Scots influence on Japanese military uniforms

The Imperial Japanese Army of IRL was not sexy. Not even "not sexy" as in "inevitably they're measured against the Wehrmacht, who had their uniforms decided by Coco Chanel." They just don't look cool. Nobody feels guilty about thinking that their uniforms are kinda hawt. Nobody tries to cosplay them.

This seems relatively true across most alternate histories. (The same people invent the same things. Germany, even irrelevant Germany, will always invent all the nicest hardware; by comparison, Japan will almost always have the kludge and Zeros, even if Germany's completely irrelevant and Japan has, say, conquered China and built an empire that beggars the Co-Prosperity Sphere. For the same reasons, Japan always has fugly uniforms.)

And this irritates me, because I wanted a distinctive Japan. A Japan that isn't obviously the only one it could only ever possibly evolve into being. And one that has cet certain je ne sais quoi that we associate with all things Japanese. (It also irritates me because a great deal of the visual thinking I've done about Andalusada has been animesque. Which is why I observed that nobody cosplays the IJA.)

So I have a solution of sorts.

The Anglo-Scottish Embassy in Kyoto

After the unification of the Japanese Empire from its extended diaspora, the first order of the day was to secure some useful international friendships against the Russo-Korean Alliance and the menace that was the (already unstable and chaotic) Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

It was, therefore, with great ceremony that the first Anglo-Scottish embassy was opened in Kyoto in the early 1870s, to some far-reaching (if utterly trivial) consequences. The opening ceremony, as was typical for the era, included a parade, and the parade, as was typical for the era, included a token detachment from a Highlander regiment in full regalia.

Amongst the onlookers was the crown prince of Japan, (tentatively) serving as Imperial Regent, who had no idea that Highlanders existed until he saw them.

And the Crown Prince was, very simply, fiercely against the spirit of Daiwakoku. He hated the fact that he was a glorified chrysanthemum stamp for a fair number of mostly Takasagonese oligarchs. He hated the fact that the Franciscans were trying to get him baptized. He hated what he saw as a lot of Western influences. He hated trousers.

Then he saw the Highlanders regiment, and it blew his mind. They almost exclusively were responsible for opening Oyashima to foreign influence (primarily Scottish), to Oyashiman resistance to pants in favor of hakama, and a great number of other things besides. (Many years later, when he was Emperor, he paid a diplomatic visit to England-Scotland, the first such in history. It was shattering to discover that not all Scots wore Highlands dress; some historians blame it for his subsequent rapid deterioration and death.)

The Japanese military bonetto

I'm not certain if or how military beret culture evolves. Be that as it may, the military floppy-hat culture is evolving, in no small part because of Japanese trendsetting: not the beret, per se, but the Killarnock bonnet. It was originally unique to Oyashima, but has since spread to become a defining feature of all Kyogun forces.)

• The bonetto is one of the few things that crosses departmental lines. Soldiers wear it cocked over one ear, sailors over the other. Harsh discipline is dealt out for confusing the two.
• The securing ribbons of the bonetto have usually converged with the hachimaki. (It's not uncommon for Kyogun servicemen to wear both, one under the other.)
• For parades and formal occasion, the bonetto inevitably includes a starburst cockade secured with the regimental mon. (In some cases other mon are acceptable to wear; officers usually ignore the regimental mon in favor of their family's, and the Household Guard of the Imperial Family is authorized to wear the fourteen-petal kikukamon. Conceivably the Emperor would be allowed the sixteen-petal Imperial Crest himself, but none of them have ever actually worn a bonetto for formal occasions.)