Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan

by Herbert P. Bix

  10. Ibid.

  11. Takada, “Shinshutsu Shiry kara mita ‘Shwa tenn dokuhakuroku,’” p. 42. Fellers is referring here to Benjamin V. Cohen, a New Deal lawyer who later served as assistant to Secretary of State Byrnes.

  12. The espousal, by people like Fellers, of anti-Semitic views to Japanese officials, as evidenced in the Mizota notes, was not innocuous. Such behavior allowed the wartime anti-Semitism that Japanese governments had fostered in order to ensure ideological conformity against the West to persist. To this day anti-Semitism without Jews remains a visible element of continuity between late imperial and present-day Japan.

  13. “Moto kyokut kokusai gunji saiban bengonin Shiobara Tokisabur kara no chshush (dai ikkai),” July 4, 1961, in Kyokut kokusai gunji saiban kankei chsh shiry (Yasukuni Kaik Bunko Shoz, Inoue Tadao Shiry, n.p., n.d.). This is the stenographic record of Shiobara’s questioning by officials of the Research Department of the Ministry of Justice.

  14. Ibid.

  15. “Investigative Division Progress Report,” Memorandum of Lt. Colonel B. E. Sackett to Joseph B. Keenan, Jan. 22, 1946, in Tokyo saiban e no michi—kokusai kensatsu kyoku, seiji kettei kankei bunsho, dai nikan, p. 149.

  16. FRUS, Diplomatic Papers 1945: The Far East, vol. 6, pp. 926–36; Higurashi Yoshinobu, “Rengkoku no kyokut shuy sens hanzai saiban ni kansuru kihon seisaku,” in Nihon rekishi 495 (Aug. 1989), pp. 55–60; Arnold Brackman, The Other Nuremberg: The Untold Story of the Tokyo War Crimes Trials (William Morrow & Co., 1987), p. 47. SWNCC 57/3, which was sent to all the nations that signed the document of surrender, and JCS directive No. 1512 formed the legal framework for the IPS.

  17. Matsutani Makoto, Nihon saiken hiwa: Tokyo saiban ya saigunbi, nado: dran no hanseiki o ikita moto shush hishokan no kais (Asagumo Shinbunsha, 1983), pp. 94–105. The research group, which in October 1947 became part of the Ministry of Health and Welfare, continued its work until the end of the trials.

  18. Kinoshita, Sokkin nisshi, pp. 170–72.

  19. Ibid., p. 175.

  20. Ibid., p. 176.

  21. STD, pp. 88, 96.

  22. Higashino, Shwa tenn futatsu no “dokuhakuroku,” pp. 65–66. The English “Monologue” appears on pp. 209–219.

  23. See Australian “List No. 1” of the major Japanese war criminals, dated January 16, 1946, in Tokyo saiban e no michi—kokusai kensatsu kyoku, seiji kettei kankei bunsho, dai nikan, pp. 402–35.

  24. Kat Yko, “Tj Hideki to Ishiwara Kanji,” in Igarashi Takeshi, Kitaoka Shinichi, eds., “Sron” Tokyo saiban to wa nan datta no ka (Tsukiji Shokan, 1997), pp. 118–28.

  25. Yoshida Yutaka, “Sens sekinin to Kyokut kokusai gunji saiban,” in Nakamura Masanori et al., Sengo Nihon: senryto sengo kaikaku, dai gokan (Iwanami Shoten, 1995), pp. 75–76.

  26. Donald G. Gillin with Charles Etter, “Staying On: Japanese Soldiers and Civilians in China, 1945–1949,” in Journal of Asian Studies 42, no. 3 (May 1983), p. 499.

  27. Awaya Kentar, “Senryo, hisenry: Tokyo saiban o jirei ni,” in Iwanami kza: Nihon tsshi, dai 19 kan (Iwanami Shoten, 1995), p. 198; Yoshida Yutaka, “Sens sekinin to Kyokut kokusai gunji saiban,” in Sengo Nihon: senry to sengo kaikaku, dai gokan, pp. 74–75; Nakamura Yetsu, Paidan: Taiwangun o tsukutta Nihongun shktachi (Fuy Shob, 1995), pp. 74–83.

  28. Nagai Hitoshi, “Fuirippin to Tokyo saiban: daihy kenji no kensatsu katsud o chshin toshite,” in Shien 57, no. 2 (Mar. 1997), p. 58.

  29. Brackman, The Other Nuremberg, pp. 92, 344.

  30. Meirion and Susie Harries, Sheathing the Sword: The Demilitarisation of Japan (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1987), p. 149; Higurashi Yoshinobu, “Pru hanketsu saik: Tokyo saiban ni okeru bekko iken no kokusai kanky,” in It Takashi, ed., Nihon kindaishi no saikchiku (Yamakawa Shuppansha, 1993), p. 396.

  31. International Prosecution Section 315, Microfilm Reel 28, R 2/163, p. 667; and R2/147, p. 661. The first, precedent-setting Nuremberg Trial taught the lesson that crimes “against peace” and “against humanity” (or, more accurately, “the human status”) were of international concern, and that individuals, not just states, were culpable for violating them. See McCormack, Simpson, The Law of War Crimes: National and International Approaches, p. xxii; Simon Chesterman, “Never Again…And Again: Law, Order, and the Gender of War Crimes in Bosnia and Beyond,” in Yale Journal of International Law 22, no. 299 (1997), p. 318.

  32. “Burning of Confidential Documents by Japanese Government,” case no. 43, serial 2, in International Prosecution Section, vol. 8; In a letter to the Far Eastern Economic Review (July 6, 1989), Aristides George Lazarus, former defense lawyer for Gen. Hata Shunroku, claimed that, at the urging of an emissary of President Truman, who was most likely Keenan, he had participated in saving Hirohito from the trials. “With Hata, I arranged that the military defendants, and their witnesses, would go out of their way during their testimony to include the fact that Hirohito was only a benign presence when military actions or programmes were discussed at meetings that, by protocol, he had to attend.”

  33. Yoshida, Shwa tenn no shsenshi, pp. 183–85.

  34. John L. Ginn, Sugamo Prison, Tokyo: An Account of the Trial and Sentencing of Japanese War Criminals in 1948, by a U.S. Participant (MacFarland & Co., Pub., 1992), p. 39. The IPS Language Division established Chinese and Russian sections but was never able to keep up with the demands on its services.

  35. Figures on total seating vary considerably: see Brackman, The Other Nuremberg, p. 89; Tokyo Saiban Handobukku Hensh Iinkai, ed., Tokyo saiban handobukku (Aoki Shoten, 1989), p. 31.

  36. “Opening Statement” by Keenan, in Trial of Japanese War Criminals: Documents (Washington, D.C.: USGPO, 1946), p. 1.

  37. Brackman, The Other Nuremberg, p. 133; Asahi Shinbun Htei Kishadan, Tokyo saiban, j (Tokyo Saiban Kankkai, 1963), pp. 258–60.

  38. Kyokut kokusai gunji saiban sokkiroku, No. 20, (June 27, 1946), p. 12; Brackman, The Other Nuremberg, p. 134. During the defense phase of the trial, in September 1947, General Araki also rebutted Inukai Takeru’s testimony. See TWCT, Vol. 12: Transcript of the Proceedings in Open Session Pages 27,839 to 30,420, pp. 28, 131–32.

  39. Brackman, The Other Nuremberg, p. 135; Kyokut kokusai gunji saiban sokkiroku 21, June 28, 1946, p. 3.

  40. Harries and Harries, Sheathing the Sword, p. 157.

  41. TWCT, Vol. 8: Proceedings of the Tribunal/Pages 17542–20,105, p. 17, 662. Fifty years after the end of World War II, eight volumes of these rejected defense documents were published in Japanese. Tokyo Saiban Shiry Kankkai, ed., Tokyo saiban kyakka miteishutsu bengogawa Shiry, vols. 1–8 (Kokusho Kankkai, 1995). Vol. 1 contains the Nippon Times summary of Stimson’s famous Harper’s article.

  42. Brackman, The Other Nuremberg, p. 284.

  43. Ibid.

  44. TWCT, Vol. 13: Transcript of the Proceedings in Open Session Pages 30,421 to 32,971, p. 31,310.

  45. Asahi Shinbun Htei Kishadan, Tokyo saiban, ch (Tokyo Saiban Kankkai, 1963), p. 8; “False Answers and Criticism of the Senior Statesmen,” Asahi shinbun (Oct. 23, 1947).

  46. Kyokut kokusai gunji saiban sokkiroku, dai hakkan, No. 342, December 26, 1947 (Matsudo Shoten, 1968), p. 8.

  47. Asahi shinbun, Dec. 27, 1947.

  48. Kyokut kokusai gunji saiban sokkiroku, dai hakkan, No 344 (Matsudo Shoten, 1968), pp. 216–17; Kain Michitaka, “Nitch sens to Taiheiy sens: Nihon fuasshizumuron no josetsu toshite,” pp. 2, 6. Although scheduled for publication in Chgoku kenky, No. 6 (Nihon Hyronsha, 1949), the article was censored by SCAP.

  49. Kyokut kokusai gunji saiban sokkiroku, dai hakkan, No. 345, pp. 221–22.

  50. When Life magazine, on Jan. 26, 1948, criticized the trial, Webb wrote to MacArthur (Feb. 11) denying he had ever “questioned any witness to show the Emperor…was guilty of crime of any kind or in any way responsible for the war…. I also pointed to [Keenan] that the Prosecution’s evidence implicated the Emperor.”

  51. TN, dai hakkan, p. 413, 209, 210.

  52. Ibid., p. 159; also see pp. 209, 210.

&nb
sp; 53. Akazawa Shir, “Shch tennsei no keisei to sens sekininron,” in Rekishi hyron. 313 (July 1976), pp. 48, 50. He cites Tanabe’s essay, “Seiji tetsugaku no kymu” in Tenbo (Mar. 1946).

  54. Miyoshi Tatsuji, “Heika wa sumiyaka ni gotaii ni naru ga yoroshii,” serialized in the Jan., Mar., Apr., and June 1946 issues of Shinch under the title “Natsukashii Nihon.” Reprinted in Tsurumi Shunsuke, Nakagawa Roppei, eds., Tenn hyakuwa, ge (Chikuma Shob, 1989), pp. 326–27; the essay is discussed in Bix, “The Shwa Emperor’s ‘Monologue’…,” pp. 314–15.

  55. “Kokutai goji no hryaku (Kinoshita no memo)” in Kinoshita, Sokkin nisshi, p. 225.

  56. Just before returning to the United States to work in Republican and extreme right-wing organizations, Fellers wrote Hirohito a letter on “matters of spiritual importance.” Delivered to gane Shjir at the Palace by diplomat Kasai Jji, it was apparently read by Hirohito. Seventeen years later, in April 1963, Kasai wrote Fellers to say:

  Today is the emperor’s birthday. Thanks to MacArthur and you the emperor’s position was saved. I am truly grateful to you…. Do you remember that you had tried to appeal to the emperor to express his imperial repentance? If he had done that, he would have obtained the love and respect not only of the Japanese people but of the whole world. Cited in Higashino Shin, pp. 192–93.

  57. MacArthur, partly following SWNCC 57/3, amended the Nuremberg Charter in significant ways. His Charter for the IMTFE deleted the article in the Nuremberg Charter denying immunity to “heads of state” in wartime (Article 74). It failed to provide for the appointment of alternate judges as at Nuremberg; and it stipulated that a majority vote of the judges present at any particular time determined decisions and judgments. An absent judge could take part in subsequent proceedings unless he declared in open court that he was unfamiliar “with the proceedings which took place in his absence.” See Wallach, “The Procedural and Evidentiary Rules of the Post–World War II War Crimes Trials: Did They Provide An Outline For International Legal Procedure?” pp. 864–65; Yoram Dinstein and Mala Tabory, eds., War Crimes in International Law (The Hague, Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1996), p. 270.

  58. Dinstein and Tabory, eds., War Crimes in International Law, p. 5.

  59. International lawyer Theodor Meron has pointed out that the Tokyo tribunal, “in contrast to the the IMT, did not view the entirety of the Hague Regulations as necessarily an accurate mirror of customary law.” See Theodor Meron, Human Rights and Humanitarian Norms as Customary Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), p. 39.

  60. “Opening Statement” by Joseph B. Keenan in Trial of Japanese War Criminals: Documents, p. 19.

  61. Cited in Brackman, The Other Nuremberg, p. 374; Tokyo Saiban Handobukku Hensh Iinkai, ed., Tokyo saiban handobukku, p. 63. The final judgment stated that Japan waged wars of aggression against France, the United States, Britain, and the Netherlands, but failed to include a similar statement labeling as aggression its campaigns in China.

  62. Higurashi Yoshinobu, “Tokyo saiban no sogan mondai,” in Gunji kenky 35, no. 2 (Sept. 1999), p. 52.

  63. Brackman, The Other Nuremberg, p. 399.

  64. Asahi shinbun journalists claim that some of their bones, buried at the cremation site in Yokohama, were excavated after the cremation and, after the occupation ended, offered to family members by Health Ministry officials in a formal ceremony at Ichigaya. See Asahi Shinbun Htei Kishadan, Tokyo saiban, ge, pp. 970–72.

  65. “Separate Opinion of the President,” in B. V. A. Röling and C. F. Ruter, eds., The Tokyo Judgment: The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (I.M.T.F.E.) 29 April 1946–12 November 1948, vol. 1 (APA–University Press, 1977), p. 478.

  66. “Dissenting Judgment of the Member from France,” in Röling, Ruter, The Tokyo Judgment, vol. 1, p. 496.

  67. It seems more accurate to say that Pal viewed World War II as an anti-white Asian nationalist, rather than “from an interpretive perspective located in the South,” as Richard Falk claims in “Telford Taylor and The Legacy of Nuremberg,” in Columbia Journal of International Law 37, no. 3 (1999), p. 697, n. 12.

  68. “Judgment of Mr. Justice Pal, Member from India,” in Röling and Ruter, The Tokyo Judgment, vol. 1, p. 929; TWCT, vol. 21, Separate Opinions, p. 963. On Pal’s dissent and his role at Tokyo, see Nagao Ryichi, “Pru hanji no ronri,” in Igarashi Takeshi, Kitaoka Shinichi, eds., “Sron” Tokyo saiban to wa nan datta no ka (Tsukiji Shoten, 1997); Higurashi Yoshinobu, “Pru hanketsu saik: Tokyo saiban ni okeru bekko iken no kokusai kanky,” in It Takashi, ed., Nihon kindaishi no saikchiku (Yamakawa Shuppansha, 1993).

  69. CIE officials considered the Tokyo trial a part of the demilitarization and democratization process. Their “war guilt program” centered on the publication in the Japanese press of daily news reports on the court proceedings.

  70. Yoshimi Yoshiaki, “Senryki Nihon no minsh ishiki—sens sekininron o megutte,” in Shis 811 (Jan. 1992); Yoshida Yutaka, “Senryki ni okeru sens sekininron,” in Hitotsubashi rons 5, no. 2 (Feb. 1991); Ara Kei, “Tokyo saiban, sens sekininron no genry—Tokyo saiban to senryka no seron,” in Rekishi hyron 408 (Apr. 1984).

  71. Nakamura Masanori, “Tokyo saiban to Nihon gendaishi,” in Nakamura Masanori, Gendaishi o manabu: sengo kaikaku to gendai Nihon (Yoshikawa Kbunkan, 1997), pp. 98–99.

  72. Ashida Hitoshi nikki, dai nikan (Iwanami Shoten, 1986), p. 247.

  73. Nakamura, “Tokyo saiban to Nihon gendaishi,” p. 97.

  74. Awaya Kentar, “Tokyo saiban ni miru sengo shori,” in Awaya et al., Sens sekinin, sengo sekinin: Nihon to Doitsu wa d chigau ka (Asahi Sensho, 1998), p. 117; U.S. State Dept., “Japanese Reactions to Class A War Crimes Trial,” Aug. 27, 1948, in O.S.S./State Dept. Intelligence and Research Reports, part 2, Postwar Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia, reel 5 (University Publications of America, Inc.).

  75. The decree was discovered and introduced in English by Awaya Kentar. See “In the Shadows of the Tokyo Tribunal,” “Appendix” in Hosoya C. et al., eds., The Tokyo War Crimes Trial: An International Symposium (Kdansha International Ltd., 1986), pp. 79–88.

  76. Yoshida Yutaka, “‘Shwa tenn dokuhakuroku’ no rekishiteki ichizuke,” in Higashino, Shwa tenn futatsu no “dokuhakuroku,” p. 266.

  77. Nakamura Masanori, Gendaishi o manabu: sengo kaikaku to gendai Nihon (Yoshikawa Kbunkan, 1997), pp. 93–120.

  78. In section 12 of appendix D, rape was defined traditionally as “failure to respect family honour and rights” rather than as violence against women per se. Tokyo saiban e no michi: kokusai kensatsu kyoku, seisaku kettei kankei bunsho, dai yonkan, p. 416.

  79. “The Crime of Conspiracy,” memorandum for Joseph B. Keenan, Washington, D.C., May 23, 1946; Arieh J. Kochavi, Prelude to Nuremberg: Allied War Crimes Policy and the Question of Punishment (University of North Carolina Press, 1998), p. 225. The prosecution of “conspiracy” had also divided the British and Americans from the French and Soviets during the London negotiations over the IMT Charter.

  80. Kain Michitaka, “Tokyo saiban, sonogo,” in Shis 348 (1953), p. 28.

  81. Awaya, “Tokyo saiban ni miru sengo shori,” in Sens sekinin, sengo sekinin, p. 97; Awaya et al., eds., Tokyo saiban e no michi: kokusai kensatsu kyoku, seisaku kettei kankei bunsho, dai yonkan (Gendai Shiry Shuppan, 1999), p. 416.

  82. Yoshimi Yoshiaki, “Sens hanzai to meneki,” in Kikan sens sekinin kenky 26 (Winter 1999), pp. 1–6; Awaya, “Tokyo sabian ni miru sengo shor,” p. 97.

  83. Stephen Endicott, Edward Hagerman, The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea (Indiana University Press, 1998), pp. 37–41.

  84. Sakuta Keiichi, “Nihonjin no renzokukan,” in Sakuta Keiichi, Kachi no shakaigaku (Iwanami Shoten, 1972), p. 413.

  85. Awaya, “Tokyo saiban ni miru sengo shori,” in Sens sekinin, sengo sekinin, pp. 112–15.

  CHAPTER 16

  SALVAGING THE IMPERIAL MYSTIQUE

  1. Kinoshita Michio, Sokkin nisshi, p. 112.

  2. Reginald Bl
yth, as reproduced (in English) in Kinoshita, p. 112.

  3. Mark Gayn, Japan Diary (Sloane Associates, Inc., 1948), pp. 137–138.

  4. On the gender shift, see Takashi Fujitani, Splendid Monarchy: Power and Pagentry in Modern Japan (University of California Press, 1996).

  5. Shimizu Ikutar, “Senryka no tennsei,” Shis, No. 358 (June 1953), p. 638.

  6. Yamagiwa Akira, et al., Shiry Nihon senry 1: tennsei (tsuki Shoten, 1990), pp. 570–74.

  7. Kinoshita, Sokkin nisshi, p. 215.

  8. “Inada Shichi, ‘Bibroku’ yori bassui,” entry of August 14, 1946. Hakusukinoe (in A.D 663) was a naval battle between Japanese warriors coming to the aid of the Kudara Kingdom in the southern part of Korea, around Pusan, against Chinese and Korean forces. Defeat forced the Japanese to flee the peninsula and led to domestic reform.

  9. Yamazumi Makimi, “Sengo kyiku wa seik shita ka,” in Nihon kindaishi no kyoz to jitsuz 4, kfuku—Shwa no shen (tsuki Shoten, 1989), pp. 272–76.

  10. Earlier MacArthur had slowed the momentum of the democratization movement from below and given encouragement to the defendants in the Tokyo Trial by banning a national general strike planned for February 1, 1947.

  11. Matsui was Hirohito’s interpreter for his 8th through 11th meetings with MacArthur, and for his two meetings with Dulles on Feb. 10 and April 22, 1951. See Sankei shinbun, Jan. 6, l994; Shind Eiichi, “Bunkatsu sareta rydo,” Sekai (April 1979); Pacific Stars & Stripes (May 7, 1947).

  12. Cited in Arasaki Moriteru, Okinawa djidaishi, dai gokan: “datsuhoku nynan” no shis 1991–1992 (Tokyo: 1993); also see Nakamura Masanori, “Kenp dai kyj to tennsei,” in Gekkan, Gunshuku mondai shiry (May 1998).

  13. Watanabe Osamu, “Sengo kaikaku to h,” pp. 245–246.

  14. Ashida Hitoshi nikki, dai nikan, pp. 13–14.

  15. Arasaki Moriteru, Okinawa djidaishi, dai gokan, pp. 219–20, 230; Nippon Times, June 29, 1947; Pacific Stars & Stripes, June 29, 1947.