Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan

by Herbert P. Bix

  On the evening of February 10, 1921, officials of the Imperial Household Ministry and Home Ministry informed the Tokyo newspapers that the crown prince’s engagement would go ahead as planned and that Nakamura and his vice minister, Ishihara Kenz, had both resigned.26 On February 12, the Yomiuri shinbun published a scathing editorial against Yamagata, for having precipitated “a certain grave incident at court.” Ten days later Yamagata offered to resign as genr and president of the privy council and to return his many medals and renounce his titles. He noted in his diary that “Today’s Home Ministry and Metropolitan Police Board seem unable to control [the forces of the far right]…. I would like to borrow about fifty stalwarts from the army minister and wipe them all out.”27 Hara and the court declined to accept his resignation, but Yamagata had clearly fallen from power. The positions of genr Matsukata and Saionji, who had sided with Yamagata in his opposition to the marriage, had also been slightly weakened. To help calm the situation at court, the genr recommended that Makino step in and assume a prominent role in managing court affairs.

  On February 15, 1921, the Hara cabinet had the Imperial Household Ministry formally announce that the crown prince would depart on a Western tour. The right wing (represented by Sugiura and Tyama), having won on the issue of Hirohito’s marriage, lost on the issue of his Western tour, which had arisen at the onset of the engagement dispute. Hara, the imperial princes, and all the genr supported the tour, seeing it, in part, as a way of coping with the postwar enthusiasm for democratic reform; the ultranationalists opposed it as “a rash act of worshipping foreign thought.”

  The “grave incident at court” shows how easily problems involving the imperial house could engender heated partisan political controversy. From this seemingly minor episode in the history of the imperial house emerges the prototype of 1930s-style right-wing terrorism. On the issue of Hirohito’s marriage, the forces of the right succeeded in frustrating the will of the genr and the president of the strongest political party, creating a situation in which the legitimate leaders of the Meiji state were called national traitors.28

  On another level this incident reveals the delicate competition between the current of Taish democracy on one side and the imperial house and civilian right-wing groups on the other. It also illuminates the entire lineup of political actors in late Taish politics. These were the Seiykai and its Diet opponents, the genr and the younger members of the political class, Satsuma and Chsh (or the fief-based political cliques), and the pro-and anti-Yamagata camps. Other protagonists were the Europeanists and pan-Asianists, advocates of continued Westernization and reform of the imperial throne; and advocates of the traditional concept of the kokutai, based on myths credulously accepted as fact. All made their appearance just as the genr receded from the scene and new political alliances began to form.

  Equally noteworthy was the Japanese public’s unawareness of the dispute over the crown prince’s marriage, while the civilian leaders of the right wing—for whom resorts to gangster methods were second nature—easily kept abreast of developments at court and exercised hidden influence there and also in the world of conservative party politics.29 Tyama, for example, was on close personal terms with many court officials well before and long after the incident. Kita (later executed for his minor role in the February 26, 1936, military uprising) used the incident to strengthen his relations with members of the imperial house, such as Prince Chichibu, to whom he presented a copy of his famous “Plan for the Fundamental Reorganization of Japan.” Its opening chapter, on “The People’s Emperor,” called on the military to seize power in a coup d’état and reorganize the state. The emperor would provide legitimation and, in the process, move closer to the people. Starting in 1922 Kita began to exert political influence on Tg and Ogasawara Naganari just as they were beginning their new careers as lobbyists for an expanded navy.30 (Ogasawara, who had converted to Nichiren Buddhism around the time of the Russo-Japanese War, was a particularly close friend of the demagogic Nichiren preacher Tanaka Chigaku.)

  After the closing of the Ogakumonjo, Tg and Ogasawara—the ex–school president and the school’s director—tightened their cooperative relationship. Tg, then seventy-five, was able to maintain his public activities only through his energetic spokesman, Ogasawara. And in 1921 Ogasawara went on the reserve list, after which the most effective way for him to maintain his relationship with those in power was to draw nearer to Tg, who as a fleet admiral remained on the active list, attending meetings of the Field Marshals and Fleet Admirals Conference, where he was privy to top naval secrets. Tg and Ogasawara—men with close ties to the religiously inspired ultranationalist right—soon became prominent advocates for construction of a fleet of submarines and a naval air force. Following the signing in Washington of the Five-Power Naval [Limitations] Treaty in February 1922, they, together with Adms. Kat Kanji and Suetsugu Nobumasa, formed the core of a naval pressure group hostile to the new international order and opposed to further arms cuts.31

  Makino Nobuaki also came to the fore in Japanese politics during 1921. Makino had served in cabinets headed by Saionji and attended the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 as the de facto leader of the five-man Japanese delegation. He returned home deeply worried about the collapse of bourgeois monarchy in Europe and anxious to check the democratic current that had begun to sweep the world. After Imperial Household Minister Nakamura took responsibility for the dispute over the crown prince’s marriage and resigned, Saionji, with the support of Matsukata, recommended Makino as the new imperial household minister.32 On February 19, 1921, Makino assumed his duties, bringing with him as his vice minister Sekiya Teizabur, a Home Ministry bureaucrat with firsthand knowledge of colonial and police affairs.

  Makino’s initially strong affinities with the future intellectual leaders of Japanese-style “fascism from above,” such as Kita Ikki and Ōkawa Shumei, and his long-term ties with the moderate rightist Yasuoka Masahiro, clearly mark him as a transitional figure.33 In March 1925 Makino became lord keeper of the privy seal—Hirohito’s most important political assistant—a post he held until his resignation in 1935, at the age of seventy-five.34 During most of that time he interacted with Hirohito mainly through his secretary, but actually saw Hirohito in audience only about once or twice a month.35 Although British and American officials considered Makino to be the leader of the pro-Anglo-American faction at court and one of the most prominent court “moderates” and “liberals,” his entire career belies such easy labeling.

  Chinda Sutemi, a Christian educated in the United States, also entered the circle of high court officials in late 1920. He had served as ambassador to Austria, Germany, the United States, and England before joining Makino at the Versailles Peace Conference. His appointment as grand chamberlain to the crown prince and to Empress Sadako was part of the shake-up in the Imperial Household Ministry, which brought veteran diplomats and military men with firsthand experience of Western countries into the court.

  The months of February and March 1921 marked a watershed in Hirohito’s own existence. The phase dominated throughout by his earliest defining communities—court-centered society and figures from the Peers’ School—ended with the formal dissolution of the Ogakumonjo on March 1, 1921. His basic spiritual and physical preparation for life was completed. A new group of palace officials, recently moved into high positions, was about to establish the court’s independence from control by the government. In the process they would restructure his life and shape the monarchy as an independent political force between the government and the nation. Two days later Hirohito departed for Europe on a tour designed to further his education, push him into adulthood, and counter popular perception of the imperial house’s decline.

  IV

  Crown Prince Hirohito graduated from the Ogakumonjo two months short of his twentieth birthday, just when the domestic political struggle outside the palace compound had entered a progressive phase. The government at the time was searching for ways to stave off the threat to t
he monarchy posed by the new thought that had entered Japan—ideas such as parliamentary democracy, antimilitarism, Marxism, and communism—since the end of World War I. For Prime Minister Hara the best way to proceed in the circumstances was to send the prince on an “inspection” tour of Western Europe, while seeing to it that he continued his formal education surrounded and influenced, as always, by men old enough to be his father or grandfather.

  The professed reason for the prince’s foreign trip was to pay his respects to the duke of Connaught (the uncle of King George V) who had visited the Japanese court in June 1918, at the end of the Terauchi cabinet. But for Hara and the genr—the tour’s chief advocates—the real reasons were political and psychological and had everything to do with recovering the declining authority of the monarchy.36 The imperial family, fearing for Hirohito’s safety, initially opposed the idea of the tour, as did some Diet members, such as Ōtake Kanichi of the Kokumint and Oshikawa Masayoshi of the Kenseikai, and leading civilian rightists such as Uchida Ryhei and Tyama Mitsuru. The right-wing patriots protested vehemently for weeks before Hirohito’s departure, claiming that, in view of his father’s illness, the trip would be seen as an unfilial action and have a harmful impact on the kokutai.

  The ruling group—Saionji, Matsukata, Yamagata, and Hara—felt it a matter of “grave importance for the state” that the crown prince go on a “Western tour” before his imperial wedding. They had already written off Emperor Yoshihito because of his illness and his inability to speak in public. They wanted Hirohito to meet more people, to become accustomed to participating in political matters, and to begin learning how human affairs were managed.37 In 1920, with the fiction of the Taish emperor’s direct rule increasingly apparent, they became more anxious than ever to bring the crown prince forward as a surrogate for his father. Their main opposition was from Hirohito’s mother, Empress Sadako, who didn’t want her first son to go abroad because of the physical dangers involved in such a trip. But Hara and the genr, concerned about what they perceived as the serious inadequacies of the crown prince’s education, felt the risk had to be taken. In late 1920 they finally persuaded her to allow the trip as “a matter of political necessity.”38 The journey to post-Versailles Europe had to go forward because, as the genr Matsukata explained in a letter to her: “There may never be another time like this to inquire into the reasons for the popular movements and intellectual unrest that are occurring right before our eyes. This is a great chance for the crown prince to observe personally, at first hand, the rise and fall of the power of many states.”39

  Once Sadako’s resistance was overcome, government and court officials could discuss more candidly among themselves the deeper reasons behind the trip. It was increasingly clear that Hirohito would soon become regent. He needed to investigate conditions in foreign countries in order to be able to deal with the new sentiments of the Japanese people.40

  The great continental monarchies had collapsed and the war had unleashed worldwide movements for peace, democracy, disarmament, and independence. Operating in an antimonarchical world, as regent he would have to deal with the momentum for social reform that was steadily gathering force in Japan. He would also have to cope with the new tendency in Japan to disparage nationalism, militarism, and the state. Above all Hirohito represented the crucial “third generation” of Meiji’s dynastic lineage, thus the one who had to be successful if the imperial house itself was to survive and prosper.41 Precisely in relation to these external and internal pressures, coupled with fears for the future of the imperial house and its growing isolation, lay the necessity for Hirohito’s Western tour.

  Although initially conceived on a small scale, the tour developed into a formal state visit. At home it marked the start of a public relations campaign, centered on the crown prince, to counter popular perception of the imperial house’s decline and the Taish emperor’s total physical and political incapacity. The entire campaign turned on building up Hirohito’s image as “our” wise and great regent, representing “the nation’s imperial house.” Makino and the top officials of the Imperial Household Ministry made unprecedented efforts to tutor Hirohito on how he was to behave abroad and to mobilize the press corps to cover the trip.42

  Five months prior to his departure for Europe, on October 28, 1920, Hara had told Imperial Household Minister Nakamura:

  Regarding the crown prince’s habits, such as his frequent body movements, I want everyone in attendance close to him to correct this. I also observed that he is unfamiliar with Western table manners. I want someone to instruct him very carefully in this too. This matter is particularly important…43

  In short, in order to ensure its success the tour was carefully choreographed down to the smallest details. And because of the precarious condition of the Taish emperor’s health, the tour could not be prolonged. The crown prince would have time to visit only five European countries: England, France, Belgium, Holland, and Italy, plus the Vatican. The Harding administration was planning to invite the prince, but the Hara government decided to omit the United States from his itinerary largely on the recommendation of the Japanese ambassador in Washington, Shidehara Kijr. In a secret telegram to the Foreign Ministry, Shidehara expressed fear that the prince might not be able to handle “the difference in national sentiment between Japan and the United States” and “the rough behavior of ordinary Americans,” particularly newspaper reporters.44 Shidehara also worried about the uncertain state of Japan–U.S. relations on the eve of an arms reduction conference. Should any incident occur during a royal visit, it could have extremely damaging effects on public opinion in both countries.45 So Hirohito was denied the chance to visit the United States.

  On March 3, 1921, Crown Prince Hirohito and his thirty-four-man entourage led by Prince Kan’in, Count Chinda Sutemi, and Lt. Gen. Nara Takeji, and accompanied by Prime Minister Hara, entrained at Tokyo Station for the port of Yokohama. There they boarded a boat that took them to the newly refitted warship Katori. After bidding them good-bye, Hara returned to join more than fifty thousand well-wishers standing on shore, and the Katori steamed out to sea, accompanied by a cruiser escort.46

  Bound for Europe and his first encounter with the world outside Japan, Hirohito grew elated. During the next six months of travel, he followed a daily routine of study and physical activity and never eased up. He received his strongest impressions in France and especially Britain, the country originally scheduled as his main destination. The Western tour was the first major attempt by Japan’s ruling elites of the Taish era to manipulate Hirohito’s image, and defenders of Hirohito often cite it as a source of his alleged commitment to “constitutional democracy.”

  Hirohito’s outbound passage aboard the Katori took him through the Asian and European territories of the British Empire, starting from Hong Kong, where for fear of Korean assassins he went ashore only briefly. Accompanied by the British governor-general and guarded by the entire British police force on the island, they strolled through the city for about forty minutes, then had lunch aboard a British warship.47 Next he sailed to the island of Singapore, already a vital center of commerce for all of colonial Southeast Asia. During his three-day stay in Singapore (March 18–21), he attended British receptions in his honor, visited a Japanese-managed rubber plantation and a museum, and circumnavigated the island.48

  On March 22 the Katori departed for Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), second largest island in the Indian Ocean and a British colony that produced rubber and tea for the industrialized economies of the West. Six days later the warship arrived at the capital, Colombo. With neither Japanese nor expatriate Koreans living on the isolated island, the imperial party felt free of danger for the first time. After five days in Columbo, the Katori departed on April 1 for the warm waters of the Red Sea, their destination the Suez Canal, the famed “lifeline” of the British Empire. They reached the canal on April 15 and the next day began the hundred-mile journey through the sea-level waterway with barren desert sands stretching away on e
ach side.

  After docking at Port Said, at the entrance to the canal, on April 17, they traveled to Cairo, the ancient capital of Egypt, then in its last year as a British protectorate. The next day, in Cairo, Field Marshal Viscount Allenby, the British high commissioner, acted as Hirohito’s host and arranged for him to see the Pyramids and the Sphinx, and visit with the Khedive Fuad, soon to become the first king of formally independent Egypt. Leaving Cairo on April 20, the imperial party sailed into the Mediterranean, bound for the British colony of Malta, a military outpost guarding the route to Suez. On Malta, where the Katori anchored on April 25, they were welcomed by the British residents and guided to the graves of Japanese sailors killed during World War I. Another diplomatic welcome awaited them on April 30 in the British colony of Gibraltar, where they stayed for three days before departing on the last leg of their long sea journey.

  Hirohito had just turned twenty years of age when the Katori finally arrived at Portsmouth, England, on May 7, and he was greeted by rows of flag-decorated British warships with their crews standing at attention. His subsequent itinerary called for him to stay twenty-four days in England, twenty-six days in France, five days each in Belgium and the Netherlands, and eight days in Italy. Except in Italy, where out of consideration for the king and the shortness of his visit he stayed on in the palace, the monarchies gave him the same formal treatment: three nights in the palace as the honored guest of the monarch, followed by stays in private hotels or private residences as the guest of the nation.