Japanese Ivy League.

From the blog "Ivy Style" (devoted to Ivy league clothes):

Jacobi Press opened his Princeton branch on Nassau Street in the mid-1930s and assigned my father regular checkups on the store.​
Lou Prager, founder of Chipp in 1947 with another J. Press alumnus, Sid Winston, was pried away from the New Haven store to become manager of J. Press’ Princeton store. Gregarious and charismatic, he instantly became a local celebrity, befriending many notable Princetonians. Lou introduced his minions to my father during his visits there, an act of noblesse oblige that maintained the fiction Paul Press was royalty — or at least clothing royalty.
One member of the favored crowd was indeed royalty: Prince Fumitako Konoye, son of the new Japanese premier and captain of the Princeton golf team. A Lawrenceville graduate, tagged “Butch” by his teammates, Fumi sang in the glee club and was a member of Key and Seal, the swanky Princeton eating club. Celebrating Fumi’s championship at the University Open Golf Tournament in 1937, Prager and my father hosted a party at the Nassau Inn that seemingly included half of Princeton, all on the J. Press tab.
But a storm was brewing. The Daily Princetonian quoted Fumi in 1939 warning classmates, “Stay out of the Asian dispute.” When the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo axis became a military alliance in 1939, Fumi’s campus posture had become precarious. He chose to leave the university before his graduation on a battleship his father sent to pick him up.
A 1940 news dispatch from Tokyo, with the headline “Butch Goes To War,” reported that Fumi had left for China to serve as a private in the Japanese army. Captured at the end of the war by the Russians in Manchuria, he died 1956 in a Siberian prisoner-of-war camp.
Historical archives recently disclosed young Konoye served as a conduit for messages between President Roosevelt and his father, three-time prime minister of Japan, whose attempts at rapprochement with the United States met with abject failure among opposed-to-the-war expansionists, headed by future Prime Minister Hideki Tojo.
The J. Press shop in Princeton closed immediately after Pearl Harbor. The entire J. Press staff followed the example set by their former customer, who had become an enemy in the Japanese army. Unlike Konoye, who left Princeton on a battleship, the J. Press Princeton staff bid farewell to Old Nassau and took up KP duties in nearby Fort Dix, New Jersey. — RICHARD PRESS

What if Konoye had prevailed on Tojo?
An agreement with United States was possible?

And in a timeline in which Hitler dies in WW-I and the Weimer Republic survive (see the thread "technology without WW-II),the chances of success of Konoye are highest?
 
From the blog "Ivy Style" (devoted to Ivy league clothes):



What if Konoye had prevailed on Tojo?
An agreement with United States was possible?

And in a timeline in which Hitler dies in WW-I and the Weimer Republic survive (see the thread "technology without WW-II),the chances of success of Konoye are highest?
The problem is that the minimum Japan was willing to accept was way, way higher than the US was willing to allow.

So. Suppose that FDR convinces the civilian government to pull out of Indochina. Before the orders go out, one of two things happen. Either the PM is assassinated or the Army minister quits.

Japanese "democracy" at the time had some serious build-in problems - the Army and Navy ministers were basically appointed by the Army and Navy, so any time they didn't like something, they'd pull out and cause the government to collapse.

In addition to that, for a decade before the war, junior army officers had been allowed to get away with assassinating any politician that was too sensible.

So. No. FDR isn't going to let Japan own China and all of East Asia, and Japan isn't going to pull out of any territory she held. So all the talking in the world won't help.

Sorry.
 
Top