A Japan POD.

The POD is August 1945 right with the surrender of Japan to the Allies. Have Japan by the year 2010 be a socially liberal society that is more tolerant and accepting of immigrants coming into their country.
 
Letting Japan keep Taiwan may be a good starting point for a more liberal (to some degree) and less xenophobic (to a larger degree) Japan. It would certainly make the Japanese less suspicious of their Chinese neighbours. I'm not sure how to make Japan keep Taiwan, but since China was still divided at the end of the war, there were many futures possible for Taiwan. Regardless, it all depends on how Japan would decide to proceed with governing Taiwan.

By the 1940's, schools in Taiwan were fully desegregated, and the Taiwanese were on their way to becoming accepted as Japanese. The Taiwanese had already shown by then through the Wushe and Ta-Pa-Ni incidents that they would not accept the suppression and discrimination originally planned for the colony. Many Taiwanese students were attending university in Japan and Taiwanese cinema was becoming popular in Japan.
Despite compulsory education in Japanese, there were still extensive underground movements of literature in Hokkien and Mandarin. Japanese-aboriginal interactions were mostly peaceful with extensive documentation of tribal culture and languages and have been since the Wushe incident, though the tribes were still exploited as soldiers and loggers/miners.

Having a large, more visible minority as part of Japanese society as well as a entirely different ethnic group that is regarded by the government as "good enough to be Japanese" should help pave the way for more acceptance of other ethnic groups. This all depends on how the Japanese government proceeds with assimilation of the Taiwanese. Since the Allies would not want any fervent nationalism from the newly defeated Japanese, the Taiwanese minority may be allowed more freedom to express their culture, producing a more heterogeneous Japan. There would be a larger proportion of Buddhists and Christians as well as folk religions and over ten million people speaking languages belonging to two entirely different language families. Japan lost many younger men as soldiers, while Taiwan came out of the war fairly unscathed. There could then potentially be a lot of marriages between Taiwanese men and Japanese women, further changing Japanese perceptions of what is "normal". Based on the current popularity of Taiwan as a vacation spot for Japanese tourists, there would be a lot of exposure in both directions as Taiwanese people go to Japan for education and jobs, while well-off Japanese travel to Taiwan for fun. Once again, what Japan decides to do with assimilating Taiwan would play a huge role in determining how much Japanese society changes.
 
The POD is August 1945 right with the surrender of Japan to the Allies. Have Japan by the year 2010 be a socially liberal society that is more tolerant and accepting of immigrants coming into their country.

OTL Japan already is socially liberal, at least for the most part{compared to the U.S.}.

As for immigrants? Unless the Japanese population undergoes a much earlier decline, and it occurs right away, Japan isn't going to have any room for them.

If OTL's Japan weren't so crowded, they'd be significantly less skeptical of immigration.
 
1945 may not be too late to have the nationalists win in China, or at least hold a lot of mainland China. In that case, and if they still manage the democratic reforms that Taiwan did in OTL, you might have a strong, capitalist US ally demanding the US force Japan to go through a German-style Coming to Terms with the Past rather than the critique coming from Communist China alone. Not to mention having a second strong ally would give the US more leverage in general.
 

The Sandman

Banned
Kill MacArthur. It doesn't matter how, as long as he's not the one in charge of Occupied Japan. Without him there, there's at least a small chance of avoiding the "reverse course" and keeping the postwar Japanese government on the broadly liberal track it was on for the first year or so of the occupation.
 
The POD is August 1945 right with the surrender of Japan to the Allies. Have Japan by the year 2010 be a socially liberal society that is more tolerant and accepting of immigrants coming into their country.

Japan is socially liberal. They are one of the worlds largest producers of porn.

How Liberal do you want it?
 
Immigrants

Now this is slightly earlier than you wanted it to be but it is close.

-No atom bomb
-operation downfall
-Japan ground into the dirt(chemical weapons,carpet bombing,napalm and blocade all used)
-japan surrenders
-20-30 million civilians dead (maybe 5-7 million u.s/allied soldiers dead)
-result of above 2 tabs = massive labor shortage/huge gender divide
-Chinese,korean... immigrants imported to japan to fill gap

This situation is like germany today- after ww2 there was a massive gender divide. So the german govt was forced to import turkish workers.
There is curently a class of germanoturkish people living in Germany who dont have any real citizenship.

In this situation japan isnt very liberal but I think I solved the immigration problem. Maybe the monarchy could be abolished so japan can start over with a completely new and democratic system that is untainted by militarism.

This situation also leads to a possible red takeover/coup in japan supported by soviets
 

The Sandman

Banned
Japan is socially liberal. They are one of the worlds largest producers of porn.

How Liberal do you want it?

Japanese law is relatively liberal, with a few odd items here and there.

Japanese society, however, is still quite illiberal. This may change as the older generation dies off, but the fact that that will involve a general demographic collapse makes things less predictable.
 
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