This kind of debacle has long been pointed out by social contract theorists. To wit: "The usual, and almost only way whereby this union is dissolved, is the inroad of foreign force making a conquest upon them: for in that case, (not being able to maintain and support themselves, as one entire and independent body) the union belonging to that body which consisted therein, must necessarily cease, and so every one return to the state he was in before, with a liberty to shift for himself, and provide for his own safety, as he thinks fit, in some other society. Whenever the society is dissolved, it is certain the government of that society cannot remain. Thus conquerors swords often cut up governments by the roots, and mangle societies to pieces, separating the subdued or scattered multitude from the protection of, and dependence on, that society which ought to have preserved them from violence." [John Locke, "Chapter XIX: Of the Dissolution of Government," Second Treatise of Civil Government, 1690]

And all it takes is one jerk. A sentry asleep at the switch. A careless clerk. A corrupt employee. But none worse than the hardhearted, overly ambitious, incompetent chief executive. How many CEOs bailed out while their companies were ruined? How often do prime ministers and presidents and kings plunge their constituencies into chaos?

A kingdom can be carved out of conquest, but that rooster will come home to roost. The Japanese in the haze of their militarism ran wild in the Asia-Pacific but their rampage was brought to a halt by strange, new weapons that fell from the sky.

It began when a monarch of the Yamato invaded Korea, making the peninsula her tributary. It ended when the American shogun took the Tenno off his high horse and brought his "celestial" chambers back to earth.

Toyotomi, fuelled by personal ambition, tried to invade China and failed miserably. Though he locked Japan's doors afterwards, the so-called land of the rising sun could not keep out the Westerners, especially when Commodore Perry and the black ships came calling centuries later.

Seventeen countries invoked the Townsend Harris concept of Extra-Territoriality in Japan, yet it only bestirred the Yamato to embark on its own hegemonism in the form of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95. As a prize, the Mikado took the Liaoyang Peninsula and other territories from the Qing Dynasty.

"Japan placed her feet on the continent, the possession of the islands which assured her the supremacy of the Chinese Seas, and imposed her machines and industries on the vanquished nation. If she did not want to annex it, she at least wanted to make sure that she should exploit it." [Paul Lafargue, "The Chino-Japanese War," Justice, June 1, 1895]

Then, in 1904-5, it was turn of the Russian Czar to take a beating at the hands of the Japanese. Ten years hence, with appetites whetted, the hegemonists joined the winning side in the First World War. More booty, more desires.

In the Roaring Twenties, the rural and bourgeois youth of Japan were indoctrinated into the barracks life. They came of age and were fed as cannon fodder in the violence of the Great Depression.

The Japanese re-invaded China, raping Nanjing in 1937. The circle of destruction grew. Mongolia was assaulted, but the terrorists of Tenno were repulsed. French Indochina was suborned and the stage was set for an inescapable confrontation with the Western powers.

The collapse of Anglo-Saxon rule in many parts of the Orient aggravated the endangerment of the democracies as the Fascist machine rolled across Europe and Africa. Be that as it may, the Japanese were wrong to assume that they would be invincible overlords.

An example of their big booboo was the public commitment of the Koiso administration to a Japanese victory at Leyte, likening the campaign to the 1582 Battle of Tennozan, which was a Japanese historical juncture. "Thus, Koiso effectively proclaimed to the nation that the victor at Leyte would win the war." [Richard B. Frank. Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire. NY: Penguin Books, 1999, p. 90]

Guess what? The Allies -- Americans, Australians and Filipinos -- won at Leyte. The Japanese predicament could not be remedied by a simple change of administration. Worse for them, though the Emperor himself may have wanted to extricate his tentacles from the South Seas and have a negotiated peace that would let him keep some of his ill-gotten gains, Hirohito also wanted one more big win before any ceasefires.

On June 9, 1945, Hirohito's Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal wrote a "Draft Plan for Controlling the Crisis Situation," which tied a Japanese withdrawal from the battlefield to the granting of independence of the former European colonies in Southeast Asia and Southwest Pacific and the mediation of a power not yet embroiled in the Great Eastern War.

On the Allied side, it was settled that Japan would be strangled with a range of offensives, from the minimum of a blockade and bombardment to the maximum of an invasion of Kyushu. The choice given to the enemy was unconditional surrender or ultimate defeat.

On the Japanese side, the non-negotiable item was the preservation of the Chrysanthemum Throne. Their nightmare scenario was the disillusioned masses rising in a Communist revolution. Thus, the imperial staffers were frenzied into hatching a Ketsu-Go (Decisive Operation) master plan to defend their home islands, envisioning the annihilation of expected American beachheads at Kyushu and do-or-die conditions in six other areas.

Japan was spared of a Soviet Occupation and horrendous land battles with Americans. Japan escaped a revolution (native, liberal democratic or Communist) and Hirohito kept his crown and his head. The Japanese acceded to an American Occupation, but only after the firebombing of Tokyo and the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The war was precipitated and managed by the Japanese militarists on behalf of their deified king. The Japanese people sacrificed their health, happiness and homes for the enrichment of the Emperor, his warlords and the zaibatsus.