You forget that Pearl Harbor was only one of multiple US territories attacked by Japan at that time. The Philippines, and Guam were also hit within hours of it. The original Japanese planning didn't include Pearl but was added only six months earlier. So the war still happens.

Without the attack, the USN would still have a half dozen battleships in the line but the carrier was still destined to be the queen of the fleets during WWII so the Pacific War remains a heavily influenced by carrier tactics. Even before Pearl Harbor occurred the US was already commissioning a lot more carriers and doing so in numbers greater than Battleships so the attack didn't really shake up the US navy which was already understanding the potential that carriers held.

As for changes this becomes debatable. The original concept the Japanese had for at least a decade was that in a war between the two, the US would sail its fleet straight to Japan. Their plan was that en-route they would attack it from various island bases nearby with ships and planes in order to whittle down the US fleet. By the time the decimated US Fleet reached Japanese waters it would be finished off by the main Japanese fleet in a decisive battle. At that point the US would be forced to sue for peace on their terms. The attack on Pearl Harbor actually junked this long developed strategic planning by the Japanese. Instead the Japanese decided to gamble on a strategy of shock and awe betting that the loss of a couple of battleships in Hawaii (their own realistic assumption) would stun the American public enough to force the US leadership to sue for peace at this point. As we know the actual reactions was shock but with anger instead of fear and turning generally isolationist public into warhawks.

Wrecking battleship row in Hawaii obvious put a crimp in the US navy who now did not have a battleline sufficient to carry out such any strategy of sending a massed fleet straight to Tokyo Bay. But the US Navy had already been moving away from that sort of thinking even before Pearl Harbor and had been developing ideas like the island hopping strategy that it would eventually us during the war. With an intact battleship fleet they might have still considered the direct strategy but its not a guaranteed thing.

So if just the attack on Pearl Harbor doesn’t occur, The Japanese invasion of the Philippines, Guam and Wake still triggers a war with the US. While the shock factor isn’t as severe the surprise attack on the Philippines still leads to outrage and public support for war. US declares war and launches a Plan Orange style counterattack across the central pacific but now its battle fleet is intact. The war probably goes essentially as OTL with a small percentage chance that the US suffers some setbacks early on similar to OTL but by enlarge things play out essentially as normal just with a strong US surface fleet to start the war and maybe some more propaganda being necessary to motivate the US public to commit to the unconditional surrender plan.

Pearl Harbor is Japan's only plausible strategic option.

They can't seize any oil from the Dutch East Indies without taking the Philippines, but that was a U.S. territory. Therefore, the Pacific Fleet had to be taken out in the flimsy hope that the United States would just sue for peace.

If they couldn't do anything of the sort, their war in China would've ground to a halt.

What if Peal Harbor never happened? If nothing at all happened between the US and Japan we would have continued to support the UK, France, etc. Germany would have been able to put more effort into the war against Russia, but Russia would have eventually run. If the US and Japan did not end up at war, Russia would have had a much bigger role in Europe.

In order for Imperial Japan to NOT attack Pearl Harbor to be remotely feasible, Imperial Japan has to come under complete control of the Japanese civilian government. Anything less means the militarists control the government and attacks the United States either way. And the war with China was have been completely prevented meaning to invasion of Manchuria.

Imperial Japan was NEVER going stop at conquering China, the Japanese ultranationalists made it abundantly clear in their declarations, documents and formation of the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere", a plan to subjugate all of Asia and the Pacific underneath the boot of Imperial Japan.

And no, Imperial Japan cannot bypass the United States to retrieve oil from Indonesia without first taking the Philippines Islands from the United States. China alone was a massive drain on Imperial Japan's resources, meanwhile the Philippines was needed as a springboard to launch a sustainable invasion and occupation of Indonesia. The United States had built deep-water ports, infrastructure and material necessary to fulfill the necessary logistical requirements to launch an invasion, sustainable logistics, cut down on resources and distance bottlenecks without hemorrhaging their already restrained supply lines.

In reality, Imperial Japanese High Command already considered bypassing the Philippines to reach Indonesia and considered it an impossibility, because they wanted all of Asia not just part of it, thought the United States was going to intervene nonetheless, and logistics networks were already at their breaking point unless the Japanese use the Philippines as a midpoint. The Ultranationalists sought to rapidly strike the United States believing its willpower and people to be weak, then seize all of Asia for Imperial Japan.

Yes, I have already considered Imperial Japan using French Indochina as another port and it still doesn't work, because the French built their ports and infrastructure to accommodate resource extraction NOT prioritize massive military operations. They would not have been remotely able to use the ports to sustain an invasion of Indonesia, because of the distance, logistics bottlenecks, poor infrastructure and lack of capacity.

The Atlantic fleet eventually exchanges fire with German submarines. The U.S. still enters the war. 

If the Japanese seized the Dutch oil fields while bypassing US and British territory, there is almost no chance the USA enters the war against Japan. FDR would want to, but public opinion would not support this. It is impossible to predict how this is resolved, though eventually Japan exhausts itself in China.

War was inevitable. It would have been much worse imho.

There are a lot of questions behind this question, and a lot of what needs to come out is why doesn't Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Is this something tactical, like Japan learns that the US Carriers are not there and so the surprise attack is deferred, or is this something very strategic, like Germany didn't invade the Netherlands in 1940 and so the Dutch government must sell goods to Japan (and Germany) to the frustration of the UK and US.

The underlying predicament Japan is in is decades in the making. Japan has decided that she wants to be a colonial power, and in the have and have not world of the 1930s, she became embroiled in a series of landgrabs and attempts to try to eat China. This was not a spur of the moment decision, even during WWI, Japan was trying to turn China into colonial holdings (the 21 demands).

The fine points of subjugating China could go in many different directions. China manages to look too scary for Japan to treat it as a have not? That would probably be a whole different 20th century; China is so weak that Japan manages to carve up what she wants and doesn't need a giant war? Cool, Japan will still need both hands to hold onto China, even a busted broken China is a lot to hold onto.

But if we assume the premise of Japan being at war with China, and China being too sturdy to bend to their will, Japan must have oil, steel, and war materials. The decision to seize them emerged as a result of a US Oil Embargo, itself a response from Japan grabbing Indochina from France--and Japan did this to try to cut off ways for aid to get to China...back to the same problem again.

It's not quite as simple as an 'if/then' statement with Japan's war with China leading to Pearl Harbor, but fundamentally, Japan believed that she should eat China, and that this would allow her to prosper, and that European Nations had eaten whole continents, wiped out whole populations, and become extremely wealthy doing so. The USA protested Japan's behavior with China, and wasn't willing to fight on that specific point, but she was willing to use soft power to leave Japan without the means to conduct that war.

For as much as the OP wants a different direction, that's going to be a serious setup to get it.

If Pearl was never attacked, the US would have still entered the war regardless. The reason why the japs even attacked Hawaii was to disable the US fleet so they can take over south east Asia without interference, as they NEEDED those oil fields in order to keep their war effort going. The US had territory in the Philippines and Guam, which the japs attacked and took over almost immediately after Pearl. So if had Pearl not happened, those American territories being attacked would still have drawn the US into the war, but since they have their fleet fully intact, things turn out much differently. But the results are still the same. The utter devastation of the Japanese pacific fleet and Air Force, and the total defeat of Japan as a whole.

I'm sure there are conspiracy theorists who will tell you it didn't and FDR faked the whole thing to drag America into WW2.

The Nazis were already sinking US shipping at the cost of US lives, most Notably the Reuben James just a few weeks before Pearl Harbor. Most likely by spring of 42, 2-3 months after PH, the US would have declared war on Germany. Since Japan wouldn't have Pacific the oil fields they took after the PH attack, their offensive in China would.have slowed to a grind.

As a result, the war in Europe, especially the push from Normandy to Berlin would have gone quicker and US and British forces would have taken Berlin instead of Russia. But it wouldn't have changed the Cold War boundaries because FDR was an idiot who promised away Eastern Europe to Russia.

The Japan /China stays regionalized with Japan only maintain control over a few of the most important coastal cities and the Korean peninsula.

Beyond that a multitude of possibilities opens up depending on many factors.

Would Russia suddenly supporting Chi Com forces??? Maybe but probably not beyond material support because Russia did NOT want engage in war with Japan.

Would the Allies support free China forces??? Again probably materially. But they would drastically reinforce they Asian holding to determine Japan from attacking them.

Post VE day there would be a tri-polar world with Russia controlled Eastern Europe, Allied controlled Western Europe and India would be a colony longer as would the Phillipines. And Imperial Japan would be the 3rd party in that Tri-polar world.