Nihon

This article refers to the country from the Alicesoft game Daiakuji; for the country referred to as 'Nippon' in the English translation of the Rance Series, see JAPAN.
"The Nipponese national motto."

- A land of strong men supported by strong women.

About
Nihon (ニホン, nihōn) is a small island nation located along the edge of East Asia and the main setting of the Alicesoft game Daiakuji.

Nihon is distinct from the other countries of the world for its unusual emphasis on combat and physical prowess. Teeming with aggressive and territorial wildlife such as Pandas and Monkeys, the people of Nihon were required to develop exceptional martial abilities to survive. As a consequence, the average Nihonese person possesses physical strength and fighting ability that ranks among the highest in the world. This strength has naturally impacted the society and culture of the nation, and it is typical for even the smallest disputes to be resolved with violence. A Nihonese person is expected to have acquired some form of training in a combat discipline by the age of 15, and so it is typical for people in professions not typically associated with fighting, such as office workers and housewives, to be deceptively talented combatants. While there is no restriction as to what form of combat a person is allowed to study, Nihonese men tend to gravitate toward unarmed martial arts, such as karate or judo, while women gravitate toward weapon-based ones, such as kendo or kyudo. A national fighting tournament is held annually to test these skills, with the champion being recognized as the strongest person in the country and, by extension, the world.

Just as it drives day-to-day life, fighting also plays a central part within the structure of the Nihonese government. While the country as a whole is led by an administrative cabinet and cities by a council of elected officials, a national policy grants smaller territories the ability to be run by volunteer organizations known as Regional Management Unions. These unions are given the duties of maintaining security, regulating crime, and overseeing public events within their respective areas, and are generally led by influential community figures such as landowners. While unions are subsidized by their local government, they are also expected to gain revenue through public donations, which are in turn collected by city officials and made a part of the regional budget. Unions are free to challenge other unions to battles for control over territory, but must remain below a certain size to continue being legally recognized by the government. Once a union becomes too large, it is declared a threat to the governing power and a city is expected to send out its police force to seize its territory and redistribute it among smaller unions. The union system has resulted in organized crime running rampant throughout Nihon, with several unions being controlled by powerful criminal groups that use their earnings to bribe city officials to turn a blind eye to their activities.

While national pride and traditionalism have allowed the people of Nihon to maintain their phenomenal strength across time, it has also bred stagnation within its societal development. Though there is no law that formally enforces it, the national motto claiming the country to be comprised of "strong men supported by strong women" has resulted in Nihon becoming staunchly patriarchal in its structure, with men holding all major positions of power and women being expected to unquestionably support the decisions made by the men in their lives. This has resulted in the nation's leaders becoming conditioned to having their opinions run uncontested, rendering them stubborn and uncooperative when forced to entertain the thoughts and criticisms of others. As a direct consequence of this stubbornness, Nihon is considerably behind the other developed nations of the world in terms of technological development and innovation, as well as completely unwilling to admit defeat in the face of certain destruction.

Conflict with Wime
In the mid-20th century, the radical misandrist nation of Wime made an international declaration of war to all countries that did not restructure their governments to permit only women to be allowed control over any and all institutions. While several other nations accepted the conditions out of fear of the technological supremacy of the Wime Army, Nihon repeatedly ignored them, causing war to erupt between the two opposing countries across the Pacific Ocean.

Despite having much stronger individual soldiers, the Nihonese Army was thoroughly outclassed by Wime in terms of weaponry, and was largely unable to stand against it in direct confrontation. In an effort to circumvent this, Nihonese soldiers employed unconventional combat tactics, such as launching themselves into the cockpits of enemy aircrafts and detonating them from the inside. While these methods were effective in the short term, they ultimately only served to further deplete the already inferior resources of the Nihonese military, causing it to get steadily pushed back by Wime's forces. Even when pushed back to the shores of its own territory with no hope of victory, Nihon stubbornly refused to surrender, and continued to futilely resist against Wime for several months.

The war between the two nations finally ended in the year 1935, when Wime commissioned a nuclear bomb to be dropped over Nihon, devastating the country to such an extent that all forms of counterattack were rendered impossible. The enemy army proceeded to occupy the ravaged nation, sending a division of its forces into each of the captured cities in order to forcefully implement its policy of all management institutions being run by women. Nihon became a puppet for foreign powers, completely at the mercy of Wime's whims.

Wime's power was eventually contested by the reappearance of Yamamoto Akuji, the heir to the powerful management union and crime syndicate the Wakame Group in the city of Osaka. After spending years as a prisoner of war, Akuji became outraged to discover that his birthright had been taken from him by Wime, and immediately went to work in attempting to reclaim it. Throughout the following months, Akuji amassed the power necessary to seize control over all of Osaka away from the chapter of the Wime Army that occupied it. While word of his uprising traveled across the country, he was able to successfully force Seanel Brawn, the leader of the Osakan occupation, to send out a false report to headquarters claiming it to have successfully been dealt with, allowing him to continue to rule the city from the shadows. In the following weeks, several reports came from other Nihonese cities that claimed to have stopped similar rebellions, implying that the rest of the country was able to steadily wrestle control away from its occupants through similar means over time.

Trivia

 * Nihon is a parody of the real life nation of Japan, particularly in regard to its role in the Second World War. Its name is the Japanese name for Japan (日本, nihōn) rendered in katakana, while the map displayed of Osaka, the sole part of the country shown, depicts a map of the actual city of Osaka rotated ninety degrees counterclockwise. Due to the relative subtleties of these distinctions, many translations relating to Daiakuji mistakenly render Nihon as Japan despite official materials such as the game manual making a point to clarify that they are not intended to be the same place.
 * According to TADA, the director of Daiakuji, the social and governing structures of Nihon were designed for the sole reason of making the setting as conducive to the mechanics of a regional conquest strategy game as possible.