Could Japan keep expanding in Asia and avoid America?

Would Japan have benefited from ignoring the United States and focusing on Asia while American policy remained isolationist?

Japan had already pursued expansion in Asia for years without directly attacking America, with the war in China showing that this approach was already under way well before Pearl Harbor.

Japan had already spent years expanding in Asia without directly attacking the United States before Pearl Harbor. Its invasion of China allows the wider conflict to be dated into the early 1930s, even though the European war began later. The strategic problem was how long Asian expansion could continue without provoking direct American opposition.