When Emperor Hirohito required that they sue for peace, the army bent to his will.
Yet peace was still far from certain. That night, a handful of rebellious officers led several hundred enlisted men on a rampage throughout the Imperial palace in search of Hirohito and the recordings of a peace message he'd made to be broadcast to the world the next day.
The rebels begged the war minister, army general Korechika Anami, for support. Anami was torn between his desire to continue the war and his loyalty to his emperor and, as a result, did nothing. If the coup succeeded, he would support it. If not, he would not oppose the surrender.
The rebels then confronted the commander of the Imperial Guards at the palace. When he refused to support them, the rebels shot him. This infuriated the guards, who then began to fight the rebels, thus dooming the coup. By morning the coup was over and most of the rebel leaders had committed suicide.
But what if Anami, who had all the armies of Japan at his disposal, had decided to support the coup? The Imperial Guards would have aided the rebels, Hirohito would have been captured or killed, and the war would not have ended on August 14, 1945. Instead, it would have required an invasion of the Japanese home islands by the armed forces of the United States of America. Instead of peace, the United States would have been forced into Operation Downfall, the bloodiest campaign in its history.
The first phase, Olympic, would have been the invasion of Kyushu on or about November 1, 1945, while the second phase, Coronet, would have been the invasion of Honshu about six months later. Most American planners agreed that a bloody American victory would have been won by the end of 1946. The soldiers, sailors, and marines who would have constituted the invading force were nowhere near as optimistic.