AH Challenge: 1941 Japan Acts Rationally

OK, here's the challenge. Create a situation in which Japan avoids a Pacific War by acting rationally across the board, to satisfy both American political needs and national honor. I know those two things were largely inconsistent - the IJA and the US China Lobby were diametrically opposed - but is there any reasonable POD you can come up with that would allow Japan to avoid war with the United States and also survive economically (ie, not run out of oil, steel, etc.)?

War with Britain/France/Dutch is allowed, if you can make it happen without drawing in the US. That war, at least, was winnable for Japan.

Does winding down China to placate the US, but replacing it with a "Go North" campaign to placate the Army, make any sense at all? That's all I can really come up with off the top of my head. Deploying the entire Kwangtung Army, and the bulk of the IJA in China, against the Soviet Far East at the same time as they were fighting the Germans should be a fairly winnable campaign for the Japanese, with the added bonus that even if Britain declared war in support of the Soviets, the Americans would probably be politically unable to do so.
 
Yes in the talks before the War have the Americans and Japanese understand what areas they our talking about in china that the Japanese must pull out off .
 
Wasn't ending the US embargo contingent upon Japan withdrawing from China, period? Oh, I can see Japan retaining Manchukuo/Manchuria, but not the rest.

I'm certainly not an expert on that aspect of the era, but my understanding is that the only way the US Congress was lifting the embargo was a Japanese withdrawal from China. And without the lifting of the embargo, Japan was going to run out of oil by the summer of 1942. But Japan couldn't buckle due to political pressure from the IJA, as well as their sense of honor. So, Japan was in a "no win scenario", their own Kobyashi Maru, so to speak. I'm wondering how they beat this scenario, or if they even can.
 
Very difficult.

You need to prevent the type of actions that were in Nanking and Shanghai so that is a start. Have the KMT be much, much more anti-Communist and anti-Soviet earlier on and somehow piss off Stalin. The Soviet-Japanese war of 1939 or so leads a non-agression pact similar to the one in Europe. Give Stalin a free hand in Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, possibly even Tibet and other western provinces while reaffirming Japanese control of Manchuria and Korea. Japan in exchange gets vital supplies of oil, steel, and other raw materials needed to continue the effort in wherever want to expand. Possibly ASB but it is something.
 
Well, I have a PoD. In 1909, former Japanese Prime Minister, and at the time he was Resident General of Korea, Ito Hirobumi, was assasinated by a Korean nationalist. He was more moderate then other Japanese officers and politicians. If he avoided assasination, he would probably become Prime Minister again. His more moderate policies would set Japan on the path to becoming more friendly with the west. To get this idea, watch the movie 2009 Lost memories.
 
If the Japanese go North against the Soviet Union, they may lose and it'd be as big a disaster as the Pearl Harbor strategy. That's certainly what the Japanese military thought would happen. Plus the British, Americans and Dutch wouldn't be happy with it since the Soviets are fighting the Nazis.

I really don't know how you could get Japan to pull out of China without... I don't know, a coup? Revolution? Something like that. IJA ain't gonna be too happy. In order for the Japanese to even consider stopping the war with China, three things have to happen:
1) They get to keep some gains in China
2) They lose interest in the war with China
3) They CANNOT be seen to fold in the face of foreign pressure

So here's what I'm thinking: The Japanese Navy has more of a buildup in this timeline, costing the state a lot more money. IOTL, the militarization nearly crashed the economy, we're going to have an actual crash in this time line. Secondly, the IJA has a massively embarrassing and public defeat in battle against China.

The US, seeing that Japan has really lost prestige in China, is facing economic trouble at home, while at the same time facing the concept of a more powerful Navy decide to use a lighter touch when confronting Japan. They approach the Japanese and issue a quiet ultimatum that the Japanese have to have a cease-fire with China or face the oil embargo.

Meanwhile in Japan, the military has been discredited and the quietness of the deal means that the Japanese can accept the ultimatum without losing face. A cease-fire takes place and in the peace treaty the Japanese are allowed to hold some of their gains.
 
OK, here's the challenge. Create a situation in which Japan avoids a Pacific War by acting rationally across the board, to satisfy both American political needs and national honor.


David,

How about wholesale brain transplants? Seriously. That's the level of change we're talking about.

Japan's Meiji government began serious discussions regarding wars with and/or land grabs in China as early as the mid-1870s. That's only five years since the 1868 restoration and well before Japan even had the wherewithal. China had been in Japan's sights for that long.

War with Britain/France/Dutch is allowed, if you can make it happen without drawing in the US. That war, at least, was winnable for Japan.

The US resource/goods embargo was applied in stages with the oil embargo applied only after Japan strong armed Vichy into "accepting" into Japanese forces in French Indochina.

Keep Japan out of Indochina and US oil keeps flowing for the foreseeable future.

Does winding down China to placate the US, but replacing it with a "Go North" campaign to placate the Army, make any sense at all?

It make no sense, as you guessed. None of the resources Japan requires is either readily or easily available in the Soviet Far East.

The Ito Hirobumi POD is an interesting one and I'd add a better Versailles for Japan too, but Japan had been looking at China for a very long time and it will take a very big event or series of events for that to change.


Bill
 
I started this thread (alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=96639) about Japan going after the NEI and Burma without attacking Pearl Harbor and drawing the US into war.

As you can see most replies were that this simply wasn't going to happen...
 
This is well outside the parameters of the challenge, but WI the US never gets into the Pacific at all? e.g. 19th Century British Sandwich Islands, Spanish-American conflict (whenever it happens) is limited to the Caribbean etc. Germany is often brought into these scenarios but I think it's safe to assume that the Great War plays out the same way so any German gains would be redistributed among the Allies (France, UK, Netherlands?, Japan?). How does a major *Pacific War play out under those conditions? The US likely still has economic interests in the region but without territory to protect it may be more inclined to work with whoever is in charge.
 
I think a lot of the impossibility of this scenario stems from the false belief that the Japanese government was a homogenous entity in this time. As all other governments, it was made up of people, all who have their own interests. So, while Japan's combined actions seemed self-defeating, I'm sure that whoever made those decisions profited handsomely from them, in the short term at least. And here we find the problem!

During the Taisho era, Japan's long-term planning government (the genro) broke down and was replaced by short-term profit seekers under the guise of nationalism. Blowing up stuff was seen as profitable as it increased prices, which had been slashed low by the industrial progress of this era. For Japan, however, who was merely an export country at the time, these efforts did not work as well, since they relied on the US economy being restored.

Thus, as Japan's exports decline, the only way to acquire the raw materials necessary for an industrial operation, was to maintain an empire from which resources could be extracted cheaply.

So, even if we remove the people in charge and replace them by pod people, it won't change much since the physical needs were still there, and imperialist expansion was seen as the only solution by the short-term mindset of the one's in charge during the 30's.

One solution: extend the rule of the genro, or replace them with another long-term planning government, preferably a technocracy since politics often result in short-term compromises.

With the long term prosperity as the goal, a methodic approach would lead to a series of requirements, that probably would include the USN not being aggressive. So, keeping the US approval would be a priority.

Furthermore, the focus on high technology rather than pure industrial power (due to the depression skilled engineers were available for a price the Japanese could afford), as well as concentrating on developing current colonies instead of acquiring new land, would result in large investments by the government into the Japanese economy, which might reduce unemployment and general suffering by the population, thus reducing fringe elements. Eventually, a migration to a new economy could be undertaken.

Now all the Japanese need to do is to hope the US isn't looking to war as a good solution for their economic troubles.
 
Thus, as Japan's exports decline, the only way to acquire the raw materials necessary for an industrial operation, was to maintain an empire from which resources could be extracted cheaply.

So, even if we remove the people in charge and replace them by pod people, it won't change much since the physical needs were still there, and imperialist expansion was seen as the only solution by the short-term mindset of the one's in charge during the 30's.
I am not sure if the above snip represents the complete argument but it seems sensible. Japan was faced with a very difficult problem from 1930 and finding rational responses is quite difficult. The problem was that Japan needed to obtain raw materials such as oil but had some difficulty in exporting enough to pay for its imports. Access to the US market was very difficult after the Smoot-Hawley tariff act of 1930 (there is a summary in "Bankrupting the enemy: the U.S. financial siege of Japan before Pearl Harbor" by Edward S. Miller and in many other books). Access to the British Empire was similarly restricted by 'Imperial Preference' tariffs. The rise of Chinese Nationalism threatened access to the Chinese market via boycotts. Taking control of Manchuria and North China was a rational response and had overwhelming support in Japan once it became clear that it would not lead to immediate conflict with the Anglo-American powers. However, there were two problems: Firstly, Northern China did not appear to supply many of the necessary raw materials, so that dependence on the Anglo-Americans continued and became more difficult due to their hostility to the extension of Japanese power in China, and secondly the conflict with China which erupted in 1937 became more likely. As others have noted, finding oil in Manchuria or a collapse of Chinese central power (proposed by Mike Ralls) might have helped to solve those problems without any change of Japanese policy.
Japanese policy might have tried to avoid a clash with China in 1937. However, the Japanese drive for control of resources caused frequent minor clashes and the 1937 explosion occurred when Chiang decided that this time Japan would be opposed and that the war would be extended to Shanghai. Thus once the KMT had made a truce with the Communists, a Second Sino-Japanese War was probably inevitable. Most writers believe that the OTL stalemate was also inevitable but it is interesting that Japan never attempted to mobilize to win the war with China. A very logical approach might have asked if it was worth building a fleet to fight America over China if the war could not be won even without direct American intervention. The money spent on the Yamato class alone would have paid to equip several armoured divisions which might have taken Chungking. The other method of waging the war that was not initially employed was to support Chinese opponents of Chiang. The American invasion of Iraq compares favourably with Japanese 1937-8 operations in terms of long term political planning.
The other possible approach was to attempt to improve Japan's relationship with America despite the conflict with China. At first sight this looks quite hard. The American State Department was working to oppose Japan. However, American business was willing to take risks to make money. Sometimes government displeasure cost the business more than it gained. For example, the Severski company had to be reorganised as Republic after selling fighters (P-35s) to Japan. In 1938 both Ford and General Motors seem to have decided that Japan would conquer China and started negotiations on investing in Japanese controlled China. These did not make progress as the Japanese Army was not in love with capitalism and few in Japan wanted either US companies as competitors or for profits to flow from the Yen area to America. The US companies naturally lost interest after WW2 started giving them more obvious opportunities. However, if the upper ranks of the IJA had been convinced that American investment needed to be encouraged, it is likely that significant investments would have been made. Other obvious ways of improving relations with America included not attacking the Panay and perhaps trying to avoid killing Chinese civilians.
1940 produced an interesting range of possibilities for Japan. The IJA wanted to move South immediately and occupy the Netherlands East Indies. This was opposed by the IJN. The best guess of historians is that the US would not have immediately declared war. If that is true, Japan might have been able to avoid an eventual war with the US by agreeing to make peace with Britain once it controlled the NEI. Japan also had a last chance to exploit the Soviet focus on Europe by moving forces from Manchuria to China and trying to defeat Chiang. If they were feeling very cautious, they could have tried to negotiate a settlement with Chiang (probably very difficult).
What Japan actually did was to sign the Tripartite Pact, which rivals attacking Pearl Harbor as their most stupid act. The Tripartite Pact transformed US-Japanese relations. Before the pact Japan was regarded as a minor problem that should not distract the US from the problems of Europe. Afterwards, the US began a serious economic war against Japan which eventually led to Pearl.

ps. The simplest way to keep the US out of the Philippines is to have the 1873 Spanish - American crisis start a war.
 
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