I've heard the opinion that Japan was "betrayed" by the allies in the aftermath of WWI, thus they were Axis in WWII.
Question: What would it take so the Japan doesn't feel "betrayed" and they stay friendly with the UK and the US?
The problem with that is Japanese interests in the Pacific, pretty much everything they need to sustain an empire in Asia is something they need to pry from another nation, as Japan is resource poor and will need to compensate by taking resource-rich areas (read: the history of the war in the Pacific in WWII):
1. Fuel from Manchuria and the Dutch East Indies.
2. Rubber from British Malaya.
3. Breadbasket farmland from French Indochina.
4. Bases in the Philippines.
The United States trades and has interests in all of the following areas, and until the advent of synthetic rubber (which was itself motivated by Japanese seizure of Malaya's rubber resources), the United States is dependent upon Malayan rubber and in trade with a good deal of the rest of Asia.
The Philippines would represent a spear poised to strike directly in the heart of this newfound Japanese Empire, no reasonably intelligent Japanese military commander would tolerate that situation. A base in the Phillippines means the Americans can easily launch an attack into Indochina and cut off Malaya and the East Indies.
Japan can remain on good terms with the West or Japan can be an expansionist power in the Pacific, the two are basically mutually exclusive.