Difference between Shogunate Japan and Imperial Japan

[VIKINGR1993]

I've seen in some mods that there's a Shogunate Japan and a Imperial Japan thats a vassal of Shogun Japan...is there benefits of being one or the other? Just curious

[The Void Boy]

Mostly it just affects your name, flag, and color for the rest of the game. Imperial Japan westernizes faster than Shogunate Japan so when you unite the country you have a stronger technology base than you would otherwise. Shogunate Japan is free to declare war on other countries for extra land, though the countries you can declare war on are very few.

You can snipe some stuff in Malaysia and Indonesia from Britain and the Netherlands. Personally I've rarely ever been able to take stuff from Vietnam as Shogunate Japan without some crisis firing at some point to take it all away from me without my consent in a crisis. The rest involves fighting Qing, which is really not worth doing until you're actually westernized; or fighting Britain, which is suicidal. You also won't get any research points for conquest thanks to a special isolation modifier all the japanese states have. You can remove it if America spheres you and takes the Commodore Perry's Expedition decision, but once that happens you'll soon have so much militancy that you can't commit your troops anywhere without some massive rebel army rising up.