AHC: Prevent Japanese Militarism

With any plausible PODs, prevent Imperial Japan from taking the path of militarism - or at least less militaristic than OTL - without seriously affecting its rise as major power.
 
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very tricky if not almost impossible at least with a POD after ~1860, since the Meiji restoration was spearheaded by militaristic nationalism, with no subscription of any kind of socioeconomic theory, other than being an oligracy (if nothing else in all but name), aimed at making Japan able to discuss treaties with the western powers from a position of (regional) strength. One of the primary engines for the economy (beyond stalking the floundering chinese silk production coupled with a european hype for silk) was production of military material, nearly anything they did had military strength as the direct goal, and the rest frankly had military strength as a indirect goal.
 
I agree that it's pretty difficult to do so after the Meiji resotration. You could however explore having them lose the Russo-Japanese war which might temper their militarism and expansionism. The tricky thing is that the great powers were all militaristic to one sense or another being a great power and having a strong military went hand in hand.
 
Perhaps have Japan get more involved in WWI. Having soldiers in the meatgrinder of the western front might create a kind of backlash to militarism.
 
Perhaps have Japan get more involved in WWI. Having soldiers in the meatgrinder of the western front might create a kind of backlash to militarism.

They were busy seizing German assets in China, and I don't think they had the ability to ship divisions to Europe yet.
 
They were busy seizing German assets in China, and I don't think they had the ability to ship divisions to Europe yet.

Actually they probably did. They could have relatively easily sent troops to France via the Suez canal, landing at Toulon or Marseille and joining the western front. Or, in theory at least, they could have sent troops along the Siberian railway to the eastern front, though both Japan and Russia would probably sooner surrender to Germany at this point then work together.
 
Actually they probably did. They could have relatively easily sent troops to France via the Suez canal, landing at Toulon or Marseille and joining the western front. Or, in theory at least, they could have sent troops along the Siberian railway to the eastern front, though both Japan and Russia would probably sooner surrender to Germany at this point then work together.

Checked the facts an you are right, the IJN ran escort operations in the Mediterranean pretty well, but that's a big, if not the biggest, cause for the IJN to become overconfident and unruly, very much the opposite of what OP wants.

And Japan has nothing to gain fighting in Europe and they knew it. The most they would do was to go for German East Africa and the Bismarck Range.
 
If you think grinding ground combat will do the trick, you could try to get that from the Russo-Japanese War. Perhaps the Russian troops show some restraint and Bloody Sunday doesn't happen, and without the unrest exacerbated by that massacre, the Tsar feels more comfortable shipping more forces east to recover their position after Mukden.

The Japanese military recognized early on that a long, drawn-out war with Russia would likely end badly for them. With a somewhat more stable Russia, you might get just such a war, one that ends in a negotiated settlement but only after a much longer and more costly ground war.

Alternately, I've read that the Japanese intervention in the Russian Civil War eventually became very unpopular at home and was somewhat of a political debacle for the military. If the military escalates the intervention further than OTL, or mismanages it disastrously, or suffers a catastrophic defeat by the Bolsheviks, maybe the Diet gets the political ammunition it needs to take the military down a peg and assert some civilian oversight. Unfortunately I don't know enough about internal Japanese politics of the time to say whether that's a plausible outcome.
 
As in Germany it was the depression which did it. I wouldn't at all agree it was inevitable post Meiji. As it's position in the world became ever more secure and it's population more educated Japan was heading down a path of steady liberalization.
 
As in Germany it was the depression which did it. I wouldn't at all agree it was inevitable post Meiji. As it's position in the world became ever more secure and it's population more educated Japan was heading down a path of steady liberalization.

Japan was similar. While the poor in many countries turned to socialism, in Japan they signed up to the military as Japanese socialism was still mostly an intelligentsia club at that time. What aggravates the situation the the structure of the Meiji constitution, besides making the judiciary independent and only answer the the emperor, the IJA and IJN enjoyed the same privilege and didn't answer to the senate nor the diet. So if the emperor is weak and militarism enjoys substantial support, we got ourselves the OTL situation.
 
There were also the point that anything remotely smelling like Communism (including Worker Unions) was harshly oppessed by the government, as more rights for the workers would sap the Japanese military strength though worse cash generation due to higher expenses
 

LordKalvert

Banned
It would be impossible to allow Japan to become a major power while at the same time limiting her militarism. The two went hand in hand. Military power was used and Empire was the goal of everyone.

Preventing Japan's rise would be easy- deprive her of her gains in the first Sino Japanese war. This would make Russia the dominant power in the Far East rather than Japan. England may have been able to prop Japan up but the costs and risks would have been great. A deal between Russia and England becomes the more likely outcome there.

Basically, I see two outcomes- either a militant Japan like we saw rises or a weakened Japan falls into the Russian orbit
 
Japanese militarism is the byproduct of japanese culture, history, traditions and religion. You cannot butterfly away militarism while keeping centuries of samurai tradition, shintoism, a divine emperor and all this stuff.

...But didn't they change after the end of WWII? No, they didn't. In their mind, the loser have to submit completely to the winners e.g. adopting their way of life, their way of clothing and so on. They acted ferociously against the people they conquered because they were not submitting to the japanese empire. When can their turn to be under somebody jackboot, they bowed down and traded kimonos with shirts and ties.
 

birdboy2000

Banned
Japanese militarism is the byproduct of japanese culture, history, traditions and religion. You cannot butterfly away militarism while keeping centuries of samurai tradition, shintoism, a divine emperor and all this stuff.

The Tokugawa period was arguably the longest period of peace in recorded history. There were good reasons the Meiji oligarchs (like the governments of many other major powers of the age) supported foreign expansion, but a country which had spent centuries eschewing war continuing to do so is hardly implausible, and there are ways to knock it off the path to madness.
 
Tokugawa Shogunate wasn't as much peaceful as it was radically isolationistic. And there were somewhat regular revolts against the shogunate, which all failed due to lack of support and/or to strong central government, before Boshin succeeded as the leadership was sapped in legitimity and ability to project power by Western interference (personalized by Commodore Mathhew C. Perry and his Black Ships)
 
Surely it's possible to do during the period of Taisho Democracy? You have a successful, moderate engagement with the international system through Shidehara Diplomacy, so while Japan is definitely taking a harder, more colonial line towards China it's still on the same spectrum as the UK and US.
If you can cushion the economic crisis- avoid the return to the gold standard, perhaps- then you might have the early thirties being a period of unpleasant strain on the parliamentary system but one that could be overcome without the groundswell of public support for the radicals.

One thought: what about either avoiding the Bolshevik Revolution, or having it end in either a White victory or even prolonged warlordism? Without the paranoia of the northern enemy, the autarkists aren't going to have as persuasive a case.
 
I actually wrote a post on this about a week ago:

I think so, yes, but that question is far more complicated than the preceding one, and I'm also certainly not the most qualified even on this forum to answer it.

But I'd say after 1931, quite unlikely, without significant upheaval, before...1925 for a certainty, but certainly possible up until 1931 to lessening degrees, preventing the gain in influence by the militarists is quite possible. The Manchurian incident really changed the Japanese political landscape in a lot of ways, from legitimizing the use of force as a substitute for diplomacy in Japan's foreign policy, to granting the military a great deal of prestige, and by extension, flexibility to act as it so wished. It's also important to note the great damage it did to Japan's international relations, especially by poisoning relations with China completely.

Complicating the question as well is that it's hard to really say at which point Imperial Japan metamorphosed into Militarist Japan. Imperial Japan was never a particularly liberal democracy (most states weren't at this time), but at the same time, the Diet still, unlike in Nazi Germany, never stopped functioning throughout the entire militarist period, though it's influence only lessened over this time period (a particularly useful historical point in this regard was the formation of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association in 1940, effectively turning Japan into a one-party state. However, the cementation of militarist influence long predates the IRAA). One also certainly can't ignore the fact that the gradual rising tensions in China culminating in the explosion of a full but undeclared state of war in 1937 also was accompanied by the usual gradual reductions in civil rights and increases in militarist influence.

Japan's political system had a decades long tradition of meddling by military officers, and the military was especially but gradually radicalized during the 20s thanks to a combination of rising Japanese exceptionalist/nationalist thought and anti-Communist backlash, but the 1931 Manchuria incident provides a very clear 'cut-off point' between when the military 'sparred' on largely equal terms with their political opponents and when the military simply began to run roughshod over their political opponents. Of course, one mushy ignore the fact that as early as 1925, pro-democracy sentiment was being snuffed out by the rising tide of anti-communism and nationalist sentiment supporting a wave of repressive laws, such as the 1925 Peace Preservation Law, which, while on its own was not particularly notable by the standards of the time, would later legitimize further rollbacks in personal liberties and rational foreign policy.

Finally, I should note that while I have referred frequently to 'the militarists' in the above paragraphs, that in discussing Showa Japan, such large generic blocs are neither accurate nor useful. The military, for example, was divided into factions of its own, such as the Kodoha and Toseiha, who had their own disagreements on policy and ideology. A very simple (and honestly too general and I fear not all that accurate summation) is the that while both were fairly nationalist, the former was responsible for much of the radicalization of Japan and introduction of militarist ultranationalists thought during this period, while the latter, despite eventually sidelining the Kodoha, effectively inherited the mess they had created and felt not only obliged to use force to clean up their mess and 'double down' so to speak on Japan's gambles during this period, but also to take advantage of the groundwork of ultranationalist, to some degree Pan-Asia is thought the Kodoha had widely disseminated, not to mention their gradual introduction (and on the part of the Toseiha, further extension) of totalitarian rule.

(Similar caveats apply to discussion of any large generic groups in this period of Japanese history, such as 'civilian politicians', 'big business', etc.)

(A final fun fact: Hideki Tojo was considered to have been a member of the relatively moderate Toseiha faction during this time period, which is another useful caveat to keep in mind when discussing 'moderates' during this time period)
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_15_Incident

If the government had cracked down harder on this, Japanese militarism might have been smushed in its cradle. Getting a big conquest in Asia is one thing, but turning on the actual government is something else.

I actually used this as the basis for a "Gray WWII" scenario I posted before my last fishing trip in which the Japanese civilian government crushes the militarists before they can metastasize, but won't give up Manchuria. Ultimately it's the Chinese that start the second Sino-Japanese War, against a Japanese military purged of many of its OTL war criminals.

It's not like the government couldn't crack down on the military, since another incident got a much harsher response:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_26_Incident

There's a little too much cultural determinism going on here...
 
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