What if Japan was divided?

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What if Japan was divided?
What if Japan was divided into North and South Japan?
What if Japan was communist?

Gudde Moien and welcome back to Planet Althistory, today we are going to discuss, what if
Japan was divided?

Japan capitulated on the 15th August 1945 and signed their surrender on the 2nd of September 1945.
During this time it was the US that occupied all of Japan propper and some former territories as well.
The USSR got North Korea as occupation zone while the Southern part was occupied by the US.

Smaller military outposts in the Pacific controlled by Japan did not capitulate because they
had no communication with the outside world. Some soldiers even hold their position until the 70s.

A very important thing that was concluded since the beginning of the peace negociation was that
Japan would still be a monarchy. The emperor was viewed as a living god and taking him away
would cause for a lot of unrest among the Japanese. If this would change, then having a communist
Japan would not be very possible, as it would give the Japanese an initative to unite against
a common foe. The emperor needs to be there, perhaps not in power, but just there as representative
figure of Japan.

A few points that would favour a Soviet occupied Japan would be the following;
- the Kurile islands, which are still nowadays a problem between Russia and Japan
- the fact Japan occupied a good chunck of Sakhalin way before
- Stalins ambitions in general, it is because of him that Kaliningrad exists and that
many borders were redrawn
- Japan being on the losing side and not having much of leverage to negotiate
- since Japan is kinda far, the US could potentially see a few advantages in having the USSR as another power
that occupies Japan although this is less likely
- there was already a huge communist party and it is nowadays one of the biggest communist parties in the world.

So what if Japan was divided?