I was doing a bit more reading up on the history of Japan and their foreign relations from the Meiji Restoration to WWII and what seems to stand out is that Japan pretty much was on the good side of Britain for the bulk of the time.
Japan was an allied power in WWI and remained on decent terms with Britain into the interwar period.
The critical events that occured that allowed alignment of real world Japan with the Axis occured during the 1930s amid financial crisis, growing military influence over political matters in the country and a series of coup and assassination attempts against the Japanese government.
If you could take Prime minister Fumimaro Konoe and his foreign minister, Yosuke Matsuoka out of the picture somehow so they weren't in positions to influence Japan down a road of totalitiarianism, expansionism, nationalism and alliance with Germany and Italy then Japan might have been able to stay allied.
A real key to keeping Japan allied would have been to limit the political influence of the military, which was major.