As I alluded to, the 1939 Battle Of Khalkhin Gol, is probably one of the most significant battles of WWII that few know about, yet it wound up changing the entire course of the war. From that point on, Japan wanted nothing to do with fighting the Soviet Union, and they were in big trouble, until the Fall of France and The Netherlands, gave them an opening to take those colonies. That's why they joined the Axis in the first place, to curry favor with the Germans. At the time, the Soviet Union wasn't in the war. While Japan originally was upset with Hitler over the Non-Aggression Pact with Stalin, that attitude changed, and they shifted to considering the US as their biggest enemy.
Battles -- plural -- between USSR and Imperial Japan which lasted four months until September of 1939. Your Ukraine-sourced editorial cartoon pictured Hitler (not Hirohito) with Stalin, while the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact fell apart a little less than two years after the Khalkhin Gol battles ended. The Anti-Comintern Pact of November 1936 was between Japan and Germany, quite more "allied" than the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact which was about 'nonaggression.' Dirty games played out all across that era, as the USSR ended up allied to the US for some few years.
Nonetheless, it was a very modern Ukranian-sourced graphic used to illustrate your point that "History doesn't repeat, but it sure does rhyme!"