You can argue whether the insistence of keeping an emporer and accepting that condition made it unnecessary to bomb them was the key, but I contend that the national psyche of war and dominance that overly influenced the population could only be subjugated one way, and that was total defeat - the best and most expedient way at that time was the A-bomb.
I disagree. You are forgetting that Japan (far more than Iraq, for example) had a recent quasi-Democratic condition of free elections. The imperial elite had been thoroughly discredited even before the bomb and Japan was beaten. This is why the Japanese were sending out peace feelers! It was not necessary for us to violate the ancient rules of war by a TERRORISTIC tactic of INTENTIONAL killing thousands of babies (both in the womb and in their cribs) as well as destroy the heart of Japanese Christianity. If that Japanese had done that to our babies and little old ladies, there would have been no question that they would have been executed for war crimes.