Map of Japan under the Shimazu Shogunate in the year 1910.
The battle of Toba-Fushimi ends decisively, but Tokugawa Yoshinobu is killed in action afterwards.
Seeing the country in a deadlock, and noticing that Europeans are using the situation to profit at Japan's expense, Emperor Komei, who in this timeline survives his illness, decides to appoint a new Shogunate under the Shimazu clan.
Imperialist factions side with Komei and his decision. The imperial navy and the Satsuma forces defeat those of Tokugawa loyalists led by the Aizu domain in the north and unify the country in 1869.
Komei moves his court to Kagoshima, Shimazu Tadayoshi is enthroned as the new Shogun.
The Shimazu Shogunate adopts a policy of moderate and gradual modernization. The Daimyo are kept intact, but reforms are enacted to make them more like a modern bureaucracy and unitary state.
Japan fights a war with China in the 1870s over Korea and the Ryukyus, which ends in a moderate victory. Japan annexes the southern part of Korea. In 1889, another war is fought, in which the Joseon kingdom collapses and the client Baekje Kingdom takes Liaodong with Japanese aid.
Japan forms an alliance with Imperial France after the French victory in the Franco-Prussian war. In 1891, Japan fights and wins a war with a European power. The Spanish-Japanese War sees Japan annex the Philippines from Spain. The 1905 Prusso-Japanese War sees the newly reestablished colonial ambitions of Prussia collapse after Japan takes Prussian Indochina.
Japan participates in the Scramble for Africa, claiming a parcel of Somaliland and the island of Socotra.
Relations remain good with the Russian Republic as well as the Republic of Poland, though relations with the UK appear strained as war looks to be looming on the horizon.
