Found on Wikipedia,
"The failure of Japan to understand the goals and interests of the other countries involved in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere led to a weak association of countries bound to Japan only in theory and not in spirit. Dr. Ba Maw argues that Japan could have engineered a very different outcome if the Japanese had only managed to act in accord with the declared aims of "Asia for the Asiatics". He argues that if Japan had proclaimed this maxim at the beginning of the war, and if the Japanese had actually acted on that idea,
"No military defeat could then have robbed her of the trust and gratitude of half of Asia or even more, and that would have mattered a great deal in finding for her a new, great, and abiding place in a postwar world in which Asia was coming into her own."
What do you all think? A Japan that unites Asia rather than attempts to capture it would be very interesting. I don't know enough about the lead up to WWII to come up with a POD, but i could see an empire with a very different temperament.
(And just to nip the nay-saying in the bud, I don't think a forum composed almost entirely of westerners can argue about the soul of a country we have barely ever understood in a time period before any of us were born.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_East_Asia_Co-Prosperity_Sphere#cite_note-33
"The failure of Japan to understand the goals and interests of the other countries involved in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere led to a weak association of countries bound to Japan only in theory and not in spirit. Dr. Ba Maw argues that Japan could have engineered a very different outcome if the Japanese had only managed to act in accord with the declared aims of "Asia for the Asiatics". He argues that if Japan had proclaimed this maxim at the beginning of the war, and if the Japanese had actually acted on that idea,
"No military defeat could then have robbed her of the trust and gratitude of half of Asia or even more, and that would have mattered a great deal in finding for her a new, great, and abiding place in a postwar world in which Asia was coming into her own."
What do you all think? A Japan that unites Asia rather than attempts to capture it would be very interesting. I don't know enough about the lead up to WWII to come up with a POD, but i could see an empire with a very different temperament.
(And just to nip the nay-saying in the bud, I don't think a forum composed almost entirely of westerners can argue about the soul of a country we have barely ever understood in a time period before any of us were born.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_East_Asia_Co-Prosperity_Sphere#cite_note-33