How would the Japanese have resisted a American/Soviet invasion?

How much worse...much much worse. Hirohito and the adults in the royal family get the drop. Pretty much all commanders in areas where POWs/civilians were killed, the drop. Any accommodations with existing Japanese society, forget it. Diving on the left side, gone. The weird Japanese house numbering system, gone. Using the Latin alphabet (Romaji) for Japanese, likely (until Ataturk Turkish was written in Arabic characters not Latin ones). English mandatory in school, likely. Occupation lasting longer. Places like Okinawa, Iwo Jima, other islands taken by the USA that had been Japanese (not Imperial possessions like Formosa or Sakhalin) ain't never going to return to Japanese sovereignty like OTL. Japanese history books ain't getting away with the whitewash they give WWII actions by Japan, not now not ever...

Just for grins, I bet the Americans decide to totally obliterate the Yasakuni Shrine and, at Japanese expense, erect a memorial there to the slaughtered POWs and civilians.

There will also be a much stronger hunt for war criminals, think Simon Wiesenthal on steroids. No free passes for guys like Ishii in exchange for information, tell us and get prison, don't tell us and maybe you end up a maruta.

It is worht noting that there were a lot of people in high places who, OTL, would have been glad to see all of the above happen. If the Japanese do the slaughter, they may look like the softies.
 
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Also, there's the question what the Japanese would do with the several hundred thousand allies POWs. Would they have used them as hostages?


Though I recall that in Decisive Darkness the Japanese also used many prisoners on the Home Islands as human shields in an attempt to stop further atomic bombings, to no avail. The dropping of the third bomb on Kokura is described from the POV of the Allied prisoners forced into the middle of the city, with their guards running away in panic as the bomber approaches...
 
Though I recall that in Decisive Darkness the Japanese also used many prisoners on the Home Islands as human shields in an attempt to stop further atomic bombings, to no avail. The dropping of the third bomb on Kokura is described from the POV of the Allied prisoners forced into the middle of the city, with their guards running away in panic as the bomber approaches...
That was the Yamaguchi bomb, actually.
 
The US being involved in an Eastern Front style horror show would have... Interesting effects. For a start, the US is probably significantly more anti-war in the 40 years following WW2. It may see air-power as less of a cure-all. Almost certainly it will mean the US will have a more Soviet view of nuclear war (i.e. that states and armies may persist as organized entities after the bombs fall).

I do think that Japanese culture would survive the invasion. The Emperor may have to go, but the Japanese nation, language and culture would survive (albeit more changed than OTL.

I'm not sure that the Soviets would invade more than Hokkaido - the Soviets just don't have the landing craft required to land enough troops on Honshu to do more than get some poor Red Army soldiers skewered. By the time the Soviets did have enough landing craft (either of their own or imported from the US), the US is likely to have a restive Honshu under occupation.

Japan being invaded would draw the war out enough that the Soviets are likely to occupy all of Korea. That has huge implications for American involvement in Asia as well as the development of the Cold War.

fasquardon

The bolded part probably does not matter. The Soviets had agreed to the borders already. They may very well leave stay behind forces (the south was more leftist than the north in 1945) but although that would cause issues, you would still see a divided Korea. Unless it was traded as a bargaining chip for something in Japan of course.
 
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