The East Asian Co-Prosperity Organisation in 1989

[bartmoss]

The map looks really well. I'm very doubtful about the historic likelihood though. Japan only attacked the US because the US stopped oil supplies (Pearl Harbor, from the Japanese POV was a preemptive strike in a defensive war), and the US only got involved in Asia because of Pearl harbor. The American influence on the Japanese was only possible because of Japan's defeat in WW2, I am almost certain that an Imperial Japan would not take orders from anybody, ever. (Indeed the whole idea of the co-prospertiy sphere was to remove Western influence in Asia and replace it with Japanese dominance.)

Anyway, never mind history, as a map-making exercise it's fine and the style is very convincing.

[markusw7]

Nice map. On its plausibility however it all depends on when Japan became friends with the US. It has to be before the Invasion of Manchuria to be possible but i doubt at that time America would have been looking for friends as it was highly isolationist at the time. Without oil from somewhere Japan would have been unable to conquer china and if the Americans went ahead with the oil embargo this would all be an impossibility.