if america didn't open up Japan, then the meiji restoration wouldn't have happened
I think given the economic and political trends in the 19th century, it seems inevitable
someone would have opened up Japan and thus convinced the Shogunate to buy more modern arms and warships (as they did OTL--the Shogunate's navy in the 1860s was fairly typical of a minor Western country).
It would fail, Japan was also slowly modernizing, is just the Perry humiliation(as USA as a power was a nobody) was one of the last straw cost the tokugawa their power
If Britain or (maybe) France really wanted it, there is nothing the Japanese could do about it since any proxy like Germany or Russia or the United States couldn't give too much aid. The question is more "how can they really want it", and for Britain that's debateable since OTL Japan did exactly what they needed--it was a bulwark against Russian expansion in the Pacific and China. And France has a lot of power projection in the Pacific, but trying to totally rule Japan would just piss off Russia. Even though the Third Republic tried, there never were good Franco-German relations thanks to the Alsace-Lorraine issue, so diplomatically it wouldn't make sense for France to alienate Russia since they're the only counterweight to Germany. Beside, they already have Vietnam and Laos/Cambodia/those Chinese concessions in East Asia.