Pokemon Legends Arceus takes place in 1871
I know, I know, the game's been out for years at this point. I'm also not pretending to be an expert in any of this; I have a casual interest in Meiji Era history and that's about it. But I still wanted to talk about this because it's my favourite Pokemon game. I still see a lot of people talking about this game like it's taking place in the ancient past (even Bulbapedia describes it as "at most 300 years before"), and I encountered someone today talking about how Rei and Akari are wearing traditional Japanese clothing - and while they are, there's a nuance that's being lost there.
So the Pokemon world isn't 1:1 with Earth, that's true, but the regions (especially the Japan-inspired ones, IMO) do wear their real-world inspirations on their sleeves and that includes history - the mainline games are pretty openly contemporary to their IRL inspirations. PLA compresses a lot, and to be honest, ignores a lot of the less-than-marketable realities of its inspiration. But its world and story are deeply rooted in real history, to the point that I don't think we can reasonably push the timeline further than a couple of years in either direction, and really, 1871 is the earliest I think it's viable to set it at all.
So, for those who aren't familiar, Sinnoh is based directly on the northernmost Japanese island, Hokkaido (the Battle Zone is the southern part of Sakhalin, now a part of Russia, but that's beyond the scope of this).
Like Sinnoh, Hokkaido was initially sparsely populated save for the indigenous Ainu people. Japan claimed the island in the 1500s, calling it 'Ezo' and, broadly, forcibly vassalised these indigenous people, but actual Japanese settlement of the island was limited to a handful of merchants from the Matsumae clan, who had an exclusive right to trade and control the island under the Shogunate. This would be the state of affairs until around the time of the Meiji Restoration - after Shogunate-aligned rebels briefly used it as a holdout, the new Imperial Japanese government decided to 'settle' and develop the island.
To this end, Ezo was renamed to Hokkaido, and the Hokkaido Development Commission was established to survey, administer, and develop the island. They constructed their headquarters around a recently-built canal, creating the village that would one day grow to become the city of Sapporo, which is still the capital city of Hokkaido to this day.
In real life, what would follow was forced assimilation of the Ainu people and the wholesale obliteration of their culture. This obviously isn't what we see in PLA, but I think the parallels to real history are still pretty obvious; we have a northern island with a changing name (Hisui - Sinnoh/Ezo - Hokkaido), inhabited by indigenous people (the Diamond & Pearl Clans/Ainu people) but otherwise unexplored save for by merchants (the Ginkgo Guild/Matsumae clan), up until an official organisation (the Galaxy Team/Development Commission) arrives to establish a settlement which goes on to become the island's central city.
Even in Diamond and Pearl, Jubilife is transparently a parallel to Sapporo:
So, it becomes the main thing which allows us to date the events of Legends Arceus. Because we know, in-game, that Jubilife Village has been established for two years as-of Akari/Rei's arrival.
Settlement in the Sapporo area began with the construction of the canal in 1866, and the city's birth is generally considered to be 1868, when the Hokkaido Development Commission was established. However, the Commission didn't actually arrive in Sapporo and establish their headquarters until the following year (Japan, at this time, had no railways and a limited number of steamships). They actually commissioned American architects to lay out the town (to this day, it's on an American-style grid) and design a grand headquarters in 'modern' Western style.
In Legends Arceus, Jubilife has all these features; the canal through the centre, the buildings are on a grid, and a grand HQ building for the Galaxy Team:
This is one of two major departures from the real history (besides the whole forced-assimilation thing), the other being that the renaming of Ezo/Hisui happens slightly later in-game. When the Hokkaido Development Commission arrived in Sapporo, they indeed built a grand western-style HQ (so grand, in fact, that the real one wasn't fully finished until 1873) but it was a wooden building that looked nothing like the one in the game. That being said, Galaxy Hall is based on a real building.
In 1879, the wooden Hokkaido Development Commission HQ actually burned down (the photo of it above is of a replica). The Commission itself was wound up in 1882, but a replacement building was constructed, and served as the HQ for the prefectural administration from 1886; it still exists in Sapporo to this day, and is very clearly the basis of Galaxy Hall in game.
So in other words, the "newest" thing in-game dates to 1886. But I think it's pretty clear, given that Jubilife is still a pioneer town, stated to only be two years old, and the Galaxy Team is still active, that the setting is meant to be earlier. The game is simply condensing the establishing of Sapporo (in reality a longer process) into one founding event, using the current building as a more-recognisable stand-in for its predecessor. And in that case, I think that fairly firmly places us two years after the Galaxy Team arrives in 1869; thus 1871.
Does this show anywhere else in the game? I think so. First and most obviously, there's the technology - Galaxy Hall has smokestacks, the pokeballs are mechanical, and both Professor Laventon and the people of Jubilife have Victorian cameras.
(As an aside, the guy who runs the photo studio being named 'Dagero' is almost certainly a direct reference to the type of photography he would actually be doing - using the Daguerrotype process).
But there's also the fashion to consider:
A lot of folks will look at these two and just see traditional Japanese attire, and they're not wrong, but there's a reason Rei already has Lucas' iconic flat cap. The Galaxy Team uniform actually takes a surprising amount of western influence too, specifically in the jacket. While it's cut and worn like a traditional East Asian cross-collar garment, the actual construction with the fur lined lapels and cuffs is distinctly European and almost military - it's even buttoned shut, something only visible on the officers' version of the uniform because they wear western-style belts:
(Note also that Cyllene actually wears European-style spats with her traditional shoes, rather than the Japanese-style gaiters the others have; I love that detail). Effectively, they've hybridised a western-style formal jacket with an East Asian cross-collar top. Commander Kamado takes it a step further by outright wearing a British/Galarian coat (his concept art calls it out as a Chesterfield Coat, a British style developed in the 1840s and popular in the mid-late 19th Century through to the 20th)
Of course, the player can get further in on this too; the fashion options include western winter jackets and tailored suits, and bowler hats, none of which existed in Japan pre-1853. But after the opening of the country and the Meiji Restoration, this style of mixing Japanese and Victorian influences became very popular throughout the Meiji and Taisho periods - it's very distinctly of that period in Japan:
(Some images from @3liza - I wanted to include the 3rd one especially because it's a real example of the kind of combined-style garments that make up the Galaxy Team uniform).
Of course, the person wearing the most western-style clothing is Prof. Laventon:
But that's also very clearly deliberate, because he's not from the Pokemon-equivalent of Japan (do we have a name for the whole country yet?) - he's Galarian. A lot of people do seem to know that, but then don't go on to twig that he's every inch the Victorian scientist and distinctly not dressed like someone from the 1500s - not that there were any British folk running around in Feudal Japan.
By 1871, though? There were many. Because Prof. Laventon, as well as just being a fun guy, is again touching on a very specific part of Meiji Era history. He's a yatoi - a foreign technical or scientific advisor (the term technically means 'day labourer' and there's a whole history there) invited into Japan (and, by his presence, its Pokemon-world equivalent) to help the country modernise its own science and industry. There were some three-thousand of these advisors in Japan in the late 19th Century, so having the professor character in PLA play into that is another really neat tie back to the real history being referenced here.
So, what does this all mean? Well, I just think it's neat; it's really interesting to me to see the actual history at play here, and I wanted to share that, and maybe try and dispel a little of the whole "ancient history" thing that still hangs over my favourite game at times. The folk saying it's more like 150 are right, but I didn't quite realise how possible it is to pin down an exact year (as I'm writing this, it would be 154 years ago). If she didn't get to go back to the present (and I still say she does, post-canon XD), Akari could very reasonably be expected to live into the 1930s, and her existence would likely be documented.
I'll leave you with one final thing. In 1871, while you're taming the wilds of Hisui, one of the major projects of Japan's modernisation is going on further south - a large number of yatoi are working with many more Japanese folk between Tokyo and Yokohama (Saffron and Vermillion cities in this universe - Kanto Route 6). What they're building, is the first railway line in the country, due to open in a year's time.
I think a certain Pearl-clan Warden might like to go and see that...
