How much difference could the emperor make?

Hereditary monarchy generally doesn't produce the most dramatically effective leaders; the biggest conquerors and reformers and generally most effective people are usually those from the enormously larger population pool of people not in line from the throne who happen to be far enough above the mainstream in talent to seize power, and then apply their massive outlier skills to doing stuff while in power (not in any way reliably for the good, of course, but definitely in scale of effects this seems to be the pattern). But it doesn't always produce duds, there's going to be, say, an Edward III once in a while, a totally legitimate heir who ends up also being quite aggressive and effective. What happens to Imperial Japan if the Showa emperor had been such a person, instead of the relatively unremarkable person he actually was? It seems unlikely based on what little I know of his biography that Prince Chichibu would have been such a person, but he never had a chance. It's always at least possible that he would have shined if he'd gotten the opportunity, so Hirohito dying young could be a single PoD to get this alternate history going. Anyway, what happens if whoever holds the throne is someone who instead of merely riding the tide of anti-democratic sentiment to accumulate power and not doing much with it, actively used the trend to take and subsequently exert control? Could they have led the same level of expansion without the egregious mistakes, or were the conquests of the Kwantung army and the rest of the incredibly messy 1930s Japanese leadership inseparable from their self-destructive tendencies?
 
I am no expert on Imperial era Japanese politics (or Japanese politics or history in general) but I just watched something a few weeks ago talking about the Japanese political system. Basically it was fundementally flawed in that the military was under very little government authority, not sure of the how or why. Thats why the Imperial army in China did basically whatever it wanted whenever it wanted, the government could do very little to stop it. It also had no say about what either branch of service did with its funding, nor did it stop the almost pathological hatred developing between the Imperial Army and Imperial Navy. In short it was a broken system ripe for someone to manipulate it to seize more power for themselves.
Perhaps the emperor is able to take power in this haphazard system. Amassing power, holding it. And then using it to effectively crush his enemies, and then establish Japan on whatever path he wants. Again I am no expert. And this does in no way answer your question, but its the best I have short of more research.
 
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