This page is likely to be under construction for a while. Eventually it will have entries on Tanukistani culture, history, politics, armed forces and more. Even when the essentials are all here, modifications and further additions may occur from time to time.
I must stress that I have absolutely no experience in RP, so please bear with me when quality isn’t quite up to par and when I make mistakes… Feel free to send me a PM with tips and suggestions for improvements; I hope to learn fast.
I respectfully ask you not to post them in this tread though.
I guess I should start by giving a bit of background. It doesn’t really tell much about Tanukistan itself yet, but you might be interested in it anyway.
First of all, some background on the name of Tanukistan. For historical reasons (more on this in the history part (not yet available) of this page) it is named after the tanuki (called raccoon dog in English). The plural for tanuki is also tanuki. In Japanese folklore, the tanuki is known for its shape shifting abilities, their tendency to tease humans and one remarkable aspect of the male tanuki’s anatomy: its large testicles.
A Japanese slang word for testicles is kintama, which literally means ‘gold ball(s)’. This is also a reference to the tanuki, since they are associated with precious metals. This is the result of tanuki skins being used in the thinning of gold. More on the tanuki can be found
here, more on tanuki in Japanese folklore can be found
here.
The Japanese write tanuki using the following character: 狸. The attentive reader will notice that this symbol is also used in the Tanukistani flag. It actually spells Tanukistan in Japanese characters: 狸スタン.
From the fact that Tanukistan has been named after the tanuki, one might correctly deduce that the country is located in an area where tanuki live. In real life, this means the eastern parts of Asia. Since the tanuki plays an important role in the Tanukistani culture and it is also well known in Japanese folklore, I decided to give the country a slightly Japanese look.
This does however not mean that Tanukistan is a NationStates equivalent of Japan. I am merely loosely basing certain parts of the Tanukistani culture on that of Japan. They would for instance have an architecture that is somewhat similar, people would have a somewhat similar diet, historical army equipment would be somewhat similar, etcetera.
There will however certainly be differences (one reason being that I can hardly be considered to be an expert on Japanese culture), with Western elements and some of my very own ideas added to the mix.
As for timeline and available technologies: Tanukistan has entered modern times, has access to modern technologies and has limited possibilities of making minor improvements (especially in slightly improving their efficiency or using them a little more efficiently).
Finally, one last remark: info on Tanukistani budgets (and thereby all data based on those budgets) will be obtained from
Sunset's calculator. Since Tanukistan is a new state on NationStates, I guess the budget allocation isn’t quite what it’s supposed to be yet. For instance, Tanukistan seems to be spending nothing on defence, although the country definitely does have armed forces.
