History

Worldweep Opening History

When the Weep opened, famine, foreign pressure, and unrest destabilized the imperial court. In the chaos, the Shogunate of Steel—a military junta of generals and admirals—seized power in a bloodless coup, declaring they would “preserve Minkai until the storm passed.” Their "preservation" meant absolute isolation. Ports were closed, foreign envoys were expelled, reformers were executed.

Age of Collapse History

For the next thousand years, the Shogunate ruled with an iron fist. The emperor was reduced to a ceremonial hostage, paraded out to legitimize decrees written by generals. The army drilled endlessly, producing weapons and training soldiers for wars that never came. Strict travel bans kept villages insular, while curfews and surveillance limited daily life in cities. Class divisions hardened: samurai and officers monopolized authority, while peasants and artisans were tightly bound to hereditary duties.

Society became highly regulated. Farming schedules, tax quotas, and religious observances were enforced by garrison officers. Military service was the highest form of duty, and even peasants drilled with weapons in local militias. Festivals and art persisted, but innovation was discouraged, with cultural expression limited to repetition of approved forms. Over centuries, Minkai’s people became accustomed to stability at the cost of stagnation.

Before the Weep, morning rituals like the Hinode no Inori (Sunrise Prayer) marked the start of the day. Under the junta, these traditions continued, but they became enforced rituals. Garrison officers monitored shrines, recording attendance and loyalty. Failing to present offerings could mark a family as suspect. Ceremonial roosters were still kept, but they crowed under the watch of soldiers.

Meals like asachawan porridge and pickled sides remained staples, but food distribution was rationed and tightly monitored. Farming families planted and harvested on schedules dictated by military quotas. Children’s education shifted from shrine lessons and parental apprenticeship to paramilitary drilling alongside basic literacy. In towns, the bustle of merchants was replaced by the rigid order of checkpoints and patrols.

Evenings, once a time for stories and music, became quiet hours under curfew. In rural regions, small community rituals persisted in private, but in cities, official propaganda replaced folklore. Musicians who once lulled kami with their songs now performed under junta patronage, their pieces rewritten to praise obedience and sacrifice.

Age of Renewal History

Seventy-five years after Mathesis’s fall, the military junta still rules Minkai. The generals who seized power a millennium ago are long gone, but their system persists: the emperor remains a ceremonial figurehead, while the Shogunate of Steel dictates policy. Isolation has ended, but only under the junta’s strict control. Ports are open to trade, yet heavily taxed and monitored; foreign teachers are allowed, but only in government academies.

Daily life retains its regimented habits from the Age of Collapse. Morning shrine rituals are still supervised, schoolchildren still drill in basic military forms, and festivals are still patrolled. Yet cracks are showing. In rural provinces, communities have quietly reclaimed old practices, slipping songs, dances, and folk rites back into public life. Some junior officers look the other way, recognizing that loyalty can come from joy as much as obedience.

The younger generation has grown restless. They see neighboring countries recovering faster, their cities more prosperous, their fleets more advanced. Many young Minkaian scholars, artisans, and even soldiers yearn for genuine reform. Underground salons discuss forbidden philosophy, students smuggle in foreign texts, and small protests flare in cities. The junta cracks down, but every year more voices rise.

Government 

Minkai is still ruled by the Shogunate of Steel, the military junta that seized power at the start of the Collapse. Emperor Amatatsu remains a ceremonial figure, paraded for festivals and rituals but stripped of authority. Real power lies with the generals, who control foreign policy, taxation, and the armed forces.

Beneath the generals sits the samurai class, composed of militarized administrators. Samurai families hold hereditary posts as tax collectors, shrine supervisors, and provincial inspectors. They wear their swords and armor as symbols of rank, but their daily duties are clerical: managing quotas, enforcing curfews, and drilling peasants into militias.

Over centuries of peace imposed by isolation, the samurai’s martial reputation eroded. With no real wars to fight, they became bureaucrats in armor. To commoners, they remain powerful but increasingly irrelevant: fossils tied to the junta’s system but disconnected from the world outside.

Real World Inspirations

This Minkai draws heavily from Japan’s Tokugawa shogunate and sakoku isolation, where the country deliberately closed itself to outside influence for centuries. The Shogunate of Steel exaggerates this into a millennium of military rule, where stability and order were preserved at the cost of innovation and freedom. In the Age of Renewal, Minkai parallels the late Meiji and early Imperial Japan, a nation emerging from forced isolation but channeling its humiliation into militarization and nationalism. For tone, Minkai takes inspiration from jidaigeki and chanbara cinema, such as Seven Samurai (1954), Harakiri (1962), and Twilight Samurai (2002). Its Renewal-era nationalism also echoes the propaganda art, films, and wartime media of Imperial Japan, which glorified sacrifice, obedience, and the “destiny” of the nation.