DBWI: North Japan was never a communist state.

However, once Nosaka-san passed away in 1993, the Communist government of northern Japan rapidly collapsed, and by 2000, Japan's four home islands were finally unified as a single country again. :)

Today, there is much construction going in northern Japan, especially the long-dreamed of high-speed Shinkansen line from Tokyo to Sapporo. We were actually very fortunate that despite the sad and tragic use of prison labor, the tunnels for this new line from just west of Sapporo all the way to just north of Hakodate are essentially complete--Nosaka-san had them built between 1975 and 1993 as part of a very ambitious project to build a railway line from Sapporo all the way to northern Tokyo. It's only right now awaiting the opening of the Tsugaru Strait Tunnel, which just started running test trains recently.

And now, there is now talk of moving the government back to Tokyo, and the current Emperor--who ascended to the throne in 2015 after his father's passing--is studying the idea of moving the Imperial Palace back to Tokyo on the grounds of Edo Park (OOC: the OTL Imperial Palace grounds west of Tokyo Station).
 
What would change about the relationship between Japan and its neighbors in Asia?

That depends what the prospective government of unified Japan is like. OTL, South Japan's leaders have been very apologetic about the Empire's war-record, even to the point of paying reparations to the families of 'comfort women' from the SE Asian nations. OK, China and Korea don't give them any props for that, but a willingness to accept wrongdoing coupled with how important Japanese companies are to the economies of SE Asia did melt a lot of ice with those countries...as seen by the Pact of Bangkok, or 'SEATO Mark II' as everyone calls it.

And without that...heck, we might have seen Communism spread to SE Asia.
 
One could argue that a desire to see Japan punished harshly is one of the few things that unites the two Chinas (the Nanking-based Republic of China and the Peking-based Worker's Republic of China).
 
One could argue that a desire to see Japan punished harshly is one of the few things that unites the two Chinas (the Nanking-based Republic of China and the Peking-based Worker's Republic of China).

This despite North Japan and the WRC supposedly being 'fraternal Socialist comrades' up until the First Citizen's death :p

But yeah, good luck with that... With the Pact of Bangkok, with a booming economy and with a strong military...one could argue that South Japan won in peace what the old Empire never could in war.
 
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