What IF the US had left Japan to its own direction after WWII?

[My Wife Hates CIV]

Where do you think Japan would be today had the US handled the aftermath like Iraq?

Would Japan even exist today? Would it be the Japan we know right now?

[Proteus_MST]

It would be clearly more militaristic than it is today.

And I guess the Tenno would still be the countries leader

[My Wife Hates CIV]

Following Japan's surrender, the Allies issued the Shinto Directive separating church and state within Japan.

would this even work in a middle eastern country today? is it even possible?? Are these countries today doomed because of this?

[Proteus_MST]

Following Japan's surrender, the Allies issued the Shinto Directive separating church and state within Japan.

would this even work in a middle eastern country today? is it even possible?? Are these countries today doomed because of this?

There actually is one example for a separation of church and state:
Turkey

After Mustafa Kemal Ataturk took power in the country, he did everything to secularize it and succeeded.
With the result that Turkey AFAIK is the most secular muslim country you can find (surely not without problems ... especially in the more rural areas ... but the major cities, like Istanbus, surely aren´t different from western cities).
While there surely are powers who would want to turn Turkey into a more islamist state again (among them today surely Erdogan and some of his allied parties) turkey has been a secular state for almost a century now.

So, I don´t think it would be impossible with other islamist countries ... but I guess it would take time ... and democracy would have to be protected for long enough, so the population becomes accustomed to the freedoms of democracy and will fight against any powers who want to take their freedoms away from them again

[giblets]

The question is kind of vague, does the US still use atomic bombs against Japan and force Japan to surrender in this timeline?

[Elok]

Obviously Japan would go just like Iraq: the religiously and ethnically divided local population would turn against each other in a horrible civil war, then form a fundamentalist religious state intent on murdering minorities and conquering all the nearby vulnerable countries, like China and Korea.

[My Wife Hates CIV]

cant argue with that. watching it happen on the other side of planet today. (well, maybe not other side of planet, but might as well be)

[Elok]

No, that was sarcasm, and you missed it because you're hammered. Differences between Japan then and Iraq now:

Japan was a burned-out hulk at the end of WWII; many of its cities had been firebombed, two of them nuked, its military gutted. Iraq was taken after a pitifully short war, and instead of being killed most of its military, especially the brass, just wound up unemployed. And they had lots of guns.

Japan was and is ethnically homogeneous, at least compared to Iraq. The country has been thinking of itself as one country for more than a thousand years. Pretty much everybody was and is some mixture of Shinto and Buddhist. Iraq was basically a political fiction held together in Saddam's fist, and a minority had been oppressing the majority.

On a related note, most Iraqis identify with some particular identity not exclusive to Iraq; they are Shiites, or Sunnis, or Kurds. This invites cross-border meddling. Japan's borders are all water, and most every aspect of Japanese culture is exclusive to Japan (or takes a uniquely Japanese aspect). China and Korea sure as hell weren't in any shape to meddle.

Iraq is currently host to a violently expansionist, massacre-happy regime of fanatics. Japan was like that before the war, and it took a tremendous amount of bombing to make them lose their stomach for it.

After WWII, we were stuck butting heads against another superpower. Now, Russia is a sort of second-rate power we can't exactly ignore, but who tend to go on the back burner of foreign policy.

Gribbler et al, feel free to chime in.

EDIT: Also, fifty years difference means we're fighting a very different kind of war.

[My Wife Hates CIV]

your first argue didn't impress me... so I stopped reading.

"Japan was a burned-out hulk at the end of WWII; many of its cities had been firebombed, two of them nuked, its military gutted. Iraq was taken after a pitifully short war, and instead of being killed most of its military, especially the brass, just wound up unemployed. And they had lots of guns."

There was nothing left of Iraq (just because it only took a week makes no difference)... the US stopped the bombing of death (highway) because it was so bad.

next thread.

[Elok]

A quick look at Wiki suggests that a little more than one out of every thirty people in Japan died during WWII. Wiki crashed before I could look up comparable stats for the Iraq invasion itself, but going from memory comparable devastation would have required several hundred thousand dead. I don't think that actually happened.

[My Wife Hates CIV]

but factor in only a week. the point was Iraq and japan were in no condition to continue to the fight.

[Elok]

Which is why Iraq continued a violent insurgency for years after it was taken, and is even now in the middle of a bloody war.

[My Wife Hates CIV]

that's my point. Obama handled it all wrong. and it was his to handle correctly.

[Elok]

Bush was in charge for the first five years. Anyway, in no condition to fight, fought anyway because of weakness of president who wouldn't be elected for years, check. Care to read the rest of post eight now?

[My Wife Hates CIV]

oh I can could say it was the failure of the president before bush. this means nothing. lead... or move aside. it's always the guy before you who's f* up.