Japan does NOT go militarist

Japan had a Constitutional Monarchy of sorts in the 1920s.

Is there any POD which makes Japan NOT behave in the way it did in the 1930s and 1940s.

Could Japan find ways of obtaining raw materials without invasion etc?

If Japan were to follow such a course obviously there would be no Pearl Harbor etc.

Would something happen in the Atlantic which would allow Roosevelt to declare war in the first months of 1942?

If so would the West do better than in OTL because the resources would all be concentrated on Hitler or would a more divided America be less effecting?


I assume an officially neutral America would mean a longer WW2 and Stalin doing better than in OTL?

Any other suggestions

Japanese Empire without militarist on 1930-1940

I don't believe relation with Cina was very good!
No Militarist ,but a fascist party before or after !

Derek Jackson said:

Japan had a Constitutional Monarchy of sorts in the 1920s.

Is there any POD which makes Japan NOT behave in the way it did in the 1930s and 1940s.

Could Japan find ways of obtaining raw materials without invasion etc?

If Japan were to follow such a course obviously there would be no Pearl Harbor etc.

Would something happen in the Atlantic which would allow Roosevelt to declare war in the first months of 1942?

If so would the West do better than in OTL because the resources would all be concentrated on Hitler or would a more divided America be less effecting?


I assume an officially neutral America would mean a longer WW2 and Stalin doing better than in OTL?

Any other suggestions

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Have Britain keep their alliance with Japan after WWI (the US pressured Britain to let the agreement lapse); maybe for some reason the affects of the Great Depression are less severe in Japan than elsewhere.

There are a whole slew of socio-economic influences that brought about Japanese militarism in the early 20th century. The Constitutional government of Japan was fairly Prussian like and the military had much influence then one can imagine by just casually saying "Japan had a Constitutional Monarchy of sorts in the 1920s" - I mean, without knowing the scope of the sitution it would also be right to say that Germany had a Constitutional Monarchy under Wilhelm II. They also needed room for their growing population.

The termination of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance was also welcomed by the British. As early as the end of the Great War the Royal Navy was worried about giving the Japanese unrestricted access to their developments in naval aviation. The British most likely would have let the alliance lapse anyway, since it wasn't appropriate for the politics of the post-Great War world, and they certainly weren't pleased with the type of aid they got from Japan thru out the war.

Regarding access to raw materials, where exact are the Japanese going to get access to vital material without invaded in order to secure that access? The Japanese Home Islands are not exactly rich in mineral wealth to begin with.

Derek Jackson said:

Japan had a Constitutional Monarchy of sorts in the 1920s.

Is there any POD which makes Japan NOT behave in the way it did in the 1930s and 1940s.

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You would IMO have to stop the installation of the rule that only serving officers could be minister of War or minister of the Navy, which was in 1903? IIRC, which is what gave the militarists the stranglehold on Japanese politics they enjoyed.
But to do this you'd probably have to go back well into the Meiji era. The man who was responsible (called Arigata??) was from the first generation of Meiji oligarchs.

David S Poepoe said:

Regarding access to raw materials, where exact are the Japanese going to get access to vital material without invaded in order to secure that access? The Japanese Home Islands are not exactly rich in mineral wealth to begin with.

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They can trade for them the way everyone else does, Japanese industry enjoyed huge export success in the early-mid 1930s that was only cut off by the war in China and later US embargo; it was militarism itself which made a military solution to Japan's resource shortage necessary.


1920s Japan was also much more democratic than pre-1914 Germany. The basic difference was the presence in Japan of a Premier and Cabinet, appointed from and responsible to the legislature rather than the crown. High corruption kept the prestige of elected politicians relatively low, but they had plenty of power.

That being said, militarism was a pretty natural reaction for a society like Japan's in the face of the strained international and domestic situation after 1929, and is very difficult to avoid altogether. However, it might be possible to moderate Japanese militarism:

In 1927 there was a right-wing government in power in Japan, and the re had just been a sharp recession. Against this background certain officers of the Kwangtung Army arranged the assassination of the Chinese Warlord in control of Manchuria. This was probably intended as the prelude to a takeover attempt, but the government disowned the operation and the Army wasn't desperate/independent/powerful enough to proceed without official backing yet.

If instead the Japanese government had pushed through with an early occupation of Manchuria and ran on an openly imperialist platform in subsequent elections there would have been a number of positive changes from OTL; firstly, militarism would have been integrated into the 1920s political process, allowing the politicians to maintain control and avoid the unchecked aggression by quite junior officers that gradually removed any element of rational calculation from Japanese policy in the 1930s. Secondly, Japan would have had a militaristic, right-wing government in power in 1929 to take the blame for the Great Depression rather than a Liberal one, leaving liberal politicians with enough credibility to remain a force in Jap0anese politics. Finally, the obvious and emotive "military" response to the economic crisis (the occupation of Manchuria) would not be an issue in 1930-31. In this ATL the Great Depression might actually lead to a Japanese shift away from militarism.

Japan was pretty much in chaos politically and economically in the 20's and well into the 30's, but it is intriguing to imagine the post WWII proces started earlier.

I guess that would require at least two substantial PoD's:

1. Japan is decisively defeated in a major war - I guess it will have to be the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05. But we'll also have to find a good reason for why the British allowed that to happen. But a decisive defeat will take away most of the military glory, which by nature was an important prerequisite for militarism.

2. The economic and political development towards a modern society and economy will have to firmly consoloidated before the crisis hits in 1929, or perhaps the crisis never hits.

An alternative PoD could be the Washington conference collapsing and a naval arms race starts, and with GB and Japan still being allied. I could imagine that the increased military spending will be enough to seriously lessen the crisis or even remove it, and Japan could especially benefit from developing economical ties to the British Empire. But in this TL I think it will still be difficult to keep the Japanese on the narrow path of democratic virtue.

Regards

Steffen Redbeard

Derek Jackson said:

Is there any POD which makes Japan NOT behave in the way it did in the 1930s and 1940s.
Any other suggestions

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sure they could have lost the russo-japanesse war.

Japanese culture is a warrior culture it was ingrained upon their psyche. They needed a good beating some time in their past to get them into the modern age.
So I'd agree with them getting walked on by Russia would help a lot.

Japan buys the whole Sea of Okhotsk drainage basin in 1918 or afterwards, from a starving White or Red Russia? From the Tsar's government or the Bolsheviks.
This doesn't do anything for the nutritional needs of Japan except the protein from pastoralism and fishing, but it's got lots of minerals and lumber that Japan can trade for food after processing.
Another POD is a social security system. These systems depress the birthrate by allowing people not to have children to take care of them in their old age. Any time a society sets up a social security system, the birthrate collapses one generation later when people have had time to realise that they don't need to have so many children and they can have just one or two and still not starve to death when they get old.

By every reasnoble criteria Japan had fully made the transition to the "modern world" by the 1920s at the very latest. Militarism is not necessarily "primitive" and Japanese militarism was in fact a deeply modern phenomenon. Mediaevil Japan had had no more of a warrior culture than most of mediaevil Europe, and between Hideyoshi's invasion of korea and the Sino-Japanese war of 1895 Japan had never fought any of her neighbours; that's almost 300 years of internal and external peace, a record no western state can match. Even after the meij restoration it is difficult to argue that Japan was more warlike or expnsionist than any other contemporary imperial power.

Japan was certainly a more conservative country than most western nations, and the clash between this tradition and the socio-economic changes taking place at a fast pace by the 1920s did produce a cultural crisis by the end of the decade, but conservatism does not equal militarism and the latter's triumph in the 1930s was the result of a specific set of political and historical circumstances not of irresistable forces.

BTD said:

sure they could have lost the russo-japanesse war.

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So, they're going to loose their first major modern war, they're going to have to accept another humiliation from the West and they're then going to face an aggresive, triumphant foreign enemy establishing a major military and economic presence a few dozen mlies off their coast and their response will be less militarism and more pro-western policies?

This would seem more likely to bring about the cultural and political tranformation of the 1930s 25 years early than to avert it.

Matthew Craw said:

So, they're going to loose their first major modern war, they're going to have to accept another humiliation from the West and they're then going to face an aggresive, triumphant foreign enemy establishing a major military and economic presence a few dozen mlies off their coast and their response will be less militarism and more pro-western policies?

This would seem more likely to bring about the cultural and political tranformation of the 1930s 25 years early than to avert it.

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It all depends on how bad they lose, and what kinds of humility the czar decides to teach japan. It is forseeable that the czar would decide it needs some of japan both to teach them lots of humility and to keep an eye on them militarily.