The Meammosiran Cossack Host

It's hard to believe, but three months ago I introduced the first of Andalusada's new ethnicities, the Montagnards. Last month, on the 13th (well, almost...), I added the second (and much older), the Takasagonese, and wrote this:

Afterward: Because ethnicities take work, I'm not gonna write another one until August 13th, at which point I'm going to introduce another part of the Japonic diaspora: the Meammosiran Cossack Host, first mentioned in the Russo-Japanese War.

I'm not sure if I was that disciplined (these words were written in 7/21) as to not write another one, but ladies and gentlemen, it's August 13th, and as foretold by David and the Sybil I am introducing the Meammosiran Cossack Host. Fasten your seatbelts, ladies and gentlemen, because this is gonna get weird.

One of my pet peeves about Japan in alternate history, especially great-power Japan, is that it's always the same fucking Japan. They always have the same uniforms, the same hardware, the same values, the totalitarian Bushido bullshit every fucking time. "I want a distinctive Japan," I wrote:

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.

And one of the things that I've played with, for pure alterity, has been the idea of a Japan that fell under the influence of its great, imperial neighbor across the Sea of Japan, who formed it into its own frightening image and used it as an unsinkable aircraft carrier. A Russified Japan.
 
For various reasons (mostly because I decided to play with the idea of a Japonicized Japan instead) that fell by the wayside for this verse - but a remnant of it survives, and that remnant is called the Meammosiran Cossack Host.
 

Meammosiran ethnography

The big question with Meammosirans, one that was big enough to influence the Russo-Japanese War, is a pretty simple one: "Are they Japonic at all?" From a genetic standpoint, the answer is yes. Meammosirans are extremely Ezoic, with a streak of Russian blood in there and a dash or two of Korean, Yamato, and various local Siberian populations mixed in for flavor. But they're not used to thinking of themselves as such.

Truth be told, historically the Meammosirans have been extremely Russified. Because of how Tsarist Russia counted people for demographics, they rapidly were able to qualify themselves as "ethnic Russian," and most of them tried to live the part pretty well. The average Cossack adult speaks fluent Russian in public and only speaks Meammosiran with their family.

Meammosiran history 101

The history of Meammosir is still something I'm trying to work out, but the basic outline is as follows:

• During the 1500s, more or less as per IRL, Catholicism is introduced to Japan. As per IRL, it spreads like wildfire. Unlike IRL, it gets suppressed bloodily and in a few stages: first with the elimination of the Catholic daimyo from Kyushu (who go on to become the Takasagonese) with the consolidation of the south, and only later a push north.
• In the meantime, the northern Catholic daimyo have been meddling and proselytizing the Ezochi, who (pressured by the Japonic northward expansion) establish a rather larger Ezoic diaspora than exists IRL. One of those settlements survives as Meammosir, descended from an Ezochi phrase meaning something like "Cold and Far Away From Home."
• In the end, the last holdouts of northern Japonic Catholicism collapse, and its remnants cross from Ezo and Karafuto to the Asian mainland. Isolated from any hierarchy, its Christianity bastardizes and degrades very quickly.
• In the late 1600s/1700s, the Tsardom of Tver (having completed its irresistible rise to Gatherer of All the Russias) completes its push westward. The *Yermak [who?] conquers Siberia, and encounters the now intermingled Ezo-Japonic mainland settlements, still practicing a barely recognizable Christianity.
• Efforts to Russify the Meammosirans begins pretty much immediately: the Orthodox Church sends them envoys to inform them about the true glorious faith and the, y'know, new calendar. More importantly, some of the Cossacks who do the exploring marry (or pick up mistresses), introducing the first few drops of Russian blood into the Meammosiran gene-pool.
• Because of inertia on my part, Russia's ethnic policy is more or less the same as per IRL; the net result is that, over the next century or so, most of Meammosir makes the transition from "autochthonous Siberians" to "Russians," despite a very limited influx of Russian DNA.

Or something like that. This is still tentative.

Meammosiran religion

Rather predictably, Meammosir's Cossackization resulted in their conversion to the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Host remains deeply (if not overly piously) Orthodox to the present day.

• Given Russian Orthodoxy's situation ca. 1930, the idea of establishing an autocephalous Japanese Orthodox Church gets brought up every few months or so. It never goes anywhere.
• Much to Japan's dismay, the Meammosiran Cossack Host doesn't support the Vechist. It's overwhelmingly split between wistful Tsarism and pragmatic Loyalism, which makes ecumenical relations very awkward.

The Meammosiran Cossack Host in the world today

So what role to the Meammosirans fill in Andalusada today?

• Orthodoxy. After they were converted to Orthodoxy, the Meammosirans (who were already far less primitive than other Siberians) became the single most represented Siberian ethnicity in Russian Orthodoxy. It's a rather quirky Orthodoxy, absorbing as it does a palimpsest of Ezo-Japonic cultural traditions (and an occasional almost-forgotten holdover from Catholicism), but it's an influential one - Meammosirans are probably well-represented amongst the missionaries to *Alaska, say, and Korea. On which note...
• Korean-Japanese relations. It's been said before (several times, in fact), but Korea Russified when it pulled a Meiji. Russian is the only European language commonly spoken in modern Korea, and the kingdom consciously decided to be tsarist but better when it became Andalusada's East Asian economic success story. The Meammosiran Host may have led to the collapse of tsarism, but they speak Russian as well as any Tver-educated aristocrat from Chemulpo, and their Cossack background gives them an air of legitimate respectability. (For their part, the Cossacks aren't used to hobnobbing as much as they've been able to do postwar, but they're starting to get a hang of it - they can get into some exclusive places, for instance - and their language barrier means that they're significantly more likely to have conversation partners in Korea than anywhere in the Japanese Empire.)
  
  The flip side of this, of course, is that the Meammosirans aren't actually legal to do some of what they do. Prior to the war, Meammosir used the same guns that were issued to the Russians and adopted by the Koreans; a lot of private Cossacks have found their way into quasi-military positions that are sorta legit because they exist in legal grey areas that are only implicitly covered by Korea's unequal treaties.