Jack of Harts

New Japan is a nation where new and old live side by side. A genuine gengineered teenage catgirl can walk by a Shinto temple built out of stones carried from the Japanese Home Islands aboard the last free fleet. Powerful warships and starfighters are decorated with cute anime girls or bunnies warning you about the explosives. Glasses or cybernetic eyes can reveal an entire electronic virtual world that floats over and through the nation. A man in t-shirt and jeans may be wearing a virtual tuxedo on a first date, or body armor as he hunts virtual vampires. You might see Godzilla roaring in the bay, and a virtual King Kong or Gundam may stride out to fight him. Much of that died when the Shang dropped Yosemite Station on Los Angeles, but the Free Japanese have learned how to rebuild in the face of catastrophe. The War tempered them and made them stronger than even they had thought they were.

The fall of Los Angeles left a power vacuum. The new Empress of Japan filled that vacuum by walking through the streets after her refugee fleet arrived. She met the people. And then she worked to rebuild her new home on the American mainland. Her people brought with them the surviving riches of the Japanese Home Islands, and a boundless determination to rebuild what they had lost. And so New Japan quickly became the center of Japanese power in the world, and they remade it in their image. Cherry blossom trees and Shinto architecture dominate much of the city in Jack’s time, though you can still see the older Spanish influences beneath the Japanese veneer. And both of those influences are tempered with Americana of all ages. New Japan isn’t a pure recreation of what they lost, but more a mixture of everything that survived the Second Great Depression.

Los Angeles got it bad when the Second Great Depression came over America. First it had the gang violence that weakened law and order. Then the Islamic State of Detroit sent agents to sow chaos there. Including Rogue AIs that made a particularly nasty hash of the local networks. An alliance of technogeeks and friendly AIs finally drove them out, but not before they sparked off the Los Angeles Blackout that brought the city low. Worse than the New York City Blackout of 1977. There were riots and arson and the city burned like a bonfire. Like the funeral pyre of civilization. The second largest city in America died that day. Oh, the fires went out. And some neighborhoods even began to rebuild. But the city as a whole died and refugees fled into the desert in hopes of finding more hospitable places to lay their heads.