Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan

by Herbert P. Bix

  15. MNN, pp. 21–23. Makino was shown the composition by Sugiura, and reproduced it in his diary entry of August 17, 1921. This is a rare example of an early piece by Hirohito, and also one of the relatively few instances in which he makes a reference to his own father. Another reference to his father can be found in the Honj diary.

  16. Yasuda Hiroshi, “Kindai tennsei ni okeru kenryoku to ken’i—Taish demokurashii-ki no ksatsu,” in Bunka hyron 357 (Oct. 1990), p. 183.

  17. Nearly 20 percent of all lèse majesté incidents in the early 1920s involve loose talk and symbolic desecrations of the imperial photograph. Common offenses included the cutting up of newspaper pictures of the emperor; the use, for unspecified, improper purposes, of the special sections on the imperial house; destruction of material objects, artifacts, and facilities that symbolized the emperor. Regardless of the motivation behind criticism of the throne, the government treated all acts of disrespect as crimes of lèse-majesté. See Watanabe Osamu, “Tennsei kokka chitsujo no rekishiteki kenky josetsu,” pp. 252, 258–61.

  18. Ibid., p. 253.

  19. Yasuda, “Kindai tennsei ni okeru kenryoku to ken’i—Taish demokurashii-ki no ksatsu,” p. 183.

  20. Hara Kei, Hara Kei nikki, dai hakkan (Kangensha, 1950), pp. 46–47; cited in Suzuki Masayuki, “Taish demokurashii to kokutai mondai,” in Nihonshi kenky 281 (Jan. 1986), p. 56, from a different edition of the same diary (dai gokan).

  21. Kuroda Hisata, Tennke no zaisan (San Ichi Shob, 1966), p. 133.

  22. Got Yasushi, “Tennsei kenky to teishitsu tkeisho,” in Teishitsu tkeisho 1, Meiji 32 nendohan (Kashiwa Shob, 1993), p. 3.

  23. Watanabe Katsuo, “Kych bjdai jiken no zenb,” in This Is Yomiuri (Apr. 1993), p. 70. My own interpretation departs from Watanabe’s in significant ways. For an older version of the incident, see George M. Wilson, Radical Nationalist in Japan: Kita Ikki 1883–1937 (Harvard University Press, 1969), pp. 100–101.

  24. Watanabe, “Kych bjdai jiken no zenb,” p. 81.

  25. On pan-Asianism, see John Welfield, An Empire in Eclipse: Japan in the Postwar American Alliance System (Athlone Press, 1988), pp. 8–10.

  26. Ibid., pp. 108–9.

  27. Takahashi Hidenari, “Hara Kei naikakuka no gikai,” in Uchida Kenz et al., eds., Nihon gikaishi roku 2 (Dai Ichi Hki Shuppan K. K., 1990) p. 251.

  28. Takahashi, “Hara Kei naikakuka no gikai,” p. 250.

  29. Fujiwara Akira, “Dai Nihon teikoku kenp to tenn,” in Fujiwara et al., Tenn no Shwa-shi (Shin Nihon Shinsho, 1984, 1990), p. 32. The connection between the imperial court and right-wing extremists and gangsters antedates the Meiji period and can be traced back to the influence of the Shinto revivalists on the court nobility at Kyoto.

  30. “Every four or five days Kita visited Ogasawara and furnished him with various kinds of information. Sometimes Kita cried in front of Ogasawara and Ogasawara comforted him.” Tanaka Hiromi, “Shwa shichinen zengo ni okeru Tg guruupu no katsud: Ogasawara Naganari nikki o tshite (1),” manuscript, p. 15, n. 4.

  31. Ibid., pp. 1–10.

  32. Hatano Masaru, “Taish jnen ktaishi h-: sono kettei e no purosesu to seika,” in Kei Gijuku Daigaku, Hgaku Kenkykai, hen, Hgaku kenky 66, no. 7 (July 1989), p. 48.

  33. Hata Nagami, “Makino Nobuaki kankei bunsho: kych gurpu o chshin toshite,” in Shien 43, no. 1 (May 1983), pp. 69–70.

  34. MNN, p. 751. During the Feb. 1936 army uprising, Makino held the post of “economic consultant” to the Imperial Household Ministry.

  35. ISN.

  36. Suzuki, “Taish demokurashii to kokutai mondai,” pp. 57–58; Hatano, “Taish jnen ktaishi h-: sono kettei e no purosesu to seika,” p. 57.

  37. Hara Kei nikki, dai hakkan, pp. 555–56; dai kykan, pp. 95–96, 111; cited in Suzuki, “Taish demokurashii to kokutai mondai,” p. 58.

  38. Hara nikki, dai kykan, entry of Oct. 28, 1920, p. 118; Suzuki, “Taish demokurashii to kokutai mondai,” p. 59.

  39. Quoted in Sasaki Ryji, Gendai tennsei no kigen to kin (Shwa Shuppan, 1990), p. 88.

  40. Hara Kei nikki, dai kykan, p. 149, entry of Dec. 8, 1920; Suzuki, “Taish demokurashii to kokutai mondai,” p. 59.

  41. On Dec. 11, 1920, while pleading with Yamagata not to resign his presidency of the privy council, Hara observed that the regency was of vital importance because “[t]he third generation is crucial for both the imperial family and the families of subjects. The Tokugawa family established itself through Iemitsu, the third shogun. Although Germany failed, the third emperor brought it to the height of its prosperity.” The notion that dynastic lineages ossify quickly after a certain length of time is of ancient origin and can be found in many civilizations.

  42. Suzuki, “Taish demokurashii to kokutai mondai,” pp. 59–60.

  43. Hara nikki, dai kykan, p. 118; cited in ibid., p. 59.

  44. Telegram from Shidehara to Foreign Minister Uchida, as cited in Hatano Masaru, “Taish jnen ktaishi h-: sono kettei e nopurosesu to seika,” in Kei Gijuku Daigaku Hgaku kenky (July 1993), p. 47; see also Kisaka Junichir, “Minsh ishiki no henka to shihai taisei no dy,” in Fujiwara Akira, ed., Minsh no rekishi 8, Dan’atsu no arashi no naka de (Sanseid, 1975), p. 76.

  45. Hatano Masaru, Hirohito ktaishi Yroppa gaiyki (Sshisha, 1998), p. 59.

  46. On Hara’s accompanying the party to Yokohama, then leading the farewell cheers aboard the Katori, see It Yukio, “Hara Kei naikaku to rikken kunshusei (3),” in Hgaku rons 143, no. 6 (Sept. 1998), pp. 8–9.

  47. Osaka Mainichi (ykan), Mar. 13, 1921, in Taishnysu jiten, dai gokan (Mainichi Komuniksionzu, 1988), pp. 229–30.

  48. The description of the Western tour in this and the next three paragraphs is based largely on “Nara Takeji kaisroku (san),” draft.

  49. Hatano, Hirohito ktaishi Yroppa gaiyki, p. 119.

  50. It, “Hara Kei naikaku to rikken kunshusei (3),” p. 9.

  51. Kisaka Junichir, “Minsh ishiki no henka to shihai taisei no dy,” in Fujiwara Akira, ed., Minsh no rekishi 8, Dan’atsu no arashi no naka de (Sanseid, 1975), p. 76.

  52. Ibid., p. 77.

  53. Ibid.

  54. It, “Hara Kei naikaku to rikken kunshusei (3),” p. 10.

  55. Nagura Bunichi, “Eikoku insh danpen,” in Shin shsetsu (Apr. 1922), pp. 63, 64–65.

  56. Mitearai Tatsuo, “Denka oyobi Nihon no eta tokoro: kshitsu to kokumin no kankei ni isshin kigen,” in Shin shsetsu (Apr. 1922), p. 65.

  57. Mitearai, pp. 65–67. He went on to say that “the day after our arrival in Windsor…the whole city turned out in force and shouted, ‘Hurrah! Hirohito.’”

  58. Hara Kei nikki, dai kykan, p. 357; Suzuki, “Taish demokurashii to kokutai mondai,” p. 60.

  59. The Katori returned on Sept. 2, one day ahead of schedule, forcing Hirohito to stay aboard ship because the official welcome had been prepared for the third. See ibid.

  60. Hara Kei nikki, dai kykan, Sept. 19, 1921, p. 445.

  61. Ibid., p. 452, entry of Sept. 21; cited in Suzuki, Kshitsu seido, pp. 150–51.

  62. “Nara Takeji kaisroku (san),” p. 319.

  63. MNN, p. 26.

  64. Ibid., p. 65. Kannamesai, held annually on Oct. 17, was the ritual exercise of offering the new grain crops to Amaterasu mikami.

  65. On Chinda’s indebtedness to the Meiji emperor and his keen sense of responsibility for nurturing the virtues of Hirohito, see Kusazawa Gakut, “Chinda Sutemi,” Gendai (June 1, 1927), p. 291.

  66. Kojima Noboru cites the alleged deathbed comment of Empress Nagako’s father, Prince Kuni no miya Kuniyoshi, uttered on Jan. 27, 1929. “The present emperor has in him a weakness of the will; he needs the empress’s assistance. Do your best; do your best.” One can only wonder how many other court officials during the 1920s thought Hirohito had a weak will. See Kojima, Tenn, dai nikan (Bungei Shunj, 1974), p. 56.

  67. Sasaki, Gendai tennsei no kigen to kin, p. 86.

  68. Harold Nicolson, King George V: His Life and Reign (London: Constable & Co. Ltd., 1952), pp. 141–42.
/>   69. Ibid., p. 252.

  70. Sasaki, Gendai tennsei no kigen to kin, p. 87.

  71. James F. Willis, Prologue to Nuremberg: The Politics and Diplomacy of Punishing War Criminals of the First World War (Greenwood Press, 1982), p. 103.

  72. Sasaki, Gendai tennsei no kigen to kin, p. 87.

  73. Ibid., p. 88.

  74. The tour could not compensate for Hirohito’s isolated upbringing, or teach him to conceive freedom as also meaning relief from toil and scarcity of goods. Nor did his sudden encounter with Western living in Europe lead him to espouse the modern ideal of freedom as being true to oneself.

  75. Sasaki, Gendai tennsei no kigen to kin, p. 86.

  76. Ibid., p. 89.

  77. Ilse Hayden, Symbol and Privilege: The Ritual Context of British Royalty (University of Arizona Press, 1987), p. 45.

  78. “Nara Takeji kaisroku (san),” pp. 318–19.

  79. Ibid., pp. 319–20.

  80. On Hara’s assassination, see Got Takeo, “Ktaishi no gaiy o habamu mono,” in Bungei shunj to kushugo, tenn hakusho (Oct. 1956), pp. 96–97; Tokyo nichi nichi shinbun, Nov. 5, 1921, in Taishnysu jiten, dai gokan, p. 567.

  81. MNN, p. 34, entry of Nov. 5, 1921.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE REGENCY AND THE CRISIS OF TAISHO DEMOCRACY

  1. Yasuda, Tenn no seijishi, p. 196.

  2. “Nara Takeji kaisroku (san),” p. 329.

  3. Makino’s entry of Aug. 23, 1921, notes: “Yesterday the chief military aide-de-camp visited me and said, ‘I think it’s necessary to devise a method for him to learn political affairs following his return.’ I agreed emphatically…and told him to study the matter.” MNN, p. 25.

  4. Regular lectures are mentioned in Nagazumi, Shwa tenn to watakushi, pp. 109–11.

  5. Other lecturers during the 1920s included Hirohito’s teacher of Japanese literature, Professor Haga Yaichi; a Professor Toribe, who taught Chinese literature; Professor Kat Shigeru, who lectured on Chinese history and philosophy; Yamamoto Shinjir, Hirohito’s translator and teacher of French; and the right-wing constitutional scholar Kakei Katsuhiko.

  6. Shimizu Tru, “Kenp to kshitsu tenpan o goshink mshiagete,” in Jitsugy no Nihon zkan: gotaiten kinen shashing (Nov. 1928), pp. 20–21.

  7. MNN, pp. 109–10.

  8. KYN, dai ikkan (Iwanami Shoten, 1993), p. 49; MNN, p. 263.

  9. KYN, dai ikkan, pp. 115, 142, 152, 219, 252, 260; dai nikan, p. 32.

  10. KYN, dai ikkan, p. 55.

  11. Ibid., pp. 79–80, 85, 87.

  12. Shinohara Hatsue, “An Intellectual Foundation for the Road to Pearl Harbor: Quincy Wright and Tachi Sakutaro.” Paper presented at the Conference on the United States and Japan in World War II, Hofstra University, Dec. 1991, p. 3. The material in this and the next paragraph comes from Ms. Shinohara’s helpful paper.

  13. Tachi’s massive study of international law was published in two parts—peacetime law and wartime law—in 1930–31. Kawai Yahachi’s earliest diary entries on Tachi occur on Sept. 30 and Oct. 14, 1926. See KYN, dai ikkan, pp. 31, 36.

  14. KYN, dai gokan, p. 16, entry of Jan. 29, 1931.

  15. Makino believed that Hirohito’s participation in military exercises was useful for instructing both himself and the emperor in the politics of war expenditures. Hirohito’s partiality for navy leaders such as Adms. Suzuki Kantar and Okada Keisuke may have reflected Makino’s influence. See MNN, pp. 289–91, where he discusses Hirohito’s and his own participation in naval exercises staged outside Tokyo Bay between Oct. 20–25, 1927.

  16. Watanabe Osamu, “Tennsei kokka chitsujo no rekishiteki kenky josetsu,” in Shakai Kagaku Kenky u 30, no. 5 (Mar. 1977), p. 259.

  17. The Imperial Household Ministry announced on Nov. 21, 1921, that soon after the Taish emperor’s birth he had contracted an illness similar to cerebral meningitis and from around 1914–15 “he not only lost a decent posture and walked unsteadily, but his speech also faltered.” Shikama Ksuke, Jijbukan nikki, Nov. 25, 1921, as cited in Yasuda Hiroshi, “Kindai tennsei ni okeru kenryoku to ken’i—Taish demokurashii-ki noksatsu” in Bunka hyron 357 (Oct. 1990), p. 186.

  18. Asukai Masamichi, Meiji taitei (Chikuma Shob, 1989), p. 287; Watanabe Ikujir, Kshitsu shinron (Waseda Daigaku Shuppanbu, 1929), p. 320.

  19. MNN, pp. 68–69.

  20. Ibid.

  21. Wakabayashi Masahiro, “1923-nen tg Taiwan gykei to ‘naichi enchshugi’” in Iwanami kza, 2 teikoku tchi no kz, kindai Nihon to shokuminchi (Iwanami Shoten, 1992), p. 108.

  22. Ibid., p. 113.

  23. Ibid., pp. 99–100.

  24. Ibid., pp. 103–4, quoting the Taiwan jipp (May–June 1923), pp. 7–8.

  25. Tasaki Kimitsukasa, “Kant daishinsai 70 shnen kinen shsankaki” in Rekishigaku kenky 653 (Dec. 1993), pp. 32–34.

  26. Chsenshi Kenkykai, ed., Nymon Chsen no rekishi (Sanseid, 1998), pp. 166–70; also see the discussion of the Kant earthquake in Roman Cybriwsky, Tokyo: The Shogun’s City at the Twenty-First Century (John Wiley & Sons, 1998), pp. 82–85.

  27. “Nara Takeji kaisroku (san),” pp. 344, 348; Fujiwara Akira, Shwa tenn no jgonen sens (Aoki Shoten, 1991), p. 42.

  28. e Shinobu, “Hajimete kkai sareta kizokuin himitsukai giji sokkirokush,” in Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai UP 276 (Oct. 1995), pp. 30–31.

  29. Watanabe, “Tennsei kokka chitsujo no rekishiteki kenky josetsu,” p. 187.

  30. e, “Hajimete kkai sareta kizokuin himitsukai giji sokkirokush,” p. 30.

  31. Asahi shinbun, June 5, 1995.

  32. Kojima, Tenn, dai ikkan, pp. 320, 328.

  33. Watanabe, “Tennsei kokka chitsujo no rekishiteki kenky josetsu,” p. 256.

  34. Ibid., p. 257. Watanabe calls this “the second great treason trial in modern Japanese history”—the first having been the trial in 1911–12 of Ktoku Shsui and ten others, including the St Zen sect priest Uchiyama Gud, over their alleged involvement in a plot to assassinate the Meiji emperor.

  35. MNN, pp. 107–8.

  36. Kojima, Tenn, dai ikkan, p. 304, paperback edition, p. 298.

  37. Ibid., p. 299, paperback edition.

  38. Watanabe, “Tennsei kokka chitsujo no rekishiteki kenky josetsu,” p. 257.

  39. Nezu, Tenn to Shwashi, j, p. 37. In 1928 alone the number of lèse-majesté incidents jumped to twenty-eight.

  40. Watanabe, “Tennsei kokka chitsujo no rekishiteki kenky josetsu,” p. 257.

  41. “Zshno ggi okonawareru,” in Tokyo nichi nichi shinbun (ykan), Jan. 26, 1924, in Taishnysu jiten, rokkan (Mainichi Komunikshionzu, 1988), pp. 344–45.

  42. Koyama Itoko, Kgsama (Suzakusha, 1959), pp. 43–44.

  43. Osaka Mainichi, Jan. 27, 1924, in Taishnysu jiten, rokkan, p. 347.

  44. Osawa Satoru, “Kshitsu zaisei to ‘Teishitsu tkeisho,’” in Teishitsu tkeisho 1, Meiji 32 nendo hen (Kashiwa Shob, 1993), pp. 12–14.

  45. Kawahara, Tenn Hirohito no Shwa-shi, p. 75.

  46. MNN, entry of Jan. 28, 1922, pp. 44–45.

  47. Takahashi Hiroshi, “Kaisetsu,” in Kinoshita Michio, Sokkin nisshi (Bungei Shunjsha, 1990), p. 289.

  48. MNN, p. 44.

  49. The term “peace code” comes from Dorothy V. Jones, Code of Peace: Ethics and Security in the World of the Warlord States (University of Chicago Press, 1991).

  50. Kobayashi Michiko, “Sekai taisen to tairiku seisaku no heny,” in Rekishigaku kenky 656 (Mar. 1994), pp. 1–16.

  51. Sait Seiji, “Nichi-Doku sens no kaisen gaik,” in Nihon Kokusai Seiji Gakkai, ed., Kokusai seiji 4 (Oct. 1998), pp. 192–208.

  52. Fujiwara, Shwa tenn no jgonen sens, pp. 40–48.

  53. Jones, Code of Peace, p. 44, observes that the Japanese “symbolic statement on racial equality…was left out of the covenant (along with a statement on religious toleration that Wilson very much wanted) [but] the principle of the equality of nations was resoundingly affirmed…in the very structure of the League.”

  54. Shibata Shinichi, “Hakken! Shwa tenn ga mananda teigaku kykasho,” in Bungei shi
nj (Feb. 1998, special issue), p. 131.

  55. Nagai Kazu, Kindai Nihon no gunbu to seiji (Shibunkaku Shuppan, 1993), p. 256.

  56. Kurono Taeru, “Shwa shoki kaigun ni okeru kokubs hison tairitsu to konmei: kokub hshin no dainiji kaitei to daisanji kaitei no aida,” in Gunji shigaku 34, no. 1 (June 1998), pp. 10–11.

  57. Fujiwara, Shwa tenn no jgonen sens, p. 42.

  58. Military spending fell from a high of 60.14 percent in 1920 to 28.52 percent in 1930. Expressed in terms of GNP, the decline was from 5.86 percent to 3.03 percent. See Yamada Akira, Gunbi kakuch no kindaishi: Nihongun no bch to hkai (Yoshikawa Kbunkan, 1997), p. 10.

  59. Russians who surrendered during the four-year long Siberian war were not treated as POWs, suggesting that Japanese soldiers either killed them on the spot or, less probable, released them after they had pledged not to fight again. Yui Daizabur, Kosuge Nobuko, Reng koku horyo gyakutai to sengo sekinin (Iwanami Bukkuretto no. 321, 1993), p.16.

  60. Yoshida Yutaka, Tenn no guntai to Nankin jiken (Aoki Shoten, 1985), p. 191.

  61. Ibid.

  62. Ibid., pp. 193–94.

  63. Ibid., p. 191.

  64. Kataoka Tetsuya, “Shwa shoki: Nihon rikugun e no shakaigakuteki apuroochi” in Gunji shigaku 22, no. 4 (1987), pp. 20–21.

  65. Ibid., pp. 23–24.

  66. Kataoka, p. 25, notes that in 1928 Gens. Araki Sadao, Obata Toshishir, and Suzuki Osamichi revised Tsui kry, making the principle of the offensive and the primacy of spirit over material force the dominant ideas of the Japanese army.

  67. Maehara Tru, “‘Tsuiken dokuritsu’ riron no gunnai de no hatten keika” in Gunji shigaku 23, no. 3 (Jan. 1998), pp. 18–19.

  68. Nagai, Kindai Nihon no gunbu to seiji, p. 255.

  69. Maehara, “‘Tsuiken dokuritsu’ riron no gunnai de hatten keika,” pp. 27–28.

  70. In February 1922 the General Staff Office produced a top-secret study titled “Concerning the Independence of the Right of Supreme Command,” which may have been the first official document whose title included the term “independence of the right of supreme command.” See Maehara, p. 30.

  71. Quoted in Maehara, p. 34; also, p. 40, n. 50.

  72. Tanaka Hiromi, “Kyoz no gunshin Tg Heihachir,” in This Is Yomiuri (Sept. 1993), p. 240.