Emperor Hirohito
By FRANK GIBNEY SR.
Born April 29, 1901 in Tokyo
1926 Succeeds Emperor Yoshihito to Chrysanthemum throne
1931 Japanese troops invade Manchuria
1940 Japan joins Axis alliance
1945 Approves Japan's surrender, ending World War II
1946 Approves American-made constitution permitting occupation by U.S.
Publicly repudiates divinity of the Emperor
1989 Dies Jan. 7 at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo
Japan's wartime monarch outlived his role as god-king, but he oversaw the nation's
modern transformation
By traditional (and official) count, he was Japan's 124th emperor, but Hirohito
ranks first in length of tenure. His reign spanned the years between 1921,
when he became regent for his ailing father, and his death in 1989--a record
of regal endurance comparable to those of Austria-Hungary's Franz Josef
and Britain's Victoria. At his formal accession to the Chrysanthemum Throne
in 1926, he took the official name of Showa--which translates as "Enlightened
Peace." Ironically, his era was characterized by the brutal military
invasion of China, followed by his country's most disastrous war, then its
unprecedented foreign occupation and, ultimately, Japan's transformation
into the world's second economic super-power.
In an odd way his presence and personality became the one persistent unifying
factor for his countrymen in a century of sharp and unexpected transformation.
The metamorphosis of his imperial image from the plumed militarist on horseback
to the democratic monarch waving to crowds with his crushed fedora remains
one of history's most puzzling, leaving basic questions about his ability
and his legacy still unanswered a decade after his death.
Beyond doubt, Hirohito was the 20th century's great survivor. History
has not given too many the chance to lead a nation into appalling
disaster, only to emerge with at least partial credit for its reform and
rebirth. Critics and loyal supporters alike have cited instances of
Hirohito's superior decision-making or shrewd behind-the-scenes
policy-setting. Others have likened him to the character portrayed by
Peter Sellers in the film Being There, a modest mediocrity whose
commonplace observances were given the value of Delphic
instruction. Both versions are correct in the context of Hirohito's
society--the Japanese have never shown much respect for Aristotle's
law of contradictions. To understand the Showa Emperor's goals
and premises, we must examine his life, as he led it and as it was led
for him by his multitudinous helpers.
Born on April 29, 1901, the eldest son of the Emperor Yoshihito, he
was enrolled at the age of seven in the Peers' School. Its principal
was the redoubtable Maresuke Nogi, the victorious infantry general
of the Russo-Japanese war and an embodiment of the old samurai
virtues. From Nogi and two Confucian tutors, Hirohito was given a
heavy dose of stern dynastic duty, as the semi-divine descendant of
the legendary Sun goddess Amaterasu. He lived with ancient ritual,
as his ancestors had done before him. By tradition the pontiffs of
Japan's shadowy Shinto religion, emperors were revered as
semi-sacred beings. But they were secluded in their Kyoto palaces
and generally kept powerless by varieties of military leaders, ruling in
the imperial name.
In 1868, however, just 33 years before Hirohito's birth, the ancient
role of the emperor was redefined. His grandfather Mutsuhito, known
to history as the Emperor Meiji, had been brought out of seclusion
by the young samurai modernizers of the Restoration that bears his
name. Shedding his 10th century ritual robes for 19th century military
uniforms, he was installed with his court in a refurbished palace in
the new capital of Tokyo. Having swept aside the 250-year rule of
the Tokugawa shoguns, the reformers needed an active symbol at
the head of their nation-state. Meiji became the country's first
constitutional monarch.
Yet he was a monarch with a difference. Impressed by the socially
unifying force of Christianity in Europe's nation-states, the
ever-practical Meiji reformers revived the pontifical role of the
Emperor and made Shinto the official state religion. Going further,
they decided that Japan's modernized conscript army and navy
would report to the Emperor alone. Meiji took his new military role
seriously. So did his leading general. In 1912, on the day of Meiji's
funeral, Nogi and his wife committed the ceremonial suicide of junshi,
the samurai ritual of "following one's lord in death."
A few days earlier, Nogi had paid a last visit to Hirohito and his
brothers, admonishing them to live dedicated, frugal lives, as he had
taught them. Hirohito, then 11, would heed Nogi's advice. For the
rest of his boyhood the lessons continued, under the venerable
Admiral Heihachiro Togo and a succession of teachers and advisers.
They schooled him in constitutional kingship, as well as Confucius
and the ancient Japanese chronicles.
In 1921 the young Crown Prince took a trip overseas, the first ever
for a top member of the Japanese royal family. A shy, serious and
reflective young man--he had already begun to collect specimens for
his lifelong study of marine biology--he was bowled over by his
cordial reception in Europe, especially by the relatively relaxed ways
of the British royal family. He visited museums, played golf, went
fishing in the Scottish highlands and even managed a day's
shopping in Paris. For all the retainers following him, he felt oddly at
ease. He wrote his brother Chichibu, "I discovered freedom for the
first time in England."
It didn't last. Back in Tokyo, he was now regent for his sickly father,
the Taisho Emperor. (Known principally for his fondness for smart
uniforms, a Kaiser Wilhelm-type moustache and a failing mind, the
old man was finally removed from public view after whiling away a
formal session of the Diet by rolling up the manuscript of his speech
and peering through it at his distinguished audience.) Soon after the
disastrous 1923 Kanto earthquake, an assassin took a shot at
Hirohito as he rode in the imperial limousine--and only narrowly
missed. At this, the always conservative palace guard closed in. He
was able to marry Nagako, an imperial princess, in 1924 despite
some advisers' disapproval. (It was said there was color-blindness in
her family!) But by the time he succeeded to the throne, after his
father's death in 1926, he was surrounded by protective protocol. As
the historian Daikichi Irokawa put it, "The prince was forced into
the
life of a caged bird."
Twice he attempted to assert his authority, with some success. In
1928 aggressive army units, already pushing into Manchuria,
contrived the assassination of the Chinese warlord Zhang Zuolin.
When Prime Minister Giichi Tanaka did not take action against the
plotters, Hirohito forced his resignation. The second time was more
serious. In 1936, with militarist sentiment rising, a group of young
officers called out two regiments in an attempted coup d'état, killing
several civilian officials. Hirohito was incensed, especially since the
militarists said they were acting "in the Emperor's name." He
ordered
his generals to suppress the rebellion. With some reluctance--since
most of them were by no means opposed to military rule--they
subdued the rebels and executed 19 of the ringleaders, under a
direct order from their imperial Commander-in-Chief. It was the first
such order in modern Japanese history. Also the last.
The following year Japanese armed forces moved into China. Its
path scarred by unspeakable brutalities, "the Emperor's Army"
perpetrated a series of atrocities, of which the ghastly Nanjing
Massacre was only one incident. Cabinet after cabinet, civilian
governments supinely backed the aggression, which led directly to
the Pacific War. Big business, happy at the prospect of new
resources and markets on the Asian mainland, by and large
supported the Army. So did most of the population, as the reports of
victories came rolling in.
Why did the Emperor not stop it? In a series of documents published
after his death, including direct transcripts of Hirohito's monologues
and interviews, the pros and cons of his behavior have been argued
out. Apologists--Hirohito included--contended that, with militarists
directing the government from the late 1930s on, any attempt at
imperial restraint would have resulted in another coup, this time
successful. Japanese history abounds in incidents where emperors
were sidetracked or deposed by political regimes. And Hirohito, given
his intensive indoctrination and ever-cautious advisers, was anxious
to preserve the dynasty. That, and not averting a wider war, was his
main objective.
There is no doubt that Hirohito the man wanted peace. There is
equally no doubt that this shy, reclusive family man, who could be
goaded to act decisively only in extremis, lacked the courage to
enforce his wishes. So Hirohito the Emperor went to war. Like his
grandfather Meiji, he not only reviewed the parades but participated
in the strategy sessions. Cautious as ever, he criticized Japan's
decision to join the Axis powers and commented tartly on the army's
bogging down in China. He urged that talks with the United States
continue in 1941, even after the U.S. embargo on oil and other raw
materials made compromise difficult. He interrupted the conference
that decided to wage war with the U.S. by reciting a poem that his
grandfather Meiji had once written in similar circumstances:
Though I consider the surrounding seas as my brothers
Why is it that the waves should rise so high?
Like his other oblique calls for restraint, this was politely ignored. It
was hardly an imperial order. With the first victories of Pearl Harbor,
Singapore and the Philippines, Hirohito was swept along with the
tide of national euphoria. Three years later, however, defeat was
staring Japan in the face. In January 1945, Prince Konoe, a former
Prime Minister (and grandfather of early-1990s Prime Minister
Hosokawa) appealed to the Emperor to put an end to the war. He
refused. And here Hirohito's responsibility for the conflict deepened.
If he didn't start the war, he continued it. For almost a year, in the
face of gathering defeat, he urged his generals and admirals to gain
one last victory in order to secure decent peace terms. During that
period an additional 1.5 million Japanese were killed.
The fateful imperial staff conference in August came only after the
atomic bombs, the fearful fire-bombings, the strangling submarine
blockade and the Soviet Union's entry into the war. At last, the
Emperor cast a deciding vote for surrender and later made his
memorable broadcast to Japan's people about "enduring the
unendurable." It was the first unequivocal decision he had made
since 1936.
[See some of Bix's counter-arguments.]
Just a month later the semi-divine Emperor, in striped trousers and a
morning coat, reluctantly handed his top hat to an aide and entered
General Douglas MacArthur's reception room at the refurbished
American Embassy to begin what amounted to his re-incarnation.
Accepting responsibility for the war, he offered to abdicate or do
whatever else was necessary. But MacArthur wanted him to stay. In
the first of 11 meetings between the Emperor and the new American
Shogun, the two men worked out an odd but intense collaboration.
The U.S. general flatly resisted colleagues who felt that Hirohito
should be tried as a war criminal. Above all he wanted a peaceful
occupation. The Emperor who finally stopped his generals from
continuing a last-ditch war was surely the man who could keep his
subjects peaceful. The Emperor agreed.
The decision remains debatable. With 20-20 hindsight, modern critics
have pointed out that Hirohito bore almost as much responsibility for
the war as Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, who was sentenced to death
by the war crimes tribunal. More than 3 million Japanese--military and
civilians--had died in a war waged in the Emperor's name. To
exonerate him completely cast doubt on the entire proceedings and
has done much over the years to deepen Japan's collective amnesia
about the crimes of its military. At the time, however, the decision
seemed prudent to the American occupiers (myself among them),
faced with the task of governing, indeed re-modeling millions of
Japanese who had only recently seemed ready to fight to the death
against invasion.
So the Emperor set to work to assist America's effort at
de-mo-ku-ra-shi for Japan. On Jan. 1, 1946, he publicly denounced
"
...the false conceptions that the Emperor is divine." He supported
MacArthur's new made-in-America constitution with its renunciation of
war. Later that year, with MacArthur's vocal support, Hirohito drove
out of the palace in his ancient Rolls-Royce and went to the people.
For five years a tightly secluded ruler whose very photographs had
been held sacrosanct traveled from one end of Japan to the other,
talking to his countrymen and pressing the flesh (although he
generally preferred exchanging bows) in the manner of a late 20th
century constitutional monarch. In the process, shyness and guilt
gave way to P.R. sense and confidence.
As TIME's Tokyo correspondent, I followed him on some of those
tours--and was impressed. As I wrote in 1950: "The crumpled gray
hat became in time the badge of a successful political campaigner.
The monosyllables in which Hirohito had conducted his early
interviews with the common folk grew into coherent questions and
intelligent replies. The shy man waved his hat in the air to
acknowledge greetings. He smiled. Slowly the sense of a personality
behind the walled moat of the Imperial Palace communicated itself to
the people of Japan."
For all the hurt he had permitted--and there are many Japanese who can never
forgive him--the imperial reinvention was by and large successful. The same
day I wrote my report, I talked to some steel workers at the Yahata mill
in Kyushu after Hirohito's visit. "I must admit," one of them
told me, "that we were all filled with deep emotion. When you talk
about the Emperor, it's just an abstract thing. But when you see him close
at hand, it's different, somehow...The Emperor is our father. He should
be left just as he is."
When the Occupation ended, Hirohito continued to act as the "symbolic
emperor" he had promised to become. His daily activities were publicized
for a generally respectful nation. The 1959 wedding of his son Akihito to
a commoner, Michiko Shoda--they met playing tennis--was as popular as any
royal wedding could be. The imperial survivor presided over the Tokyo Olympics
in 1964 and made greatly successful foreign trips to the U.S. in 1975 and
Europe in 1971, spending the night at Buckingham Palace just 50 years after
his first British visit. While a few rightwing fanatics still preached the
old rote reverence--the mayor of Nagasaki was almost killed in 1990 for
mentioning Hirohito's war guilt--the country at large viewed Hirohito as
a still useful piece of human furniture, preferably left in the drawing
room.
He died on Jan. 7, 1989, after months of a wasting illness, each operation
or injection reported in the same minute, vein-by-vein detail that Japan's
media lavishes on baseball averages, weather reports or trade statistics.
His death did not have the stuff of grandeur, like that of his grandfather
Meiji, whose funereal cannonades moved the great novelist Soseki Natsume
to announce the end of his era. There was no General Nogi to commit ritual
suicide--conspicuously not in a country whose modest Self-Defense Forces
enjoy one of the biggest drop-out rates among the world's military.
But for almost all Japanese who watched the incessant TV commentary, there
came a moment of wistful stock-taking. For better or worse, the Showa Emperor's
life had limned the world in which they lived. They had forgotten the bad
beginnings of the era. The good life that came later they would try their
best to perpetuate.
Frank Gibney Sr. is author of Japan: The Fragile Superpower and
president of the Pacific Basin Institute at Pomona College oooo
See also the 2003 artice by Herbert Bix on "The Debate Rekindles "
responding to some responses to his book:
For an in-depth analysis how how tricky historical memory can
be, see Noam Chomsky's essay.
Also relevant are discussions of former Prime Minister Koizumi's New Year
visit to Yasukuni Shrine, and of the Yasukuni Problem. Here is the response of an "Angry Chinese Blogger."