Japanese influence in pop culture without fascism and ww2

Let's assume that Japan never goes fascist and continues the path of democratisation of the Taisho period, maybe they don't even participate in WW1, the point is: how much is Japan's massive presence in modern pop culture a product of important historical events like the American occupation? Would Japan still become the country of gaming and anime without the massive changes in Japanese society brought by ww2?
 
Japan already had some American cultural influence before WWII--baseball was a thing in Japan at that point after all. Their animation would undoubtedly be influenced by Disney and everything else from the United States too.
 
To begin let us take my favorite icon, Gojira, aka Godzilla. No atomic bombing and that character disappears. I see a lot of the issues surrounding the war dealt with in Japanese art, it might deal with other issues, it might still penetrate America.
 
I see a lot of the issues surrounding the war dealt with in Japanese art, it might deal with other issues, it might still penetrate America.

Without the war, there were a good number of low level Japanese-American artists who wouldn't have gotten interned, and would have stayed at Disney and MGM animation studios rather than be interned and deal with the postwar anti-Japanese feelings.

With better relations like that, when the increased animation costs start in the '50s, you might see outsourcing to Japan and lower production costs, rather than the drop to the Hanna-Barberra and Warners limited animation styles
 
Without the war, there were a good number of low level Japanese-American artists who wouldn't have gotten interned, and would have stayed at Disney and MGM animation studios rather than be interned and deal with the postwar anti-Japanese feelings.

With better relations like that, when the increased animation costs start in the '50s, you might see outsourcing to Japan and lower production costs, rather than the drop to the Hanna-Barberra and Warners limited animation styles

Good to know. So it would be like the Korean animation machine doing the heavy lifting in modern productions? So we see a big Japanese animation industry 1960s forward, opening doors for Japanese voice actors, writers and more, feeding a later Japanese film industry to rival and compliment Hollywood?
 
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