be tried as war criminals. Their sole exception, shockingly, was the Emperor and his family. Despite declaring a new communist government, the new government declared that it was still a monarchy, that there would still be an Emperor. It was a tricky justification, based on a hiccup in the imperial succession during the "Northern and Southern Courts Era", on the grounds that the Southern Court was legitimate and Hirohito had descended from the Northern Court.

Regardless of the actual circumstances, even declaring that they would undertake the task of locating the "rightful" Emperor, they were in no hurry. The US plans for occupation, potentially even dividing Japan, were scuttled with the Soviets now moving forces into central Japan. As such the US and Soviet Union agreed to a "cooperative occupation" rather than dividing it into zones as had been done in Germany. While the trials of war criminals were carried out under US and Soviet oversight (again, sparing only Hirohito and his family, who now lived under house arrest in the Imperial Palace), the new People's State moved to consolidate its power through either integrating former opposition to the Imperial Rule Assistance Association or having them arrested on flimsy connections to it. The Imperial Diet became the State Council, the Prime Minister became Chief Councillor, and even if the old hinomaru flag was still being used the capital was moved away from Tokyo, not to the old capital of Kyoto but to Nagoya, declared Chukyo, the "Central Capital" to Kyoto's west and Tokyo's east.

By 1946, with the communist government setting in, it became apparent that the United States was not going to be able to influence Chukyo to their side. Neither were the Soviets, for that matter, as despite the newly-communist government they were firmly anti-Stalinist and their adherence to vaguely monarchical systems drove a wedge between them and Moscow, a "Belgrade-Moscow Split" in the east. And with the US throwing all its support behind the Kuomintang in China, forcing Mao Zedong and his communists back to Manchuria, Stalin found himself with only a rump PRC state in the region and Korea as reliable allies in the region, much to his chagrin. Indeed, despite their distance and ideological variances, Japan and Yugoslavia found common ground between themselves in their respective political circumstances, and elected to form a new "Non-Aligned Movement" that brought in India and Brazil as founding members, later going on to bring together most of the newly independent colonies of former European empires, and in many places even former conquests of the Japanese Empire.

The Chukyo Regime as it became known was formally described as a "Regency", that they would soon enthrone the new rightful Emperor. This was never forthcoming, though, in a parallel to what had happened in Hungary under Miklos Horthy. Like every communist government it moved to quickly stamp out resistance to its rule and consolidate ranks, becoming a one-party state with an ideology deriving from Marxism-Leninism. In practice though it was never as authoritarian as Stalinism, and was described by some as "Mochi Communism" in reference to the Japanese dessert for being considered a "softer and sweeter" form, largely in reference to the lack of a full-scale police state and a pseudo-consumerist economy designed to greatly improve living standards. As well, it also openly embraced the Ainu, Okinawan, Burakumin, and Zainichi populations who had for ages lived at the fringes of Japanese society, with their languages and cultures being encouraged back from near-extinction with state support.

During the "Regency" the mighty Zaibatsu that had dominated the economy of Imperial Japan were formally nationalized but importantly not broken up, instead being run as state enterprises following the pseudo-consumerist policies of the government. With heavily worker-oriented policies that created vast social safety nets, the government transitioned fully from the wartime militarized economy to an almost fully civilian economy, focusing on the production of consumer goods both for internal use and external export. Rather than following in line with the Soviet economic model, Japan intended its state production efforts to become a heavily export-focused economy that would showcase the supremacy of its economic model, and indeed the Japanese economy did see steady growth to where it had become the largest communist economy in the world with the highest standards of living, surpassing even East Germany. Nonetheless, its economic growth never fully reached the levels projected or planned for by its central government.

Although the United States was distrustful of Japan and its communist government, at several times attempting to fund counter-revolutionary movements with the Emperor as a central figurehead to depose the Regency, over time its willingness to cooperate in the foreign arena and opposition to Moscow slowly warmed relations, culminating in 1972 in which President Richard Nixon made the first official state visit of a US President to Japan and marking a watershed in the thawing relations between Washington and Chukyo. The purpose was to formalize the US handover of Okinawa and the Ryukyu Islands to Japan, but informally Nixon toured the country and observed the post-war reconstruction, carried out at a fairly impressive rate with state oversight even with the paltry contributions from the United States and Soviet Union. "Perhaps," quoted Nixon, "the Land of the Rising Sun might yet rise again." Though the US and Japan would not formally be allies, the new level of open relations was a welcome relief for the Japanese government.

Over time as conditions improved, the government began to find itself with increasing opposition from the public, largely in the form of protests and peaceful demonstrations. The anti-war sentiments of the Japanese public having set in, both in response to government mandates and public awareness of war crimes, peaceful demonstrations could hardly be opposed militarily as had been done by the Eastern Bloc. Doing so would look extremely hypocritical, and either way Japan had barely any military forces to speak of beyond a basic "Civil Defense Force". The relaxed laws on free speech would give rise to the "Thousand Cherry Blossoms" (千本桜, Senbonzakura), a movement which declared that it sought the deconstruction of the communist regime and a transition to democratic multiparty rule. While initially met with dismissal, as the movement gained strength and carried out increasingly large demonstrations through the 1980s, the government began to respond with increasing harshness.

In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev was appointed to lead the Soviet Union and ushered in a new period of detente between East and West. This similarly extended to Japan, and as the USSR began to publicly embrace policies of glasnost and perestroika the Senbonzakura gained momentum in Japan. In response the nominally benign Regency Government began to take a more active role in policing the country, using neighboring Korea's increasing militarization as a "security concern" to justify expanding the Civil Defense Force ultimately for the purpose of trying to maintain order at home. This climaxed in the May 1987 Revolt, beginning with a student protest associated with the Senbonzakura occupied Nagasaki University on 18 May 1987 and was met with gunfire that killed three and wounded 27. Over the next three days the simmering unrest became a flashover that saw riots across the city, followed by riots in other major cities from Sapporo to Naha. In their aftermath, there was an eerie calm that fell over the nation, as if a collective realization of the violence had set in. In total more than 400 were killed and thousands injured.

Following the Revolt, long-serving Councillor Sanzō Nosaka announced his resignation (shortly afterwards committing seppuku) and was replaced by the reformist Miyamoto Kenji, who had formerly been a Regency hardliner but had softened his positions and become a major opponent to the Nosaka Councillorship. Under the Kenji Councillorship, the regime began making public efforts towards reform and restructuring the government, but by then it was increasingly apparent that the Cold War was ending with the United States coming out on top, and the Regency had lost the people's faith. After just two years of attempting reform to keep the Regency intact, Miyamoto announced his own resignation and was replaced by Fuwa Tetsuzo, an even more reformist politician who took office on 6 January 1989. The next day, Hirohito died at age 87, which proved a watershed moment for Japanese politics. After a public display of grief and a state funeral for the former Emperor, Fuwa announced the end of the Regency.

More specifically, Fuwa was well aware that the regime was coming to an end and seeing the chaos in Korea, the Eastern Bloc, Manchuria, and the Soviet Union, wanted as soft of a transition as possible. Consequently he announced the "discovery" that Nakayama Yoshiko, the mother of Emperor Meiji, was in fact descended from the Southern Court and thus the line of succession that included Emperors Meiji, Taishō, and Shōwa had in fact been legitimate. The actual veracity of this claim is dubious at best but regardless it gave the government the foundation it needed to declare that Hirohito's eldest son, Akihito, was the rightful successor to the throne, and made plans for "the formal end of the Regency", which translated to "the disestablishment of communist rule". Over the next two years, as Akihito was prepared to take the throne, Fuwa rapidly dismantled the Councillorship, re-instated the National Diet, and prepared for the transition to the "Imperial State of Japan", which would be completed with Akihito's enthronement.

Akihito was declared as Emperor Seika (正化) on 12 November 1990, an era name that depending on translation either meant "Normalization" or "A Great Many Changes". The selection of an era name is always extremely deliberate, and with his enthronement signalling the end of the Regency after 45 years, it was one of those moments when the changing of the eras was most obvious. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the lowering of the Soviet flag, the resignation of Hua Guofeng, all of these were symbols that came to represent the end of communist rule. In Japan, technically nothing much had really changed, the throne had simply been vacant for four and a half decades while a communist caretaker government managed affairs. But for the Japanese, now under a truly democratic government and with an economy that took off like a rocket almost immediately, it was a transition akin to the Meiji Restoration, the transition of Japan in spirit and identity, one that ran to the very foundations of the nation.

Description

With the end of the Second World War imminent, few had expected a communist coup in Japan. Support for the Emperor was still high, and the country was gripped with a hypernationalist fervor that seemed poised to plunge Japan into the depths of Hell before it surrendered to the Allies. Even Stalin, who had planned communist influence in Japan (the northern occupation zone most realistically, potentially all of Japan at best), had expected such a feat impossible. And yet the day before the United States was prepared to drop an atomic weapon on the city of Hiroshima, a communist coup surrounded the Diet, the Imperial Palace, and forced Kantarō Suzuki to resign as Prime Minister before also forcing Emperor Hirohito to broadcast a statement rejecting his divinity, and announcing his abdication. Kyuichi Tokuda, held at Abashiri Prison since 1934, was released and invited to be Prime Minister, announcing that same morning the immediate surrender of the Japanese Empire.

The world looked on with confusion and apprehension, and the bombings were postponed. The new Kyuichi government seemed genuine, with the Emperor's abdication affirmed by the next morning and army units across the Empire laying down their weapons. So, rather unexpectedly, US forces moved to negotiate the surrender of Japan. Within the week, the Greater Japanese Empire was abolished and replaced by the new People's State of Japan, handing over former Imperial officials to the Americans to be tried as war criminals. Their sole exception, shockingly, was the Emperor and his family. Despite declaring a new communist government, the new government declared that it was still a monarchy, that there would still be an Emperor. It was a tricky justification, based on a hiccup in the imperial succession during the "Northern and Southern Courts Era", on the grounds that the Southern Court was legitimate and Hirohito had descended from the Northern Court.

Regardless of the actual circumstances, even declaring that they would undertake the task of locating the "rightful" Emperor, they were in no hurry. The US plans for occupation, potentially even dividing Japan, were scuttled with the Soviets now moving forces into central Japan. As such the US and Soviet Union agreed to a "cooperative occupation" rather than dividing it into zones as had been done in Germany. While the trials of war criminals were carried out under US and Soviet oversight (again, sparing only Hirohito and his family, who now lived under house arrest in the Imperial Palace), the new People's State moved to consolidate its power through either integrating former opposition to the Imperial Rule Assistance Association or having them arrested on flimsy connections to it. The Imperial Diet became the State Council, the Prime Minister became Chief Councillor, and even if the old hinomaru flag was still being used the capital was moved away from Tokyo, not to the old capital of Kyoto but to Nagoya, declared Chukyo, the "Central Capital" to Kyoto's west and Tokyo's east.

By 1946, with the communist government setting in, it became apparent that the United States was not going to be able to influence Chukyo to their side. Neither were the Soviets, for that matter, as despite the newly-communist government they were firmly anti-Stalinist and their adherence to vaguely monarchical systems drove a wedge between them and Moscow, a "Belgrade-Moscow Split" in the east. And with the US throwing all its support behind the Kuomintang in China, forcing Mao Zedong and his communists back to Manchuria, Stalin found himself with only a rump PRC state in the region and Korea as reliable allies in the region, much to his chagrin. Indeed, despite their distance and ideological variances, Japan and Yugoslavia found common ground between themselves in their respective political circumstances, and elected to form a new "Non-Aligned Movement" that brought in India and Brazil as founding members, later going on to bring together most of the newly independent colonies of former European empires, and in many places even former conquests of the Japanese Empire.

The Chukyo Regime as it became known was formally described as a "Regency", that they would soon enthrone the new rightful Emperor. This was never forthcoming, though, in a parallel to what had happened in Hungary under Miklos Horthy. Like every communist government it moved to quickly stamp out resistance to its rule and consolidate ranks, becoming a one-party state with an ideology deriving from Marxism-Leninism. In practice though it was never as authoritarian as Stalinism, and was described by some as "Mochi Communism" in reference to the Japanese dessert for being considered a "softer and sweeter" form, largely in reference to the lack of a full-scale police state and a pseudo-consumerist economy designed to greatly improve living standards. As well, it also openly embraced the Ainu, Okinawan, Burakumin, and Zainichi populations who had for ages lived at the fringes of Japanese society, with their languages and cultures being encouraged back from near-extinction with state support.

During the "Regency" the mighty Zaibatsu that had dominated the economy of Imperial Japan were formally nationalized but importantly not broken up, instead being run as state enterprises following the pseudo-consumerist policies of the government. With heavily worker-oriented policies that created vast social safety nets, the government transitioned fully from the wartime militarized economy to an almost fully civilian economy, focusing on the production of consumer goods both for internal use and external export. Rather than following in line with the Soviet economic model, Japan intended its state production efforts to become a heavily export-focused economy that would showcase the supremacy of its economic model, and indeed the Japanese economy did see steady growth to where it had become the largest communist economy in the world with the highest standards of living, surpassing even East Germany. Nonetheless, its economic growth never fully reached the levels projected or planned for by its central government.

Although the United States was distrustful of Japan and its communist government, at several times attempting to fund counter-revolutionary movements with the Emperor as a central figurehead to depose the Regency, over time its willingness to cooperate in the foreign arena and opposition to Moscow slowly warmed relations, culminating in 1972 in which President Richard Nixon made the first official state visit of a US President to Japan and marking a watershed in the thawing relations between Washington and Chukyo. The purpose was to formalize the US handover of Okinawa and the Ryukyu Islands to Japan, but informally Nixon toured the country and observed the post-war reconstruction, carried out at a fairly impressive rate with state oversight even with the paltry contributions from the United States and Soviet Union. "Perhaps," quoted Nixon, "the Land of the Rising Sun might yet rise again." Though the US and Japan would not formally be allies, the new level of open relations was a welcome relief for the Japanese government.

Over time as conditions improved, the government began to find itself with increasing opposition from the public, largely in the form of protests and peaceful demonstrations. The anti-war sentiments of the Japanese public having set in, both in response to government mandates and public awareness of war crimes, peaceful demonstrations could hardly be opposed militarily as had been done by the Eastern Bloc. Doing so would look extremely hypocritical, and either way Japan had barely any military forces to speak of beyond a basic "Civil Defense Force". The relaxed laws on free speech would give rise to the "Thousand Cherry Blossoms" (千本桜, Senbonzakura), a movement which declared that it sought the deconstruction of the communist regime and a transition to democratic multiparty rule. While initially met with dismissal, as the movement gained strength and carried out increasingly large demonstrations through the 1980s, the government began to respond with increasing harshness.

In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev was appointed to lead the Soviet Union and ushered in a new period of detente between East and West. This similarly extended to Japan, and as the USSR began to publicly embrace policies of glasnost and perestroika the Senbonzakura gained momentum in Japan. In response the nominally benign Regency Government began to take a more active role in policing the country, using neighboring Korea's increasing militarization as a "security concern" to justify expanding the Civil Defense Force ultimately for the purpose of trying to maintain order at home. This climaxed in the May 1987 Revolt, beginning with a student protest associated with the Senbonzakura occupied Nagasaki University on 18 May 1987 and was met with gunfire that killed three and wounded 27. Over the next three days the simmering unrest became a flashover that saw riots across the city, followed by riots in other major cities from Sapporo to Naha. In their aftermath, there was an eerie calm that fell over the nation, as if a collective realization of the violence had set in. In total more than 400 were killed and thousands injured.

Following the Revolt, long-serving Councillor Sanzō Nosaka announced his resignation (shortly afterwards committing seppuku) and was replaced by the reformist Miyamoto Kenji, who had formerly been a Regency hardliner but had softened his positions and become a major opponent to the Nosaka Councillorship. Under the Kenji Councillorship, the regime began making public efforts towards reform and restructuring the government, but by then it was increasingly apparent that the Cold War was ending with the United States coming out on top, and the Regency had lost the people's faith. After just two years of attempting reform to keep the Regency intact, Miyamoto announced his own resignation and was replaced by Fuwa Tetsuzo, an even more reformist politician who took office on 6 January 1989. The next day, Hirohito died at age 87, which proved a watershed moment for Japanese politics. After a public display of grief and a state funeral for the former Emperor, Fuwa announced the end of the Regency.

More specifically, Fuwa was well aware that the regime was coming to an end and seeing the chaos in Korea, the Eastern Bloc, Manchuria, and the Soviet Union, wanted as soft of a transition as possible. Consequently he announced the "discovery" that Nakayama Yoshiko, the mother of Emperor Meiji, was in fact descended from the Southern Court and thus the line of succession that included Emperors Meiji, Taishō, and Shōwa had in fact been legitimate. The actual veracity of this claim is dubious at best but regardless it gave the government the foundation it needed to declare that Hirohito's eldest son, Akihito, was the rightful successor to the throne, and made plans for "the formal end of the Regency", which translated to "the disestablishment of communist rule". Over the next two years, as Akihito was prepared to take the throne, Fuwa rapidly dismantled the Councillorship, re-instated the National Diet, and prepared for the transition to the "Imperial State of Japan", which would be completed with Akihito's enthronement.

Akihito was declared as Emperor Seika (正化) on 12 November 1990, an era name that depending on translation either meant "Normalization" or "A Great Many Changes". The selection of an era name is always extremely deliberate, and with his enthronement signalling the end of the Regency after 45 years, it was one of those moments when the changing of the eras was most obvious. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the lowering of the Soviet flag, the resignation of Hua Guofeng, all of these were symbols that came to represent the end of communist rule. In Japan, technically nothing much had really changed, the throne had simply been vacant for four and a half decades while a communist caretaker government managed affairs. But for the Japanese, now under a truly democratic government and with an economy that took off like a rocket almost immediately, it was a transition akin to the Meiji Restoration, the transition of Japan in spirit and identity, one that ran to the very foundations of the nation.