The trouble with all of these is they presume that the Japanese pre-WWII were rational. Basically it would take a POD pre-1900 to get much of a change in the lead up to WWII - okay maybe get Russia to win the Russo-Japaneses war, but that would be a major feat. The Japanese leadership as a whole had convinced themselves that they could do whatever they wanted and nobody could/would stop them. The whole leadership down to junior officers in the Army and Navy and the Policeman on the street had bought into the myth of Japanese inevitability. Even the "Peace" party were not a peace party as the west would think of it but more a try to get more out of them before war happens party. This was because for the 50 years prior to the start of the war anyone who spoke out against the state were arrested - if they were lucky, or killed if they weren't. So nobody spoke up against it.
Japan was the
tightest Totalitarian state imaginable prior to the war and had been since the mid-1800s. With all of the side effect of this - group think at its worst. The leadership literally could not imagine loosing, even right up to the last days of the war half of the war council was sure that they could force the Allies into a settlement that left them in charge and Japan intact with all its existing social structures in place to rebuild its military. That was
after 4 years of war, loosing their whole fleet, most of their air force, all of their merchant marine, having their industry bombed back to nothing, having two atomic bombs dropped on them and the USSR decoration of war and invasion of Manchuria. Still 50% of the ruling council was ready to continue the war - these are the people that have to somehow decide without the above pressures that it is a good idea to back off?
It is hugely unlikely at best.