I can see only one SLIM chance for Japan to have wrested a WW2 Pacific "ceasefire" with America ... and it requires several successful "what IFs" in a row ...
Historically the Japanese took the Chinese city of Nanking in 1938, and proceeded to massacre some 300,000 people therein ... even today no one knows the exact numbers ... referred to worldwide as "The Rape of Nanking" ... all covered in horrendous detail by the western film crews of Pathe News amongst others ... short newsreels of which were shown in British and American movie theaters before the main entertainment daily films were run ... in the days before TV, this was how most civilians got their visual news reports ...
What IF #1 ... Japan succeeds at a surprise invasion of Oahu on Dec. 7'41, not just 2 air raids on the USN's Pacific Fleet ... a topic debated in alternative history discussion boards for decades now ... in doing so she captures roughly 250,000 Americans on the Hawaiian Islands, and eventually another 200,000 or so on the Pacific Islands (mostly on the Philippine Islands) then rendered well behind the new Pacific "front lines" ... the confidence of the American "body politic" is profoundly shaken by this unexpected defeat.
What IF #2 ... on that same Dec.7'41 date another small scale by surprise Japanese air attack on Panama knocks out the Panama Canal for from between 6 months and 2 years ... not that doing so would prevent Atlantic to Pacific transfers of American war materials and weapons but that without the Panama Canal it takes an additional 2 -3 months for America to arrange the refueling tankers and convoys needed for such traffic around Cape Horn without stripping the British Royal Navy of so much fuel that her trans-Atlantic convoy system would collapse and prevent Lend-Lease shipments to the desperate Russians as well ... the collapse of Britain to Germany MUST NOT be allowed to happen under any circumstance ... another body blow to America's faith in her civilian leadership's ability to successfully lead the Nation in wartime.
What IF #3 ... the Japanese manage to fend off the inevitable American counter-attack on fortress Oahu, intended to retake their captured "Gibralter of the Pacific"...
The confidence of the American voter would be shaken to the CORE and with memories of Japan's "Rape of Nanking" as presented by Pathe News just 3 short years previously dancing in their heads, I would suggest that America might just have entertained a Japanese request for a Pacific ceasefire while discussion were held with respect to eventually returning the still alive 550,000 American citizens captured by Japan, to American control while a de-militarized Hawaii was traded back in exchange for American recognition of Japan as the new owners of all of the Dutch East Indies natural resources, including oceans of oil, yearly rubber crops, all types of minerals and foodstuffs ...
Not a bad trade off from the American point of view since America had never owned the Dutch East Indies anyway ... and 550,000 American VOTERS, who each had wives, husbands, sons, daughters, grandfathers and grandmothers, nieces and nephews, cousins, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters who would also vote against the current US administration if fresh Pathe newsreels of butchery started arriving from Hawaii and the Philippines ... quite a sizeable voting block ... probably more than enough votes to swing America firmly back onto a pacifist WW2 path ...
Quite a risky plan to consider, I know. The short war which the Japanese so hoped for since they KNEW that they could never hope to win a long production war against America. But with an American, British, and Dutch oil embargo swiftly choking her, what else could the Japaneses Empire have even entertained, other than abject surrender ?