Japan as a World Power

It can't win the pacific war

It can if it changes sides at some point before December 1941. This is easier if done earlier, but its possible, if the leaders can make the change in mindset there are many scenarios possible. Heres a simple one:

Circa 1936-37 the faction wanting to start war with China are suppressed.

Negotiations with China started. These need not be sincere over the long haul, but are aimed at at least temporarily reducing tensions. Note that this would leave German officers and other support with the KMT government longer.

1938 Reject further ties to Germany, renegotiate and strengthen ties to Britain, France, US, USSR.

1939 September> reach understandings of support with Britain and France vs Germany. A DoW can come later.

1945 Japan is flush with cash from war contracts, has traded its share of LL to the USSR for agreement over the ongoing border disputes, and is a signatory as a victor over the Axis nations.

This does leave 'Unfinished Business' between Japan and China, but that probably does not come to war until the 1950s or 1960s.
 
It can if it changes sides at some point before December 1941. This is easier if done earlier, but its possible, if the leaders can make the change in mindset there are many scenarios possible. Heres a simple one:

Circa 1936-37 the faction wanting to start war with China are suppressed.

Negotiations with China started. These need not be sincere over the long haul, but are aimed at at least temporarily reducing tensions. Note that this would leave German officers and other support with the KMT government longer.
Well, I'd argue it wouldn't be quite so simple to 'suppress the faction trying to start wars,' simply due to the fact that it wasn't so much a faction pushing for war as independent military officers (quite a few officers, actually, during a good portion of the interwar period) instigating diplomatic incidents and forcing the government to go along with the militaristic mess, like with the Mukden incident, where Kwantung Army officers staged a bombing of a Japanese railroad, and the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, where an officer ignored peace talks and kept shelling the Chinese. Then there was the First Shanghai Incident in 1932, where the Japanese military staged attacks on Japanese monks and bombed and invaded Shanghai in pseudo-retaliation while refusing to adhere to a ceasefire for 2 months.

Moreover, the civilian government wasn't exactly in charge when it came to Japan's overseas policy (not that the public minded—they were winning, after all) and the desire to dominate China's not a 1930s phenomenon. Anti-militarist officials tended to be forced out of office or assassinated, the army had their 3 little coup plans and one attempt (where no one was really punished), and the whole country drifted into a militaristic mess that the people supported and the pacifist elements in the government were powerless to stop.

Japan was going to war with China; the Japanese knew it, the Chinese knew it, pretty much everyone knew what was coming. The Japanese military was willing to poison relations with all its neighbors for the sake of expansion and rejecting pretty much all international arbitration for as long as possible. The military and navy weren't fond of the US,UK, or USSR, mainly because the former two tried imposing limits on them and the latter was a threat to Manchuria, so the civilian government trying to improve relations wouldn't have been able to do much.

Negotiations are meaningless if one party refuses to adhere to them, as the First Shanghai and Marco Polo Bridge Incidents proved, so it's not as simple as just negotiations starting because chances are that some Kwantung officer would start a war once they (mistakenly or not) believe that the Japanese would stop their advance into the mainland. Plus, the Japanese military was cocky as hell (heavily underestimating both the USSR and US and expecting way too easy a victory in China). The Second Sino-Japanese War was bound to happen in the 1930-40 timeframe with how trigger-happy the Kwantung Army was and that gets them into the problems of OTL's Chinese quagmire, international pariah status, and not having enough oil or rubber to conduct war.
 
With it's ultranationalist militarist self, it's pretty difficult given how vast China is and that you need a POD post-1930 before 1940 to screw either the US and/or China to enable Imperial Japan to take over most of Asia and of course find ways to stabilize its rule over it without going bankrupt. For a better Japanese world power (i.e. one that isn't dictatorial) that can have a better chance of being influential you need to go back to the 1920's and before to prevent Japan's turn to ultranationalist militarism and instead have Taisho democracy survive (or at least some government who while somewhat authoritarian isn't as bad as the IRAA); and no I don't buy into the "impossible past 1900 to avert it" meme, not a bit.
 
With it's ultranationalist militarist self, it's pretty difficult given how vast China is and that you need a POD post-1930 before 1940 to screw either the US and/or China to enable Imperial Japan to take over most of Asia and of course find ways to stabilize its rule over it without going bankrupt. For a better Japanese world power (i.e. one that isn't dictatorial) that can have a better chance of being influential you need to go back to the 1920's and before to prevent Japan's turn to ultranationalist militarism and instead have Taisho democracy survive (or at least some government who while somewhat authoritarian isn't as bad as the IRAA); and no I don't buy into the "impossible past 1900 to avert it" meme, not a bit.
Yeah, Japan's course was still in flux even a while post-WWI. It does get exponentially more difficult to avert militarism the longer post-WWI you get, with a death match between Japan and China (with US and USSR involvement) I'd say essentially inevitable once you get into the 1930s.
 
With it's ultranationalist militarist self, it's pretty difficult given how vast China is and that you need a POD post-1930 before 1940 to screw either the US and/or China to enable Imperial Japan to take over most of Asia and of course find ways to stabilize its rule over it without going bankrupt. For a better Japanese world power (i.e. one that isn't dictatorial) that can have a better chance of being influential you need to go back to the 1920's and before to prevent Japan's turn to ultranationalist militarism and instead have Taisho democracy survive (or at least some government who while somewhat authoritarian isn't as bad as the IRAA); and no I don't buy into the "impossible past 1900 to avert it" meme, not a bit.
You'd probably need a pre 1910 POD to get rid of all those idiots infesting the military.
 
I thought China is....

They have :
awesome soft power
high economic power
sufficient military forces (their Defence Force is better than some European Armies, and they are NOT supposed to have military power)

On the other hand they have :
High debts (but the US too)
Old people (that's their true problem)

And they are, with South Korea, one of the three "Triades", with Western Europe and US+Canada
 
sufficient military forces (their Defence Force is better than some European Armies, and they are NOT supposed to have military power)

Not exactly. Japan is not supposed to have a defence force capable of projecting power, which it doesn't. That does not at all preclude it from being able to very energetically defend its own territory, which it does.

Japan is a long way from a 'world power', for the same reason that there have been vanishingly few countries that could be described as such. It is a significant regional power, but will end up totally overshadowed by China, just like it is overshadowed by the US.
 
What if Japan managed to win the Pacific War and manages to become a World Power.

To straight-up win a WW2-style war against the United States, you need a pre-1900 POD, but if you're willing to accept something different:

Create a POD where the Japanese still go to war with China, but don't turn into butchering monsters in the process; instead they are just normal conquerors. No atrocities leads to the oil continuing to flow, and if the Chinese can remain tied to the Germans then all the better, the Japanese can present themselves as opposing Nazi surrogates.

Eventually Japan realizes it can't conquer China outright, but they can hold enough of the coast to establish an effective puppet regime. With Korea, Manchuria, and coastal China, and not alienating the locals by raping and killing their way through the civilian population, Japan could easily be the third superpower.
 
There is absolutely no way Japan could win the Pacific War. Perhaps a way could be if Japan develops its Korean/Manchurian empire without a war with China or the Pacific War, but that's a bit hard for me to imagine in itself. I think the imperialists would need to be neutralised so that the policy becomes one slanting more towards development and economic connections across the world. From this point, Japan becomes a British ally and supports the Allies against the Axis Powers of Germany and Italy. If Japan is an active ally, then it could make money from providing war material to the USSR and Britain. Just like the US, I think that should bring it out of its economic depression.
 
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Japan choosing a different path after 1918. Seeks to access markets and raw materials but not a brutal war with China. Decent treatment and earlier industrialisation in Korea. During WW2 as 'leader of Asiatic peoples' takes Dutch East Indies and French Indo China, again with strong economic control but NOT otl brutality manages to get sympathetic governments
 
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