At the end of the Russo-Japanese War, the Treaty of Portsmouth, mediated by Theodore Roosevelt, was signed. Under the terms of the treaty, there was to be a immediate ceasefire, Russian troops were to be evacuated from Manchuria, Russia was to return Port Arthur and Tallen to China and to turn over the Southern Manchurian Railway and it's mining concessions to Japan.
However, a large degree of the Japanese public, including a young Hideki Tojo, believed that the treaty outright humiliated them. Popular opinion had demanded that Japan annex Eastern Siberia and keep it's conquests in the Liaoning Peniinsula and the northern tip of Sakhalin and that Russia pay war reparations to Japan. They believed that since the Americans mediated the Treaty, that they cheated Japan out of what was rightfully theirs. They went so far as to start a riot in Tokyo on the 9th of September 1905
What the people were unaware of was that military, the Japanese got the best it could out of the treaty and out of the war as a whole. Despite the unbroken string of victories by Japan, Japanese forces were overextended in Manchuria, and the Japanese economy could no longer sustain a prolonged war effort. The latter was nearing bankruptcy.
But what if there were two divergences
(1) The Russians somehow agree to these terms and Japan occupies Siberia and the Liaoning Peninsula.
(2) Russia leaves the negotiating table and the war resumes.
However, a large degree of the Japanese public, including a young Hideki Tojo, believed that the treaty outright humiliated them. Popular opinion had demanded that Japan annex Eastern Siberia and keep it's conquests in the Liaoning Peniinsula and the northern tip of Sakhalin and that Russia pay war reparations to Japan. They believed that since the Americans mediated the Treaty, that they cheated Japan out of what was rightfully theirs. They went so far as to start a riot in Tokyo on the 9th of September 1905
What the people were unaware of was that military, the Japanese got the best it could out of the treaty and out of the war as a whole. Despite the unbroken string of victories by Japan, Japanese forces were overextended in Manchuria, and the Japanese economy could no longer sustain a prolonged war effort. The latter was nearing bankruptcy.
But what if there were two divergences
(1) The Russians somehow agree to these terms and Japan occupies Siberia and the Liaoning Peninsula.
(2) Russia leaves the negotiating table and the war resumes.