Hopefully this doesn't get moved to Frivolous ASB, but what if Emperor Hirohito, infamous as the leader of the Empire of the Rising Sun during WW2, decided to calm down the imperialist ideology and focus on science?
I dunno. The Soviet invasion of Japan pretty much guaranteed that he was gonna flee the country and set up a career as a hypernationalist/anti-Communist agitator, complete with CIA sinecure. Research papers on marine biology might have gotten him published in a few obscure academic journals, but nothing like the coin he was hauling in doing speaking engagements with John Wayne and Ronald Reagan.