WI train accident kills Count Terauchi?

As we all know, Field Marshall Count Hisachi Terauchi was the commander of all Japanese forces in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific and one-time War Minister.

In September 1926, the Sanyo Main Line train he was on derailed in an accident that killed 34 people, but he was not injured. Now, what if the train accident killed him? How would this affect 1930s Japan and later, the course of the Second World War?
 
He became a major general in 1924. In September 1926, the Sanyō Main Line train he was riding on derailed in an accident that killed 34 people, but Terauchi was not injured.

Terauchi became Chief of Staff of the Chosen Army in Korea in 1927. After his promotion to lieutenant general in 1929, he was assigned command of the IJA 5th Division and later transferred to the IJA 4th Division in 1932. In 1934, he became commander of the Taiwan Army of Japan.

In October 1935 Terauchi was promoted to full general and became involved with the Kodoha faction in military politics. After the February 26 Incident in 1936 he was the army's choice as War Minister, which further intensified the conflict between the military and the civilian political parties in the Japanese Diet.
The Imperial Way Faction (皇道派, Kōdōha?) was a political faction in the Imperial Japanese Army, active in the 1920s and 1930s and largely supported by junior officers aiming to establish a military government, that promoted totalitarian, militarist, and expansionist ideals.
Tōseiha group, a loose faction united mostly by their opposition to Araki and his Kōdōha.
So perhaps the Toseiha are slightly stronger, and the Chinese war is delayed several years while Japan builds up It's Strength.
 
So perhaps the Toseiha are slightly stronger, and the Chinese war is delayed several years while Japan builds up It's Strength.

It might mean also mean a Japan that'll be repeating its WW1 actions: joining the Allies out of forced circumstances, especially if and when the Soviets are finished with the Nazis and decides to turn back to the Far East for more pickings. One might even be able to see American-sponsored (or atleast tacit approval from Washington) Japanese invasion of Manchuria and China should the Communist Chinese gain a upper hand in this Cold War.
 
In my personal opinion without the chaos that the Japanese caused from their invasion Mao is going to be crushed by sheer numbers of the Nationalists.
 
How would this affect 1930s Japan and later, the course of the Second World War?


Several recent threads led me to begin reading Japanese history again. I don't see any changes, major or otherwise, at all flowing from Terauchi's death. The Count's role in politics, plus the conduct of the China war and later Pacific war, simply isn't substantial enough.

With regards to the war in China, Terauchi wasn't part of the Kwantung army during the '20s and 30s and it was that organization's deliberate course of provocation which forced war upon China over Tokyo's phony protest. More tellingly, the Count didn't any steps to rein in the Kwnatung when he was war minister.

With regards to the WW2, while he was the overall commander of Japan's forces fighting in southeast Asia and the Pacific, he wasn't the commander on the spot and his ability to influence the many fronts "his" troops fought on was severely constrained by Japan's tiny sealift capacity.

The factional disputes mentioned are also a red herring. Terauchi a member of the Kodoha faction, but so were many other officers in the IJA. As for the Toseiha faction, it was just as militaristic as the Kodoha. It's opposition to the Kodoha had everything to do with issues of personal ambition and little to do with national policy. Factionalism was a way of life in the Japanese armed forces and every general officer, army or navy, belonged to one or more.

Terauchi is just one pebble of millions inside the avalanche, so his death isn't going to make any real difference.
 
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