The organizers of the coup attempt were mid-level officers who experienced ridged rejection of their plan at basically all levels of the army and the imperial palace they tried. In short, it was never going to work and never came close to working.

The whole story of how Japan came to surrender is really fascinating, partly because it’s been heavily distorted by the American government in particular. It’s not hard to see why: the whole justification for using atomic weapons on Japanese civilians is dependent on the “Japan is too stubborn to surrender” narrative.

And while it’s true that the decision makers in Japan exhibited incredible resilience to the pressure being applied by the US, if you care about understanding their own internal justification for that stubbornness, you will see that using the nuclear bombs was ineffective, unnecessary and largely the result of institutional inertia set in motion before Roosevelt’s death.

Highly recommend this if you want to know the whole story: https://youtu.be/RCRTgtpC-Go