Let's suppose that everything went right for the japanese. Luck is on their side, they sink both Yorktown and Lexington in the Battle of the Coral Sea, then both Enterprise and Hornet at Midway. Pushing on, they win the Guadalcanal capaign and...
What would it have taken to bring the USA to the negotiation table? Would capturing Hawaii cut it? Total dominance of the pacific? Was it just impossble?
Their only possible hope is that the US would be forced to negotiate after losing a large portion of its fleet, but given the nature of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and the US need to protect allied nations in the Pacific (particularly the Commonwealth countries), it was not going to happen. Japan did not have the logistical capacity to invade Hawaii, much less the West Coast, so if everything goes completely south for the U.S., it could still turtle up in Hawaii, use its submarine fleet defensively, and wait for new construction to come online in mid-1944.
I've written about this more here: