A Sane Japanese Empire

[stevep]

Guys

For a post 1900 POD a couple of ideas:

a) No Washington Treaty or a different one. Some way of preventing Japan feeling so threatened by the US. [Possibly they get the 10:7 ratio they wanted rather than the 10:6 one, which both powers thought left them exposed. Or a political solution to the US insistence that the defensive alliance with Britain be scrapped]. Either of those would make Japan feel more secure and not snubbed, which would give the pro-western elements much more influence against the militarists. The continuation of the alliance would mean Japan has a strong vested interest in retaining links with the west.

b) Possibly events in Russia, with a quicker Red victory over the White forces prompts the western powers to welcome the idea of a Japanese protectorate over the Trans Amur region. Basically keeping the Soviet state away from an effective Pacific presence and providing a refuge for anti-Bolshevik elements. Given the logistics the region to the west would become something of a no man's land with limited military and logistical capacity. Coupled with this would probably be a de-facto protectorate over Manchuria. It's recognised as Japan's sphere of influence in return for a similar recognition of the independence of China. As said above possibly a stronger China that also deters army adventurism.

You still have the problem of how the economy and society respond to a presumed great depression at one point or another. That hit the country very badly, especially the US market collapse and protectionism as much of Japan's exports went to the US at the time. However, if nothing else a descent into militarism would be markedly delayed so that any serious problem could possibly come too late for a clash with Germany so the democratic powers don't face simultaneously crisis. [That gives much better chances that each problem could be handled earlier and more efficiently].

Steve

 

[abc123]

Their military runs out of fuel 6 months later in WW2.

Besides that?

 

[Antipater]

Besides that?

It could facilitate Japanese intervention in the Russian Maritime District in the Post-WWI era. The Japanese could start considering the absolute command of the Sea of Japan central to their national security strategy, and be much less inclined to withdraw from Vladivostok and other territories in the 1920's.

 

[archaeogeek]

It could facilitate Japanese intervention in the Russian Maritime District in the Post-WWI era. The Japanese could start considering the absolute command of the Sea of Japan central to their national security strategy, and be much less inclined to withdraw from Vladivostok and other territories in the 1920's.

With the army that got chewed up at Khalkin Gol? It's not like the Soviets were fighting green troops there.

 

[Antipater]

If the Japanese had simply ignored Western opinion and stayed put in Vladivostok and the Russian Far East after WWI, it is exceedingly unlikely that any power would have intervened to eject them. Voiced their disapproval certainly, but not attempted to expel them with military force. An embargo at that point would have been unlikely from US, as it would have just cost US exporters money, and had little military effect.

If the Japanese hung on to the Russian Maritime Province (Primorsky Krai) and Kamchatka, it is unlikely the Soviets would have been prepared to offer military resistance until 1925 or so. It would have been extremely difficult to defeat the Japanese if they took the time to establish fortifications, as they could be easily resupplied.

My point is a more Eastern-focused Japan could have resulted from a different Portsmouth Treaty. The exploitation of Sahalin's resources could have made further expansionism in the Russian far east seem more desirable, and consequently made the Dutch East Indies (and War with the US) less so.

 

[I Blame Communism]

If the Japanese had simply ignored Western opinion and stayed put in Vladivostok and the Russian Far East after WWI, it is exceedingly unlikely that any power would have intervened to eject them.

Russia, maybe?

If the Japanese hung on to the Russian Maritime Province (Primorsky Krai) and Kamchatka, it is unlikely the Soviets would have been prepared to offer military resistance until 1925 or so. It would have been extremely difficult to defeat the Japanese if they took the time to establish fortifications, as they could be easily resupplied.

It was the Japanese officer commanding who signed a semi-truce with the Reds after the Kappeltsi straggled their way over Lake Baikal, so he clearly didn't feel confident in the fight. And why should he, with Soviet Russia's other fronts winding up? He had a couple of Japanese divisions and a gaggle of demoralisedm, ill-disciplined Whites who hated one-another against the Reds and their extensive partisan support in the Transbaikal.

They didn't have the time to establish fortifications before the Reds arrived.

 

[Doug M.]

If the Japanese hung on to the Russian Maritime Province (Primorsky Krai) and Kamchatka, it is unlikely the Soviets would have been prepared to offer military resistance until 1925 or so. It would have been extremely difficult to defeat the Japanese if they took the time to establish fortifications, as they could be easily resupplied.

The underlying problem is that the local Russians, while anti-Bolshevik, had absolutely no desire to be annexed to Japan. When push came to shove, they preferred to be part of Russia -- even a Bolshevik Russia.

So a Japanese attempt to annex the region outright was impossible, because it would have led to revolt and guerrilla warfare. The Japanese could perhaps have kept it anyway -- but only by imposing a massive army of occupation and engaging in a very brutal crackdown. This while meanwhile fending off the advancing armies of the USSR.

This was simply not plausible. By 1922 everyone realized this; the Siberian adventure had become massively unpopular, because it was correctly seen as a bottomless sink of blood and treasure, expensive and pointless. Even the military raised hardly a murmur of protest when it came time to pack up and go.


Doug M.

 

[eighthgear]

Any good TL's on this subject?

 

[subversivepancakes]

I think that a necessary condition for "a sane Japanese empire" is curbing or sharply reducing the appeal of militarism and ultra-nationalism (or, the tail that wagged the dog). Perhaps limiting the power and appeal of militarism by dealing Japan an unambiguous military defeat would do the trick. The easiest way to do this would be the Russo-Japanese War, but of course if you do that then there's not much of an empire to speak of, even if it is sane. So the Siberian Intervention, then. An overconfident Japanese military pushes itself even farther than it did OTL, gets overextended and bogged down in a hopeless quagmire, and suffers some sort of clear defeat for which the armed forces are blamed, rather than the political classes. Ideally this would spur reform to reduce military power, so that they wouldn't hold veto power over the formation of a government. Military loses credibility, ultra-nationalism loses appeal, politicians aren't getting assassinated every twelve seconds, and there's a bit of breathing room for the development of political society, as it were. Japan would still have a small empire - Taiwan, Korea, the South Pacific Mandate, and the former German concessions in Shandong. After that, who knows?

 

[Fearless Leader]

I'm not sure Takashi was really all that -- he was an admirable character in many respects, but maybe not that astute politically -- but let's try it on for size.

Problems: one, universal male suffrage came in the late 1920s anyway; and two, fear of socialism dropped dramatically after the March 15 Incident (1928) when the police and security services rounded up pretty much the whole Japanese Communist Party and then put them through a series of well-publicized trials detailing their revolutionary plans and their links to more moderate socialists and labor unions. It didn't help that most of the leadership and intellectuals went "tenko", which is Japanese for publicly confessing error and switching sides.

The net result was a massive discrediting of socialism in Japan; although the major parties still raided it for ideas sometimes, and occasionally resurrected Communism as a bogeyman, basically both socialism and Communism were defunct as political movements until after WWII.

I think you missed my point, perhaps it wasn't presented clearly enough. The creation of this "Super Party" or LDP analogue in TTL would take place prior to the institution of universal male suffrage and the March 15th incident sometime in the early 1920's.

Give credit where credit is due, Takashi was pretty good at political maneuvering. Eventually he's going to see that support for Universal male suffrage is going to oust his party from power and make plans to keep that from happening. IMO he's the perfect guy to use the desire for universal male suffrage and the fear of socialism to create a 1 and a half party system in Taisho Japan.

Once the super party is created it's really a rather simple thing to keep it alive, simply have those politicians within it realize that it's easier to be elected within the Party than run opposed to the party like in OTL with the LDJ. Sure other parties will form and win seats, but the power will never really depart from TTL's super-party thereby creating a level of stability in 1920's Japan that was never there.

Also if the PM/Ministers beef up their security it might help the survival rate of unpopular ministers...

How does this Japan deal with the Great Depression?

Japan was an adherent of Keynesian economics long before anyone else and so even in OTL they were not affected as much by the Great Depression as everyone else. Given a far more stable political climate in TTL's Japan (what with the Super-party monopolizing the Diet etc.) I'd wager that TTL's Japan is even more effective in instituting a Keynesian economic plan to mitigate the effects of the Great Depression. Perhaps the PM will stumble upon utilizing infrastructure as a means to buy votes (Like Tanaka Kakuei...).

The stability of the political system will prevent the Military from taking over in the 1930's and perhaps abort the rise of militarism in Japan. Perhaps some reforms could even be passed to eliminate some of the vagueness of the Meiji constitution!

 

[admkenshin]

The problem with Keynesian economics is that they seem to work, but for an export nation, it is merely a stop-gap measure. Japan needs to export to import, and without WW2 the US isn't going to come out of the depression anytime soon.

Perhaps if Japan could do as they did in the 70's and redevelop their economy for the production of electronics, and be successful at doing that...

 

[Doug M.]

Give credit where credit is due, Takashi was pretty good at political maneuvering. Eventually he's going to see that support for Universal male suffrage is going to oust his party from power and make plans to keep that from happening. IMO he's the perfect guy to use the desire for universal male suffrage and the fear of socialism to create a 1 and a half party system in Taisho Japan.

I'm still not seeing the "fear of socialism" thing, for the reasons given above -- viz., The successful suppression of Communism and discrediting of socialism after 1928, by the March 15 episode and tenko.

Once the super party is created it's really a rather simple thing to keep it alive, simply have those politicians within it realize that it's easier to be elected within the Party than run opposed to the party like in OTL with the LDJ. Sure other parties will form and win seats, but the power will never really depart from TTL's super-party thereby creating a level of stability in 1920's Japan that was never there.

OTL the LDP was pretty much unique among parliamentary democracies. I'd suggest it was a product of the unique circumstances of postwar Japan, and unlikely to have an analogy in the very different political system of the 1920s.

To give just a single example, the LDP was built around a system of rotten boroughs that gave disproportionate power to rural voters, and then it relentlessly wooed those rural voters with year after year of handouts to small farmers -- protection, subsidies, infrastructure projects. From the early 1950s onward, the LDP's electoral base was always the Japanese small farmer, especially the small rice farmer.

The problem with an LDP-analog in the 1920s is that this class *did not exist* in the 1920s. The modern Japanese small farmer class is a product of the Occupation, when MacArthur imposed land reform at the point of a gun. Before that, Japan was a nation of large landowners and landless tenant peasants.

(Also, it's very hard to imagine a big-tent party in the 1920s that doesn't include the military as part of the coalition.)

Japan was an adherent of Keynesian economics long before anyone else and so even in OTL they were not affected as much by the Great Depression as everyone else.

Actually, OTL Japan's first reaction to the stock market crash was to go back on the gold standard (late 1929). This led to a crippling bout of deflation on top of the worldwide misery of the next two years.

They went off the gold standard in late 1931, but that was because (1) they were desperate -- the combination of deflation and the onset of the Smoot-Hawley tariff wars was threatening the country with complete economic collapse, and (2) Korekiyo Takahashi.

If Japan was Keynesian, it was because of one man -- Takahashi. He was Finance Minister from December 1931 until his murder in 1936. He basically was the Japanese Keynes, if Keynes had been born the bastard son of an unsuccessful artist, and had grown up to be a competent politician as well as an economist. Takahashi was out of office in the first years of the Depression, but as soon as he got back in, he went of the gold standard, slashed interest rates, and started spending like crazy in a (successful) effort to reflate.

So, OTL Japan was affected /worse/ by the first two years of the Great Depression, but then bounced back faster starting in 1932. Basically they had a more radical, more successful New Deal starting a full year earlier.

But those first two years gave the military their opening. I have trouble seeing how a one-party Japan is going to avoid this.


Doug M.

 

[Doug M.]

There's a brief summary of Takahashi's response to the Depression here:

http://abwblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/how-japan-recovered-from-great.html

Note, BTW, that 1929 was Japan's second crash of the decade. There'd been an earlier bank crash in 1927, caused by the aftereffects of the Tokyo Earthquake. That one led to a recession lasting a year or so, which in turn caused a noticeable upswing in military radicalism.

-- I mentioned upthread that Japan was a nation of big rural estates and landless tenant farmers. One side effect of this was that recessions hit the farmers extra hard. When things got rough and agricultural prices fell, the landlords wouldn't take the hit. Instead they'd pass the damage along to the poor farmers by cutting wages and raising rents.

Understandable -- but Japan's conscript Army was drawn disproportionately from those poor peasants. And the Army allowed a fairly high degree of social mobility; while the upper officer class was disproportionately drawn from the traditional nobility and the landowning classes, it was perfectly possible for a poor peasant's kid to become an officer, and not unheard of for him to become a general. By the early 1930s, probably a majority of the Army's junior officers were of rural peasant stock -- and they were getting letters from home every week, describing how grandmother-sama had withered away from hunger and there was no money for the baby who wouldn't stop coughing.

So, there was a pretty direct transmission belt: economic hard times -> dramatically increased misery for landless peasants -> resentment and restlessness among Army officers.


Doug M.

 

[abc123]

I think that a necessary condition for "a sane Japanese empire" is curbing or sharply reducing the appeal of militarism and ultra-nationalism (or, the tail that wagged the dog). Perhaps limiting the power and appeal of militarism by dealing Japan an unambiguous military defeat would do the trick. The easiest way to do this would be the Russo-Japanese War, but of course if you do that then there's not much of an empire to speak of, even if it is sane. So the Siberian Intervention, then. An overconfident Japanese military pushes itself even farther than it did OTL, gets overextended and bogged down in a hopeless quagmire, and suffers some sort of clear defeat for which the armed forces are blamed, rather than the political classes. Ideally this would spur reform to reduce military power, so that they wouldn't hold veto power over the formation of a government. Military loses credibility, ultra-nationalism loses appeal, politicians aren't getting assassinated every twelve seconds, and there's a bit of breathing room for the development of political society, as it were. Japan would still have a small empire - Taiwan, Korea, the South Pacific Mandate, and the former German concessions in Shandong. After that, who knows?

I agree with you.

 

[Shevek23]

There's a brief summary of Takahashi's response to the Depression here:

http://abwblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/how-japan-recovered-from-great.html

Note, BTW, that 1929 was Japan's second crash of the decade. There'd been an earlier bank crash in 1927, caused by the aftereffects of the Tokyo Earthquake. That one led to a recession lasting a year or so, which in turn caused a noticeable upswing in military radicalism.

....
Doug M.

So, what if Takahashi or someone of like mind had pioneered his quasi-New Deal approach back in '27, and just as Japan was debating going back to something more "normal" a few years later, the Great Depression itself hits--and Japan is sitting relatively pretty, able to cushion the blows with this proto-Keynesian method. Now the Army is less radicalized. Perhaps Japanese expansion takes the form of economic ventures in partnership with various local Chinese warlords, for mutual economic survival and profit--the Japanese don't militarily occupy anywhere new, they get leverage within Chinese society and use it in a way that gives them access to Chinese labor, resources, and markets without alienating the Chinese. Pretty soon an informal Chinese/Kuomintang alliance forms partially as a bulwark against the Communists, partially for mutual development. Meanwhile FDR gets along pretty well with this moderate, pro-business and apparently populist Japan, leading to cooling the mutual rancor between Japan and the US Navy--less buildup, more trust. In turn this opens the way for a sort of return of the status quo ante between the British and Japan. With no invasion of China (in the form of occupation, looted/raped cities, carved off puppet states--but lots of Japanese business enterprise, perhaps protected by detached Army units in areas where Chinese unrest is still endemic) Japan is not embarrassed at the League of Nations and becomes a bulwark of the more or less liberal powers there.

Some major flies in the ointment---

1) Mutual hostility between Japan and the Soviets is pretty much endemic, what with past Japanese advances at Russian expense, their former involvement with the Whites, their current physical possession of assets that directly threaten the Soviets, their presumptive interest in advance at Soviet expense. Not the least of which would be if they were key in supporting Chinese anti-Communism. This works well for the Japanese relations with the Western allies during the period of the Hitler-Stalin pact, but is awkward just before that (the Soviet "Common Front" period) and of course just after when everyone did a 180 degree turn. But at that point I suppose FDR could help negotiate quiet accords between the Soviets and the Japanese. Since OTL the potential Pacific front between the USSR and Japan remained quiet (barring of course what was for both Russia and Japan a bloody, bitter proxy war in the form of the Chinese agony) it seems there would be plenty of reasons for both sides to accept and even welcome a tacit peace.

2) The above Soviet/Japanese rivalry, as well as domestic concerns, was a major reason why the Japanese were interested in joining this thing Hitler called the "Anti-Comintern Pact." For Japan to wind up not getting entangled with the Axis, these waters would have to be very carefully navigated.

3) Lining up with the Axis was for Japan largely about freeing herself from the entanglements of the Western colonial system--so she could institute her own, of course. A lot of the momentum came from Western hostility toward piecemeal opportunism. Could a Takahashi--FDR correspondence, combined with success in informally penetrating China (and possibly other regions) for mutual profit with the local elites forestall all that, leaving the Pacific a peaceful region as Europe slides into war? What about the possibility that Japan would seize French Indochina from its pro-Vichy colonial regime with the tacit or even active help of the British and quiet approval of the United States? Then in turn the British (again with FDR quietly nodding in the background and offering tacit good offices here and there) broker deals whereby the Japanese reinforce the refugee Dutch regime in Indonesia, in return for access to both tropical products and oil there.

ITTL, it is harder to see just how and why the USA finally does go to open war against the European Axis, if it ever does. I think it likely that eventually it would enter the same way it did in WWI, over German submarine warfare. When this happens, the USA would add to British blandishments of both the Japanese and Chiang Kai-Shek to make some kind of lasting truce with the Chinese Communists, thus patching up the remaining open wound of East Asia and freeing the Soviets to fully concentrate on defeating Hitler. This leaves everyone's military forces in the Pacific at loose ends--presumably the British, most of the Dutch, lots of ANZACs, and the US Navy largely depart the Pacific and concentrate against Hitler in the Atlantic/Med. Perhaps at this point Japan sends some strong contingent to join them on land and sea, as a formal Ally? (Thus helping ally remaining fears of a Japanese takeover while everyone's back is turned...)

 

[Intosh]

Another POD :

a japanese corps of 50 000 men is transferred to the western front in 1916 (Verdun, Somme) and the Japanese learn the hard way that :
- modern and industrialized war is brutal and mortal,
- modern and industrialized war is not romantic,
- whites soldiers are not racially inferior to the Japanese soldiers,

The veterans of this expeditionnary corps will bring a spirit of pacifism to Japan. And japanese militarymen will realize that defeating chineses, coreans underequipped quasi-medieval empire in 1894-1895 or russians soldiers at the far end of the Transiberianin 1905 is not fighting a real industrialized war with hundred of thousands casualties.

 

[Doug M.]

I'm sorry, but that's exactly wrong. While Imperial Japan had many, many problems, a romantic view of modern war was not one of them.

By early 1941, Japan had been fighting a massive continental war for nearly four years, with ~35 divisions, well over a million men, and casualties well into six figures. At that point, they had more experience of modern war than anyone but the Germans.

The IJA's attitude was not "war is noble and chivalric". It was "war is black brutality and cruelty and endless casualty lists, so we must be the hardest bastards of all".



Doug M.

 

[Intosh]

I'm sorry, but that's exactly wrong. While Imperial Japan had many, many problems, a romantic view of modern war was not one of them.

By early 1941, Japan had been fighting a massive continental war for nearly four years, with ~35 divisions, well over a million men, and casualties well into six figures. At that point, they had more experience of modern war than anyone but the Germans.

The IJA's attitude was not "war is noble and chivalric". It was "war is black brutality and cruelty and endless casualty lists, so we must be the hardest bastards of all".

By early 1941, they have not experience of modern war, they have the experience of a big colonial war or something close to the eastern front of 1915-1918 : a big country, a war of movements, a ennemy who have plenty of space and plenty of time to retreat and regroup...

Golghin Gol gave the IJA a taste of modern and industrialized war and they said "no thank you".

Even if brutal, because the Japanese were brutal and killing or raping everyboy, China War was not modern, chineses had few planes, artillery or armor and japanese 35 divisions were infantry divisions supported by light artillery and light tanks...

 

[Doug M.]

I'm sorry, but this is still wrong. You're using some bizarre definition of "modern war" where it only counts if the tanks are over 15 tons.

Both sides at Khalkin Gol were equally "modern". One had strategic surprise and brought more men and more, bigger, and better tanks. That side won a thumping victory.

As for China being a primitive victim without tanks or airplanes, google the Battle of Kunlun Pass. By the early '40s the Nationalists could deploy a couple of hundred tanks and over 1,000 aircraft. Many of these were older models, but they were still enough to cause the Japanese serious strategic headaches.


Doug M.

 

[mosodake]

The main problem is that Japan is going to find it very difficult to integrate its colonies and make them loyal Japanese territories. Korea *could* be done, given significant colonization efforts and less brutality, but there would be active resistance movements to this day. Manchuria, let alone China, can not be integrated, Japan doesn't have the population and the natives hated Japan. The only colony the Japanese managed to successfully assimilate was Taiwan, and that was only because of its low population prior to the Nationalist withdrawel there.

The population of Taiwan increased by only around 10% after the KMT withdrawal. It was hardly because of low population that Japan could assimilate Taiwan. The main reasons were that living conditions in Taiwan were rather shitty until the Japanese came, Japan wanted to treat its first colony as a "model colony" for the world to see, and the Taiwanese people were eventually allowed a large amount of freedom and political power at least on Taiwan itself. Japanese also became a much needed lingua franca on the island. Two resistance movements, one of which was especially brutal, was also sufficient to make Japan change its policies towards the natives.