What if Japan won Midway?
What if Japan won Midway? A Japanese victory at Midway would have reopened the possibility of a Japanese invasion. But the Soviets would not have been able to send Zhukov back. Until the defeat of the German southern thrust, which would happen in early 1943, everything had to go there.
Did Japan think they could beat the US?
For 2,000 years Japan had never been defeated. There was no word for surrender in the Japanese dictionary. And although the Japanese government never believed it could defeat the United States, it did intend to negotiate an end to the war on favorable terms.