Basic Trope: Japan is the dominant world power 20 Minutes into the Future.
- Straight: It's the year 2000. Japanese corporations dominate the global business world, Japanese popular culture dominates entertainment media, most people speak Japanese and Japanese values are a strong influence on Western culture.
- Exaggerated: It's the year 1950. The Axis powers won World War II and Italy and Germany were invaded by Japanese Empire, so Japan literally rules the world.
- Downplayed:
- Japan is the dominant world power, but they haven’t actually taken over the world.
- Japan is merely powerful culturally and economically but not militarily and is far behind major powers such as the United States, the European Union, China, and Russia.
- Justified: Japan's economic growth continued unabated through the 1990s following sensible reforms and gradual cultural change, whilst it's other Asian neighbours (particularly China) continued to stagnate.
- Inverted: Japan is owned by a foreign power.
- Japan winds up as the most backward and impoverished country in the world.
- Subverted: Japan took over the world, but its empire collapsed shortly after.
- Double Subverted: But then it rises again, now more culturally influential than ever.
- Parodied: Weeaboos took over the world.
- Zig Zagged: The Empire of Japan had risen and collapsed by every turn of the century, each time with different territories throughout the world to the point that most of the world had been conquered by Japan once.
- An alternate history results in Japan being part of the ruling power but with some very different cultural influences.
- Averted: Japan collapses before it was able to establish an empire.
- Enforced:
- It's a work created in the 1970s or 1980s, when everyone thought this trope was going to happen due to Japan's great economic growth and didn't see the crash of the 1990s coming.
- The work is a wish-fulfillment fantasy written by a Japanese nationalist.
- Lampshaded: "The Japanese are damn rich, never thought it could happen after WW2!"
- Invoked: A Japanese time traveler prevents the nineties crash, allowing Japan to take over the world.
- Exploited: The United States financed Japan's growth as a superpower, for its own gains.
- Defied: Japan owns the world, but Korea takes over Japan.
- Discussed: "日本はどうしてこんなに富んでいるの？"
- Conversed: "日本とは何が基本的に世界を所有しているのですか？"
- Deconstructed: As with all one-world governments, this Japanese-led one is stretched very thing trying to control the whole planet. China and Korea in particular are constantly rebelling, leading to long and bloody wars.
- Reconstructed: Japanese technology improves people's quality of life so much that the nation's traditional enemies decide to forgive it.
- Implied: In San Francisco of the future, buildings are labelled with Asian characters and the architecture looks distinctly Asian.
Back to Japan Takes Over the World.
