Empire of Japan sits out ww2

[Yakman]

Japan is not going to be able to avoid war in China. There are too many Chinese itching for a go at it, and too many unruly Japanese officers. Incidents will continue to happen, and one of them will lead to war

this.

war with China was almost inevitable.

Chiang wanted it, the Japanese wanted it.

that being said, let's say that war with China doesn't happen. then what?

well, i'd argue that the Japanese would act largely as they did during ww2. w/o the enormous man sink that China had become, perhaps they also move against the USSR?

 

[DarthJF]

Japan is not going to be able to avoid war in China. There are too many Chinese itching for a go at it, and too many unruly Japanese officers. Incidents will continue to happen, and one of them will lead to war

Yeah, Chiang was actually starting to get things together in China when the war started. Give them another decade and they would be in a much stronger position. Inevitably there would be a war over Manchuria and by that time the balance of power against Japan would be even worse than it was back in 37. Imperial Japan is doomed to a bloody and futile war if they insist on keeping their posessions in mainland Asia. Korean independence movements couldn't be suppressed long term either.

I can see Japan keeping Taiwan and their Pacific island chains, but they'd lose Manchuria and Korea sooner or later. And probably wreck their country in the process as well.

 

[keynes2.0]

well, i'd argue that the Japanese would act largely as they did during ww2. w/o the enormous man sink that China had become, perhaps they also move against the USSR?

Why? Japan only allied with Germany to try to have an ally against the countries that would oppose it's imperial ambitions. Without those imperial ambitions, Japan has no reason to support Germany against the Soviet Union.

 

[eleinvisible]

Why? Japan only allied with Germany to try to have an ally against the countries that would oppose it's imperial ambitions. Without those imperial ambitions, Japan has no reason to support Germany against the Soviet Union.

The Soviet-Japanese border war had been intermittent since 1932, reaching its peak at Khalkhin Gol. The IJA long planned to expand into the Russian Far East. Either to annex it or at the very least to create another buffer state. In fact, they did occupy much of the area during the Russian Civil War.

If the Army's plan to invade China was rejected, I'd bet they would have then petitioned for war with Russia.

 

[DarthJF]

If the Army's plan to invade China was rejected, I'd bet they would have then petitioned for war with Russia.

You are forgetting something. Japanese Army didn't plan to invade China, they just invaded, just like they never petitioned for a war, they just started it.

Even without a war with China Japanese-Soviet border conflicts would probably have gone the same way. Japanese military tries to make incursions without bothering to ask for permission from Tokyo, and after the Soviets give them a bloody nose, they quietly give up the idea.

 

[gagenater]

Why? Japan only allied with Germany to try to have an ally against the countries that would oppose it's imperial ambitions. Without those imperial ambitions, Japan has no reason to support Germany against the Soviet Union.

Japan's alliance with Germany was not central or important to the way it conducted its war. Absent an alliance with Germany the Japanese would still have fought the war the same way they did in real life. It's own imperial objectives were THE reason it went to war and did so in the ways it did.

 

[Nicophorus]

So no one sees a successful future for the Empire of Japan that remains at peace? Interesting.

At the very least I could see it muddleing along, being forced to ends its mastery over Manchuria (on good terms with wink/wink to china, or bad) but retaining the other areas and then becoming the most powerful of the "Asian Economic Tigers" later in the century. There is no reason to think it can't do as well (99.9 percent likely far better) then our independent Korea/Taiwan/etc.

I even think the Empire of Japan would of been supported by the west as a strong counterbalance to USSR and (communist?) China during the cold war.

As for Korea, as a borderland between Commie vs. Capitalist, Japan would have the entire west supporting the occupation there and suppressing "communists", in the exact same way the west supported the "communist" rebels in Indonesia and elsewhere. There would be a vested interest in keeping them together, and perhaps the west would force the Japanese to enact policy to make for a more harmonious union.

 

[Calad]

So no one sees a successful future for the Empire of Japan that remains at peace? Interesting.

At the very least I could see it muddleing along, being forced to ends its mastery over Manchuria (on good terms with wink/wink to china, or bad) but retaining the other areas and then becoming the most powerful of the "Asian Economic Tigers" later in the century. There is no reason to think it can't do as well (99.9 percent likely far better) then our independent Korea/Taiwan/etc.

I even think the Empire of Japan would of been supported by the west as a strong counterbalance to USSR and (communist?) China during the cold war.

As for Korea, as a borderland between Commie vs. Capitalist, Japan would have the entire west supporting the occupation there and suppressing "communists", in the exact same way the west supported the "communist" rebels in Indonesia and elsewhere. There would be a vested interest in keeping them together, and perhaps the west would force the Japanese to enact policy to make for a more harmonious union.

Japan in 1930 wasnt nationalistic, it was ultra-nationalistic with imperial-expansive-xenophobic elements. Japanese even assasinated their own politicans who did not prefer war and wanted to avoid it. 1930 Japan is pretty much without an equivalent, even Hitler and Mussolini were more carefull of going to war.

 

[Culise]

Japan in 1930 wasnt nationalistic, it was ultra-nationalistic with imperial-expansive-xenophobic elements. Japanese even assasinated their own politicans who did not prefer war and wanted to avoid it. 1930 Japan is pretty much without an equivalent, even Hitler and Mussolini were more carefull of going to war.

Essentially this, but I want to emphasize how bad the government by assassination era really was. Japanese politics in the mid-1930s was such that 11 naval officers could march into the Prime Minister's house, murder him in cold blood, and get off with a slap on the wrist (the May 15 incident). A coup attempt in 1931, the Imperial Colors Incident, sought the assassination of much of the government, including the Prime Minister, Grand Chamberlain, and Foreign Minister, a blanket ban on political parties, and the "restoration" (based on a romanticized view of the Meiji Restoration) of the Showa Emperor against the perceived corruption of the Western democratic government; it ended with a sentence of less than a month's time under house arrest for only two of the ringleaders, and in fact, one of the said ringleaders, Kingoro Hashimoto, would go on to play a role both in politics and the war with China. The secret tribunals and executions that marked the effective destruction of the Imperial Way faction after the failure of the February 26 Incident (which you'll find to be a general naming trend; all of these putch attempts, assassinations, and the like tend to just be marked down in history as little "incidents") was not a triumph of civilian authority over the military, but a power-purge by their political rivals in the military (chief among them Hideki Tojo, who would eventually become Prime Minister), who proceeded to co-opt the faction in their own way.

Essentially, and forgive the edit, government by assassination ended not because militarism had ended in Japan, but because it had won: after the February 26 incident, in spite of the failure of the Imperial Way, the civilian government now served solely at the pleasure of the Army and Navy. The Okada government that formed in the wake of the collapse of the immediately-preceding cabinet in the wake of this incident was compelled to nominate officers based on the preferences of the serving Minister of War, and the military could compel the fall of the government simply by withdrawing the Minister of War and/or the Minister of the Navy while refusing to nominate a replacement, forcing a new cabinet to be formed. Political pressures subsequent to this in the lead-up to World War 2 therefore no longer are a matter of military versus civilian or right-wing versus left-wing, or even between factions within the Army, but rather simply between the Army and Navy: rather than peace or war, it's which nations the war will be waged against.

 

[Green Beret]

war with China was almost inevitable.

Chiang wanted it, the Japanese wanted it.

The Chinese people may have wanted it, Chiang abhorred the idea. For Chiang, the greatest enemy (and not coincidentally the greatest threat to his power) was the Communist party, part of the reason he had spent the past 10 years campaigning for their destruction (with only limited success). War with the Japanese presented Chiang with too many problems, the most obvious being the enormous and battle hardened Japanese army eager to conquer the country without any scruples as regards the destruction of people and places, but also the loss of his power base in Jiangsu and Zheijiang provinces, the rather speedy destruction of his still under (German) construction modern divisions and the loss of those diplomatic contacts which had enabled the construction of those forces in the first place. Moreover in the event of a prolonged conflict with the Japanese, the continued existence of the Chinese Communist Party would provide a viable alternative source of leadership for occupied China, which would be untainted by the Kuomintang's experiences of government, which is what happened historically and what provided the CPC with much of their support base in the subsequent civil war.

It's only once the war became an inevitability and popular opinion made the alternatives unpalatable the war that Chiang ended up overtaken by events and reconciled himself to fighting the war. The war Chiang would have liked to wage in 1937 would have been (in Barbara Tuchman's view atleast) against the vices of spitting, swearing, smoking and the socialists, not the Japanese.

 

[DarthJF]

It's only once the war became an inevitability and popular opinion made the alternatives unpalatable the war that Chiang ended up overtaken by events and reconciled himself to fighting the war. The war Chiang would have liked to wage in 1937 would have been (in Barbara Tuchman's view atleast) against the vices of spitting, swearing, smoking and the socialists, not the Japanese.

True, but this is true only for the time being. If/when Chiang would have finished modernising the Nationalist army, the east coast industrial hubs had developed further, and he had achieved the destruction or at least marginalisation of CCP (and the trend in 37 was in the direction of all these things), he would have had no qualms about attacking Japan and retaking Manchuria. If not for Marco Polo incident the war would have happened ten or twenty years later, likely by Chinese initiative if by some miracle Japanese military had managed to restrict themselves for that long.

 

[keynes2.0]

Japan's alliance with Germany was not central or important to the way it conducted its war. Absent an alliance with Germany the Japanese would still have fought the war the same way they did in real life. It's own imperial objectives were THE reason it went to war and did so in the ways it did.

Yeah... and they didn't fight the soviets historically. If we are removing Japan's imperial objectives from the equation we are left with a Japan that isn't going to attack anyone.

 

[Graf Zeppelin]

Yeah... and they didn't fight the soviets historically.

But they did fight the Soviets, several times. Also the Soviets dowed them in the end.

 

[gagenater]

But they did fight the Soviets, several times. Also the Soviets dowed them in the end.

They did but all before the 'world war' officially kicked off. By the time there was a war in Europe the Japanese had given up on attacking the soviets for the time being. And the soviets didn't fight the Japanese until close to the end when they 'dog piled in' to secure parts of Korea and some control and contact with the Chinese communists.

 

[Graf Zeppelin]

They did but all before the 'world war' officially kicked off. By the time there was a war in Europe the Japanese had given up on attacking the soviets for the time being. And the soviets didn't fight the Japanese until close to the end when they 'dog piled in' to secure parts of Korea and some control and contact with the Chinese communists.

Hmmm fair enough.

 

[Sejong]

As for Korea, as a borderland between Commie vs. Capitalist, Japan would have the entire west supporting the occupation there and suppressing "communists", in the exact same way the west supported the "communist" rebels in Indonesia and elsewhere. There would be a vested interest in keeping them together, and perhaps the west would force the Japanese to enact policy to make for a more harmonious union.

Historically the only reason why japan succeeded in occupying korea was because arms were not widely available to anti-japanese rebels. Many german and french smugglers supplied arms to rebels at exhorbitant rates but the amount of arms they could supply was limited so the rebels weren't able to be successful.

In a post-WW2 scenario where assault rifles are readily available korea would become japan's vietnam. IRL the rebels provided so many issues to the japanese that they were conducting a scorched earth policy in the countryside and emptying out entire villages. If arms were readily available, remember russia directly borders korea, then the rebellions would've become unsustainable.

I'd say unsustainable losses for japan by the 50's.

 

[JodelDiplom]

The Japanese actually dynamited a large part of the korean cultural heritage while they were in control over that country. There was absolutely no respect at all for Koreans or the Korean culture, and no way a "better together" could have worked out at that time. The Japanese did not want to treat anyone as equals when they could instead just lord it over them.

 

[gagenater]

The Japanese actually dynamited a large part of the korean cultural heritage while they were in control over that country. There was absolutely no respect at all for Koreans or the Korean culture, and no way a "better together" could have worked out at that time. The Japanese did not want to treat anyone as equals when they could instead just lord it over them.

Algeria; Vietnam; Afghanistan; Chechnya - take your pick. The Japanese were in for a situation like this in Korea of they had stayed. And both the USSR and NATO would have lots of reasons to oppose them.

 

[Yakman]

The Chinese people may have wanted it, Chiang abhorred the idea. For Chiang, the greatest enemy (and not coincidentally the greatest threat to his power) was the Communist party, part of the reason he had spent the past 10 years campaigning for their destruction (with only limited success). War with the Japanese presented Chiang with too many problems, the most obvious being the enormous and battle hardened Japanese army eager to conquer the country without any scruples as regards the destruction of people and places, but also the loss of his power base in Jiangsu and Zheijiang provinces, the rather speedy destruction of his still under (German) construction modern divisions and the loss of those diplomatic contacts which had enabled the construction of those forces in the first place. Moreover in the event of a prolonged conflict with the Japanese, the continued existence of the Chinese Communist Party would provide a viable alternative source of leadership for occupied China, which would be untainted by the Kuomintang's experiences of government, which is what happened historically and what provided the CPC with much of their support base in the subsequent civil war.

It's only once the war became an inevitability and popular opinion made the alternatives unpalatable the war that Chiang ended up overtaken by events and reconciled himself to fighting the war. The war Chiang would have liked to wage in 1937 would have been (in Barbara Tuchman's view atleast) against the vices of spitting, swearing, smoking and the socialists, not the Japanese.

the central thesis of the OP was that Japan does not invade China.

that being said, Chiang wanted war with Japan.

he didn't want war with Japan before he'd won the war against the communists.

if one looks at the Sino-Japanese War, it looks like Japan was allied with the Chinese Communists - the Japanese attacked the core of the Chinese Republic, something that the Chinese Communists were clearly incapable of doing.

that being said, let's go back to the OP.

So, the Kwantung Army doesn't take control of Japanese politics and invades China.

The psycho-militarists of Japan were scared of the USSR. That's why they invaded China in the first place.

If Japan doesn't invade China proper in the 1930s, what reason would they not have to invade the Soviet Far East in 1941-42?

 

[Graf Zeppelin]

The psycho-militarists of Japan were scared of the USSR. That's why they invaded China in the first place.

Hardly, they defeated the Russians a few agnly after Khalkhin Gol they have been a bit worried. The whole invasion of China thingie was about the US and to a lessser extend about the UK on the strategic side. They feared war with the US would be inevitable and they wanted a market and resources to strenghten their industry for that event.