First of all, no, systemd as in PID1 does not get logs back from journald. The systemctl command is using the sd-journal API to do that directly from the journal files.

Secondly, I don't, I expect the recent logs portion of `systemctl status $unit` to be suppressed when journald isn't present.

Note that journal-caused slowness of that very command is a common complaint aimed at journald contributing to people wanting to remove it!