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This was partially inspired by Akihito's remarks that the Japanese imperial family has Korean ancestry.

So what if we had an ATL Hirohito who has certain respect towards Korea and its culture and people and perhaps some brotherly nationalistic idealism and genuine pan-asianism, with a desire to give them a more equal stake in the empire even wanting to be directly acknowledged as legitimate ruler by them and do away with overt repression of Korean culture. Of course he still sees Korea as having junior role so some japanifying is inevitable.

What I am most interested in knowing is how far could he push pro-korean measures before militarists start getting ideas and deem it too outrageous.
Or perhaps Koreans may get too audacious.

Perhaps he could co-opt what genuine pan-asianists are left?

Some of the things he might do that I really want to know repercussions of:

Obviously Korean language is not banned nor is Korean culture generally suppressed (overtly at least). State Shinto remains.
He may promote unified system of writing kanji/hanja/hanzi to make it consistent which could go well with pan-asianism.

Integrating elements of korean native beliefs into shinto and trying establish some sort of connection between the old dynasty symbolically and genetically.
I am not sure if this is possible with science of the time but him promoting his Korean ancestry would be another thing.

Insisting on naming the third ship of Yamato class Chosen or something else suitably symbolic, while we are at it more Korean names for ships and more Koreans in the navy and army.
Would the navy swallow it?

In general taking every opportunity to emphasize kinship between Koreans and Japanese in more equal terms (though japan is still at the very least first among equals).
In a sense that was the policy OTL though as far as I remember the Koreans were firmly considered lesser and it was coated with all sort of racialist nonsense. This Hirohito would not like that very much.

And probably the most outrageous, recreating the title of king and proclaiming himself the king of Korea.
Though that may have problems because that could imply him being inferior to the emperors.
So he might instead make himself emperor of Korea too.
This is tied to the point about trying to establish some connection to the previous monarchy.

So how far can this idealistic pro-korean Hirohito get?
And how long may he succeed in preserving Japanese rule assuming they do not get involved in a war with America?
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