Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan
Page 72
81. Ihara Yoriaki, Zho kshitsu jiten (Toyamab, 1938), p. 45.
82. During the 1930s “imperial family members accounted for 9 out of 134 army generals and 3 out of 77 navy admirals. Of this number, 5 of 17 field marshals and 3 of 11 fleet admirals were members of the imperial family. Ten military councillors were appointed from the imperial family, including one from the Korean Imperial House.” See Sakamoto Yichi, “Kzoku gunjin no tanj: kindai tennsei no kakuritsu to kzoku no gunjika,” in Iwai Tadakuma, ed., Kindai Nihon shakai to tennsei (Kashiwa Shob, 1988), pp. 230–31.
83. Fujiwara Akira, “’Tenn no guntai’ no rekishi to honshitsu,” in Kikan sens sekinin kenky, No. 11 (Spring 1996), p. 65.
84. Yamato was an ancient name for a clan (one of many) that by dint of martial prowess established the first state in ancient Japan.
85. Asano Kazuo, “Taish-ki ni okeru rikugun shk no shakai ninshiki to rikugun no seishin kyiku: Kaiksha kiji no ronsetsu kiji no bunseki,” in Nakamura Katsunori, ed., Kindai Nihon seiji no shos: jidai ni yoru tenkai to ksatsu (Kei Tsshin, 1989), p. 447.
86. Kketsu Atsushi, “Tenn no guntai no tokushitsu: zangyaku koi no rekishiteki haikei,” in Kikan sens sekinin kenky 8 (Summer 1995), p. 11.
87. Shibuno Junichi, “Taish jnen Kawasaki, Mitsubishi dai sgi no bunken to kenky,” Rekishi to Kobe (August 1967), p. 11.
88. Kurozawa Fumitaka, “Gunbu no ‘Taish demokurashii’ ninshiki no ichidanmen,” in Kindai Gaikshi Kenkykai, ed., Hendki no Nihon gaik to gunji: shiry to kent (Hara Shob, 1987), esp. pp. 55–56; Kataoka, “Shwa shoki, Nihon rikugun e no shakaigakuteki apurchi,” pp. 19–21.
89. Kurozawa, p. 32.
90. Ibid., pp. 49–53. Kaiksha kiji was published by Kaiksha, the army officers’ friendship and aid society. For discussion of its contents from a viewpoint contrary to Kurozawa’s, see Asano Kazuo, “Taishki ni okeru rikugun shk no shakai ninshiki to rikugun no seishin kyoiku,” p. 443, n. 5.
91. Aizawa Seishisai, of the nationalist Mito school of neo-Confucian thinkers, published Shinron (The new theses) in 1825. It contains the line: “Sacred integration between gods and men characterized this form of military organization.” Similar arguments could be found in the popular Nihon gaishi (Unofficial history of Japan), completed in 1827 by the Kyoto historian Rai San’y, and in the thought of “men of spirit” who, in the 1860s, powered the movement to “revere the emperor and expel the barbarian.” See Bob T. Wakabayashi, Anti-Foreignism and Western Learning in Early Modern Japan: The New Theses of 1825 (Harvard University Press, 1986), p. 174; Fujiwara, Shwa tenn no jgonen sens, pp. 11, 18.
92. The idea that the emperor directly commanded the military and supervised its affairs was related to the dominant belief behind the Meiji restoration—the restoration of direct imperial rule—and therefore integral to the very notion of a tenn whom the Ogakumonjo sought to inculcate. See Fujiwara, “Tsuiken to tenn,” pp. 197–98.
93. Kketsu, “Tenn no guntai no tokushitsu,” pp. 9–10.
94. Kazuko Tsurumi, Social Change and the Individual: Japan Before and After Defeat in World War II (Princeton University Press, 1970), pp. 92–93.
95. Kataoka Tetsuya, “Shwa shoki, Nihon rikugun e no shakaigakuteki apurchi,” in Gunji shigaku 22, no. 4 (1987): p. 16.
CHAPTER 2
CULTIVATING AN EMPEROR
1. Fujiwara Akira, “Tsuiken to tenn,” in Tyama Shigeki, ed., Kindai tennsei no tenkai: kindai tennsei no kenky II (Iwanami Shoten, 1987), p. 199.
2. Yasumaru Yoshio, Kindai tennz no keisei (Iwanami Shoten, 1991), pp. 12–13.
3. Togashi Junji, “Tenn hakusho: shirarezaru heika,” in Tenn no Shwashi, Sand Mainichi fukkokuban, kinky zkan (Feb.-Apr. 1989), p. 89.
4. take Shichi, Tenn no gakk: Shwa no teigaku to Takanawa Ogakumonjo, p. 29.
5. Saeki Shink, “Seibutsugaku to arahitogami no hazama,” in Bungei shunj, tokushg: inaru Shwa (Mar. 1989), p. 490.
6. Kawahara, Tenn Hirohito no Shwashi, p. 41.
7. Between 1953 and 1989 the Imperial Household Biological Laboratory published many other works bearing the inscription, “Collected by His Majesty the Emperor of Japan” and “described by” or “annotated by” others. Occasionally Hirohito “wrote” prefaces to his biological works that were transcribed by chamberlains and given to publishers. Typically they began with the words, “I, availing myself of the leisure time spared from my duties…” It Kenji. “The Shwa Emperor Hirohito’s Marine Biological Research,” p. 8. Seminar paper, Harvard University, May 15, 1997.
8. Collective authorship—a normal scientific practice—may have signified, in Hirohito’s case, continuity with the prewar mindset of protecting the emperor from the buffeting criticism of fellow scientists in case any errors had inadvertently crept into his work. This is suggested by It, “The Shwa Emperor Hirohito’s Marine Biological Research.”
9. Sand Mainichi, Oct. 1949, p. 5; “Kagakusha tenn [Hirohito] no seitai,” in Shins, No. 36 (Dec. 1, 1949), p. 9; Komae Hisashi, “Heika to seibutsugaku,” in Tenn no insh (Sgensha, 1949), pp. 150–64.
10. Kenneth B. Pyle, “Meiji Conservatism,” in Marius B. Jansen, ed., The Cambridge History of Japan, vol. 5, The Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 692.
11. In 1935, at the height of the dispute over Minobe’s “emperor organ theory,” members of the court entourage openly discussed, in Hirohito’s presence, the whole issue of the legitimate line of succession. At that time the emperor reportedly said to his chief aide, Gen. Honj Shigeru: “I think the decision as to the legitimate line of succession requires further study. Actually, I too am from the northern bloodline of descent. Of course, generally speaking, it doesn’t make any difference, though it is odd.” Cited in Yoshida, Shwa tenn no shsenshi, p. 222.
12. Nezu, Tenn to Shwashi, j, p. 15.
13. Igari Shizan, “Tei rinri shink no Sugiura Jg sensei,” in Kingu (Dec. 1928), pp. 124–25.
14. Sugiura Shigetake, Rinri goshink san, ed. Igari Mataz (Tokyo, privately printed, 1936), p. 1103.
15. Ibid., p. 1105.
16. Ibid., p. 1106.
17. Nezu, Tenn to Shwashi, j, p. 15. Nezu did not allow for the possibility that Sugiura’s single lecture on the Meiji constitution may also have indicated that other tutors had more responsibility for lecturing on the constitution. The Boshin Edict, issued after the Russo-Japanese War, called on the Japanese people to be frugal, upright, and attentive to duty, while the Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors taught them to offer their lives for the emperor and blindly obey the orders of superior officers as though they were the orders of the emperor.
18. Nezu, Tenn to Shwashi, j, p. 16.
19. A speech by Professor Miura Shk, published in the Osaka Mainichi shinbun on July 31, 1912, is believed to contain the earliest expression of the term “Meiji the Great.” Miura cited Meiji’s abolition of military house politics, his establishment of direct imperial rule, and his transformation of a small island nation into a great empire as his main achievements. A key text that helped spread the myth of “Meiji the great” was the special, book-length supplement to the popular magazine Kingu, which appeared in late 1927. The “foreword,” by Education Minister Mizuno Rentar, boasted that “no other country in the world…has a national polity in which the imperial line has been unbroken for ages eternal and the emperor becomes one with the gods at the time of his enthronement.” Inumaru, “Kindai tennsei, j,” Bunka hyron 385 (Feb. 1993), p. 129.
20. Sugiura Shigetake, Rinri goshink san.
21. Ibid., pp. 1055–61. Wilhelm II, an emotionally unstable monarch who had recently aspired to be the dictator of Europe, resided in exile in the Netherlands. As a political and symbolic leader, he personified not only the forces of his times but the historic weaknesses of the German people: their glorified, megalomaniacal image of themselves as a people who deserved to rule all of Europe, their deep insecurities, and their radical anti-Semitism. (See Thomas A. Kohut, Wilhelm II and the Germans: A Study in Leadership [Oxford University P
ress, 1991], p. 178.)
22. Ibid., pp. 958–64.
23. Ibid., p. 122.
24. Ibid., p. 581.
25. Ibid., p. 881. Anti-Japanese racial discrimination was particularly strong in the United States and its Territory of Hawaii, where Japanese were denied the right to be naturalized or to own land.
26. Ibid., p. 884.
27. Herbert P. Bix, Peasant Protest in Japan, 1590–1884 (Yale University Press, 1986), pp. 81, 112, 175.
28. Ibid., p. 887.
29. Nezu, Tennto Shwashi, j, p. 16. Nezu writes: “It would have been a miracle if, after having received in his young mind for seven years this sort of education, [Hirohito] had not become a militarist. Only a person like Sugiura would have had the courage to give this sort of conservative education in an age of rising democracy.”
30. Shiratori Kurakichi, “Shina kodensetsu no kenky,” in Ty jih 131 (Aug. 1909), pp. 38–44.
31. Tokoro Isao, “Shwa tennga mananda ‘kokushi’ kykasho,” in Bungei shunj (Feb. 1990), p. 133. My next few paragraphs mainly summarize Tokoro’s very useful account.
32. Shiratori Kurakichi, Kokushi, dai ikkan (n.p., 1914), pp. 6–7. I am indebted to Professor Tokoro for a copy of volume 1.
33. Iwai Tadakuma, Meiji tenn “taitei” densetsu (Sanseid, 1997), p. 47.
34. Shiratori, Kokushi, dai ikkan, p. 26; cited in Tokoro, p. 134.
35. Shiratori, Kokushi, dai ikkan, p. 28.
36. In 1928–29, Shiratori acknowledged indirectly that the power of myth to legitimate the political order had weakened, and the national ideology had to be reformulated to place it on a more rational basis. See his lectures published in the organ of the Navy Officers Association: “Nihon minzoku no keit,” Ysh 15, no. 178 (Sept. 1928), and “Kd ni tsuite,” Yush 16, no. 190 (Sept. 1929).
37. Tokoro, “Shwa tenn ga mananda ‘kokushi’ kykasho,” p. 140.
38. Ibid., p. 136.
39. H. Paul Varley, “Nanbokucho seijun ron,” in Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan, vol. 5 (Kodansha Ltd., 1983), pp. 323–24.
40. Tokoro, “Shwa tenn ga mananda ‘kokushi’ kykasho.”
41. Shiratori Kurakichi, Kinsen “Kokushi” (Benseisha, 1997), pp. 711–713.
42. Tokoro, “Shwa tenn ga mananda ‘kokushi’ kykasho,” p. 136.
43. Tokoro has argued that Sugiura used historical materials and interpreted them “deductively,” whereas Shiratori’s aim in the Kokushi was to explain the process of development of Japanese history “inductively.” Shiratori’s textbook simply recorded the circumstances of the succession to the throne and how many emperors worked hard and tried to promote the happiness of the people. Tokoro believes it is historically “precise and fair,” sometimes pointing out defects and shortcomings in the rule of different emperors. He compares the Kokushi to Kitabatake Chikafusa’s Jinn shtki of 1339, but does not use Kitabatake to explicate Shiratori. His comparison is essentially rhetorical, designed to drive home his point that Shiratori’s Kokushi still has “persuasive power” and “may be called a modern version of the Jinn shtki.” See Tokoro, “Shwa tenn ga mananda ‘kokushi’ kykasho,” p. 140.
44. Iwai, Meiji tenn “taitei” densetsu, p. 5.
45. Nagazumi, Shwa tenn to watakushi, p. 76.
46. Suzuki Yasuz, Nihon no kenpgakushi kenky (Keis Shob, 1975), p. 260.
47. Ibid., pp. 261–62.
48. Quoted in ibid., p. 263.
49. A typical example is Konoe Atsumaro, “Kunshu musekinin no riy,” in Kokka gakkai zasshi 5, no. 55 (1892), pp. 1224–31.
50. Minobe Tatsukichi, Chikuj kenp seigi (Yhikaku, 1927), p. 512, cited in Yamauchi Toshihiro, “Tenn no sens sekinin,” in Yokota Kichir, Ebashi Takashi, eds., Shch tennsei no koz: kenp gakusha ni yoru kaidoku (Nihon Hyronsha, 1990), p. 247.
51. Shimizu expressed the relationship between the emperor and the state in terms of an organic—brain/body—metaphor, but also added that “there is no contradiction between saying that the state is an entity which possesses the right of sovereignty and, at the same time, the emperor is the subject of sovereignty. Unless one reasons this way, one cannot explain the Japanese national polity.” Quoted by Suzuki (Nihon no kenpgakushi kenky, p. 266) from Shimizu Tru, Kokuhgaku dai ippen kenphen, p. 21.
52. From 1885, when the cabinet system was established, until 1945, no Japanese prime minister ever ran for the Diet, and only four—Hara Kei, Hamaguchi Osachi, Inukai Tsuyoshi, and Kato Takaaki—had been elected to the House of Representatives. Prime ministers did not lead the majority of the House, though they were tacitly accepted by it. The genr chose the prime minister; later, at the start of his reign, Hirohito and his court group became the appointers, taking into account, when it served their purposes, the preferences of the majority conservative party in the lower house, but just as often ignoring them. Thus imperial Japan had a “party cabinet” system of government rather than a parliamentary cabinet government. This is not to imply either that the Westminster model of parliamentary cabinet government worked democratically in the interwar decades. Neither Lloyd George nor Ramsay MacDonald were leaders of the majority party of their governments, but the distinction between the Japanese party setup and the British model of parliamentary government is useful and worth making.
CHAPTER 3
CONFRONTING THE REAL WORLD
1. On May 28, 1919, Foreign Minister Uchida Ksai cabled the Japanese ambassador in Paris that the kaiser’s trial would have a negative influence “on popular beliefs concerning our kokutai.” Afterward Makino joined Wilson and Lansing in opposing the trial of Wilhelm II. See Uchida to Matsui, May 28, 1919, in Nihon gaik bunsho, dai san satsu, gekan, 1919 (Gaimush, 1971), p. 1078.
2. Tokyo nichi nichi shinbun, May 8, 1919.
3. Quoted from Tanaka Hiromi, “Shwa tenn no teigaku,” in This Is Yomiuri (Apr. 1992), pp. 101–2. Tanaka termed these congratulatory accounts a “report card.”
4. Ibid., p. 102; Hatano Masaru, “Taish jnen Ktaishi h-: sono kettei e no purosesu to seika,” in Kei Gijuku Daigaku Hgaku kenky 66, no. 7 (July 1993). Miura Gor had won notoriety as the head of the Japanese legation in Seoul. He was implicated in the murder of Korea’s Queen Min in 1895.
5. Nara Takeji, diary, pp. 292–94; Tanaka Hiromi, p. 102. I am indebted to Professor Tanaka for a copy of this portion of the Nara diary.
6. Quoted from the Nara diary, p. 294.
7. The talking habit increased over time and is discussed in many memoir sources, including Okabe Nagaakira, one of twelve chamberlains who served Hirohito from March 1936 to April 1946. See Okabe Nagaakira, Gekid jidai no Shwa tenn: aru jij no kaiski (Asahi Sonorama, 1990), pp. 97–99.
8. Makino’s diary entry of Oct. 28, 1926, furnishes a good example of Hirohito’s taciturnity:
I visited Prince Saionji as promised, and he told me that he had an audience the other day with the prince. He told him that he was getting old and worried about the future. Hereafter you question the privy seal if there is political strife or change. Even after I am gone, question him chiefly. If the privy seal needs to seek other opinions or consult with others, he will ask you for permission to do so; you should grant it so that he can question them…. Saionji added that…the prince didn’t reply, but of course he expected that.
MNN, pp. 261–62.
9. The novelist e Kenzabur remembered the strange dread that came over him when, as a little boy, he laughed on hearing Hirohito’s voice for the first time on the day Japan capitulated:
We didn’t understand what he was talking about, but we certainly heard his voice. One of my playmates, wearing dirty short pants, was able to skillfully mimic it. We all laughed loudly as he spoke in the “emperor’s voice.”
Our laughter rang through the quiet mountain village at high noon on a summer day and vanished with an echo into the blue sky. Suddenly a feeling of anxiety, of having committed a sin, gripped us disrespectful children. Falling silent, we stared at one another. Even for mere grammar school students, the emperor was an august and overwhe
lming presence.
e Kenzabur, “Tenn,” Shkan Asahi (Jan. 4, 1959), p. 30. For a fuller account of the different ways the Japanese people received Hirohito’s voice on the day of the famous broadcast, see Takeyama Akiko, Gyokuon hs (Banseisha, 1989), pp.53–54.
10. After 1927 the Photography Department of the Imperial Household Ministry banned the taking of pictures that showed the upper half of Hirohito’s body or his back (he had a slight curvature). Thereafter he was typically photographed with an unsmiling expression, standing motionless or at ramrod attention, his arms straight down at his sides. Nakayama Toshiaki, Noriko hi no migite: “okaminaoshi” shashin jiken (K. K. Jh Sentaa Shuppan Kyoku, 1992), p. 104.
11. Watanabe Ikujir, Meiji tenn no goseitoku to gunji as cited in Fujiwara Akira, Shwa tenn no jgonen sens (Aoki Shoten, 1991), p. 46.
12. Nezu, Tenn to Shwashi, p. 20.
13. Tanaka Hiromi, “Shwa tenn no teigaku,” pp. 101–2; and Tanaka Hiromi, “Nisshin, Nichi-Ro kaisenshi no hensan to Ogasawara Naganari (2),” in Gunji shigaku 18, no. 4 (1983), pp. 43–44. Ogasawara was a prodigious literary creator of paragons of military virtue such as “Commander Hirose” of Japanese textbook fame and “Tg Heihachir the Great.”
14. According to Ogasawara, “All his essays on politics are particularly deeply moving. His brightness is almost unbelievable…. Once, when Sugiura was giving a lecture on apothegems, he asked the crown prince which saying most impressed him and [Hirohito] answered: ‘Ten ni shifuku nashi’ [Heaven has no self-interest].” Ogasawara Naganari, “Sessha no miya denka no goktoku,” Taiy (Jan. 1, 1922).