Yonai's coalition alternative to one-party rule

Yonai's earlier cabinet balanced two navy officers, two army officers, two representatives from each of the Rikken Minseito and Rikken Seiyukai, and about eight independents. The counterfactual borrows that coalition structure for his proposed return in July 1941. Both parties had been dissolved in 1940 during Konoe's attempt to organize politics through the Imperial Rule Assistance Association. Reassembling support from different political groups would let Yonai balance party interests against the services and their more extreme factions. Hachiro Arita, a former foreign minister under Yonai who objected to the Indochina deployment, is proposed as a returning minister. Matsuoka is excluded from the imagined government. The reason given for retaining separate political bases is that a single umbrella organization could fall under the control of its largest faction.