Modern Imperial Japan

[Faeelin]

Although, I suppose if the rest of China has gone hard-line Red, the Japanese might find enough people afraid for their necks in the case of a Red takeover to run Manchuria (Greater or otherwise) as a puppet regime, although I remain dubious as to it's profitability or long-term stability. Korea, meh. There appears to have been more collaboration than the standard patriotic mythos has it (an awful lot of the ROK early leadership were, shall we say, compromised) but Japanese colonial policy was pretty brutal and unlikely to produce the sort of economic boom that OTL Korea had.

Bruce

Sure; but a poorer Korea might still serve nicely as part of the Empire.

Perhaps they could give the Republic of Korea independence in the 50s, as part of an anticommunist alliance?

 

[NFR]

I've given this a few more seconds of thought, and it seems to me that all things being equal (which they aren't, and it's pretty hard to talk about this without a given agreed upon timeline), the Soviet Union would prefer to help China as soon as the Hitlerite threat is removed. Manchuria itself is not so useful to us, yay, MORE coal and timber. But it is far more useful to Japan and China. Keeping a puppet state there antagonises both Japan (which we take the place from) and China (reason obvious), for very little gain. It guards a little the flank of the Maritimes, but that is it, and add a burden of policing an area with 40 millions of potential trouble-makers. And also, importantly, if they are a part of Soviet alliance, movements of Han peoples (35 millions+) will exert great population pressure on Far East and Siberia (population... about a quarter in immediate environs). We didn't settle the Jewish Autonomous Okrug for that.

So if one side or the other must be allowed to retain it, which is the more advantageous? China was weaker and less united, and might be easier to influence. She also has enormous bounty of strategic metals (tugsten!), also being quite useful. A friendly China would protect flank of Soviet Union quite handily. Japan would be both harder to influence and less useful resource-wise. She would provide excellent access to Pacific, however.

So on balance I think Stalin would have gone for China.

 

[The Mists Of Time]

The opening post says, "Japan stays out of WWII."

My big question here is, How do you keep Japan out of WWII?

I'm not sure how you do that. Maybe if you keep the things from happening that caused Japan to get into WWII. Maybe The Great Economic Depression of the 1930's does not happen. But then, wasn't Germany's economy one of the factors that helped bring Adolf Hitler to power?

I think to keep Japan out of WWII you need a very different Japan and different Japanese Empire, with a different attitude and world view, a Japan that is less aggressive than The Japan of that era in OTL.

It sounds like you are talking about a WWII that is only in Europe and North Africa, where there is no war in The Pacific. That would make for a very different WWII.

I'm not sure if you could really have kept Japan out of WWII. Like I said, I think you would need to have a very different Japan and different Japanese Empire, one that is less aggressive.

I know I tend to view and approach a lot of these things very simplisticly, perhaps too simplisticly, but this is my take of the opening post. Befory you can say what a modern Imperial Japan would be like, I have to ask in this case how you keep Japan out of WWII.

 

[Riain]

Renew the Anglo-Japanese treaty in 1922, keep Japan and Britain aligned in the interwar period. This reduces the US threat, taking power away from the armed forces who IOTL gained from this threat. Without a feeling of isolation without strong allies Japan needn't have turned militaristic, although this wouldn't have been much of an empire it would have survived intact.