Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan

by Herbert P. Bix

Hirohito also had behind him a childhood of training in self-control as well as a military education that had accustomed him to rigid routine. His grandfather had personally commanded the army and navy during occasional maneuvers staged against hypothetical foreign invaders and, quite unlike his own father, had been diligent in attending the graduation ceremonies of the army and navy schools.11 But Meiji had not received a military education and knew virtually nothing about strategy and tactics. His training in military matters was designed to get him into the open air and reform his unhealthy lifestyle. Seeking to follow in the idealized footsteps of a fabricated Meiji, whom he had installed as his life’s model, was one of Hirohito’s dominant desires, though it never prevented him from freely altering Meiji’s example whenever circumstances required. Hirohito, unlike his grandfather, was constantly accompanied by military aides-de-camp, who encouraged him to act in a military manner, and particularly after becoming emperor in December 1926, he was nearly always in uniform except during religious festivals (when he donned the ancient attire of a Shinto priest). This daily conditioning had a profound effect on his evolving personality.12

  Equally important, Hirohito accepted, and felt no compulsion to question, the duly constituted order of authority into which he had been born. From an early age he acquired a sense of himself as a person who decided—and was destined to be required to decide—matters in the spheres of political power and military command. As he entered manhood and assumed the duties of emperor, however, his intellectual interests began to flow toward history, politics, and particularly natural science. These other values and aspirations did not prevent military matters from occupying the largest portion of his time.

  The young man on the way to becoming Japan’s “absolute” monarch and supreme military commander pursued a scientific hobby, but spent most of his time, and may even have had the most satisfactory personal relations, with military men who were not scientists. During his last two years at the Ogakumonjo, he seems to have befriended the vastly self-confident General Ugaki. Later, while participating with his ministers in ruling the state, he would add the mask of supreme commander in chief (daigensui) and begin to express himself more often. His words, uttered in a spirited manner, carried tremendous political influence. Hirohito usually gave wholehearted trust to bureaucratic types whom he appointed to high position. But he had little natural predilection for dogmatic saber rattlers and political reactionaries like the principal of his middle school, Captain (later retired Admiral) Ogasawara, the Imperial Navy’s first public relations expert, and the school’s principal, the renowned Fleet Admiral Tg.13

  The problem therefore is: How should one understand the coexistence and specific content of the different, potentially conflicting, identities that Hirohito assumed as his life unfolded through so many distinct phases? How did he manage to control his emotional life so as to be able to survive the many different roles he took on and the demands made upon him, and at what cost to himself? Certainly his most deeply embedded, never effaced identity was that of an emperor by divine right. His education is the story of how he came to think of himself as a giver of orders, a participant, along with others, in the policy-making process, and the leader of a nation that was bringing modernity to Asia.

  II

  Inevitably Hirohito had acquired attitudes about political life that delighted his teachers.14 One can gain a rough idea of his view of human affairs at this time from a recitation for Sugiura passed on to Imperial Household Minister Makino Nobuaki, who reproduced it in his diary. In “My Impressions Upon Reading the Imperial Rescript on the Establishment of Peace”—his short (two-page) composition written in January 1920, after the peace treaty between the Allied Powers and Germany had finally gone into effect, nineteen-year-old Hirohito looked ahead to the day when he would “bear the great responsibility of guiding political affairs” and cited the words of “my father, the emperor.”15 This essay reveals a young man concerned about “extremist thought” who wishes to uphold the virtues of military preparedness, yet also wants to realize “eternal peace.” His first point is that:

  The realm of ideas is greatly confused; extremist thought is about to overwhelm the world; and an outcry is being made about the labor problem. Witnessing the tragic aftermath of the war, the peoples of the world long for peace and international conciliation among the nations. Thus we saw the establishment of the League of Nations and, earlier, the convening of a labor conference…. On this occasion, just as stated in the imperial rescript, our people must make strenuous efforts and always adopt flexible ways.

  “Extremist thought” may be read here as a metaphor for ideas of democracy, antimilitarism, socialism, and communist revolution that had swept over Japan and the world following World War I. Having declared his concern about this phenomenon and referred to the “labor problem” as troublemaking, Hirohito continues his reading, sticking very close to the letter of the rescript:

  Concerning the League of Nations in particular, the imperial rescript states as follows: “We [chin; that is, Emperor Yoshihito] are truly delighted and, at the same time, also feel the grave burden of the state.” I too offer my congratulations on the coming into being of the League of Nations. I shall obey the Covenant of the League and develop its spirit.

  The enthusiasm with which Hirohito affirms the new world assembly should not be mistaken for an endorsement of either the Anglo-American worldview or the principles of the “new diplomacy” on which it was constructed. Rather his affirmation of the spirit of the League merely reflects his youthful idealism and optimism. At this stage, however, his idealism stands in stark contrast to the skepticism of the Hara government, which had wanted to delay acceptance of the League and had instructed the Japanese delegation at Versailles to keep quiet on European issues and concentrate on securing Japan’s “rights and interests” in China.

  Continuing with his resolutions, he declares in the very next line: “I must fulfill this important duty to establish permanent peace in the world. What should I do to carry out this duty?” His answer is that Japan, as a great colonial empire, must act in concert with other countries, on the basis of “universal principles,” while eschewing luxury and extravagance at home. Then, linking “military preparations” and industrial-infrastructural development to “profitable diplomatic negotiations” and “keep[ing] up with the Great Powers,” he hints at a premise of future action: “Without military preparedness profitable diplomatic negotiations will be difficult. Also, we cannot become a rich country unless we make industry and transportation flourish and increase the efficiency of workers. If we do not do this, we will be unable to keep up with the Great Powers.”

  Hirohito concluded his essay by stressing the ideal of total national unity in the face of foreign competition in order to fulfill “the nation’s destiny.”

  “Confused realm of ideas,” “extremist thought,” “extravagance,” “luxury,” “military preparedness,” “eternal peace,” going along with the trend of the time, and achieving total unity as a prerequisite to realizing the national destiny—these were words and concepts that Japan’s conservative ruling elites and military leaders used when describing the siutation at the end of World War I; so did young Hirohito. More broadly these terms belonged to an ideology conservatives paraded in order to deny growing social tensions in Japan. These tensions, the result of the widening gaps in wealth and power between different groups and classes, called for more than rhetorical surgery, however.

  III

  Japan’s World War I prime ministers—Ōkuma Shigenobu (1914–16) and Terauchi Masatake (1916–18)—had tried to govern within the fiction that the Taish emperor both reigned and ruled. Postwar prime minister Hara Kei (1918–21) could not even pretend seriously that Yoshihito was more than a figurehead—a necessary formality but at most no more than that.16 Hara and the aging genr were deeply disturbed by the emerging trends: nationwide food riots in 1918, the deteriorating health of the emperor, and repeated lèse-majesté incide
nts involving criticism of the imperial house.

  The lèse-majesté incidents of the postwar period were part of the larger Taish-era challenge to veneration of the throne.17 After Hirohito became regent in November 1921, however, people were also arrested and charged with lèse-majesté simply for saying, “What a lot of people for just one youngster”; or “This is too much! His majesty the emperor is only a cocky young kid. Yet whenever he goes by, all traffic is stopped for several hours beforehand. Some fools even wait more than ten hours to see the procession pass.”18

  Reverence for the throne was being undermined not only by the public’s growing awareness of the emperor’s protracted illness, but by socioeconomic changes and the Taish democracy movement, which cogently argued the case for a broader suffrage.19 Yet the Hara government and the genr would allow only a modest revision to benefit rural male elites. Rather than undertake a fundamental rationalization of political power to reflect societal changes, they vetoed demands for a universal male suffrage law, left the privileged hereditary peers and the privy council intact, and groped for ways to protect the throne and counter the Taish democracy movement.

  One of Hara’s very first concerns was public criticism of the immense wealth of the imperial house. “If you make people think the wealth of the imperial house is the wealth of the nation,” he told Imperial Household Minister Hatano Takanao, “then no matter how large the income is, no one will ever complain.”20 In a nation increasingly divided by class conflicts, Hara knew that the throne stood in danger of being drawn into controversy. More than a million people in farming and fishing villages, but most in towns and cities spreading through thirty-seven prefectures, plus Hokkaido, Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto, had just taken part in mass protests known as the “rice riots.” Although the rioters had directed their anger against rising commodity prices, the underlying cause of the riots was the landlord system, which required tenants to deliver the largest portion of their crops as rent. Hara could not deny the “enormous income” of the imperial house, for the imperial house was indeed Japan’s largest landowner, and care had to be taken to ensure that henceforth it not be involved in economic activities perceived as inflicting hardship.

  The genr Yamagata concurred. In October 1919 he too warned Hatano immediately to sell shares from the emperor’s stock holdings, and also to dispose of wetlands and dry fields from the imperial estates. The imperial house at that time enjoyed an annual income of 6 to 8 million yen from its management of mountain forests alone.21 It owned palaces, mansions, schools, mausoleums, and museums in Kyoto, Nara, and Tokyo, and received income from its investments in corporate stocks and bonds, together with an annual government allotment of 3 million yen. It also earned profits from the purchase of stock in colonial banks and enterprises, such as the Bank of Korea and (starting in 1925) the South Manchurian Railway Company. That wealth, added to its income from domestic mines and other sources, enabled the Imperial Household Ministry to function as the guarantor and trustee of some of Japan’s largest capitalist enterprises—a “great creator of credit and confidence for the development of Japanese capitalism as a whole.”22 Due to its immense wealth, on a par with the largest zaibatsu (great financial institutions or capital groups, with which prewar and wartime Japanese corporations were affiliated), the throne could relate to the nation in countless ways that had not been possible in Meiji’s time. If Hatano did not understand that fact, Hara and Yamagata did. The time had come to use the imperial economic power to buy the nation’s goodwill.

  Against this background there occurred, during the second half of 1920, prior to Hirohito’s graduation from the Ogakumonjo, an incident at court which showed how easily the monarchy could be drawn into the political strife of the Taish democracy era. It began as a fuss within the upper stratum of the ruling class over the question of color blindness in the family of Hirohito’s fiancée. Questions about the crown prince’s education, which had arisen around the same time as his engagement, in June 1919, were also involved. Hirohito’s education, engagement, and European trip, which were entwined from the outset, quickly fueled conflict over who would ultimately control the political and economic power inherent in the imperial institution.

  To wit: In 1917, one year after Hirohito’s formal investiture as crown prince, Captain Ogasawara had presented his mother, Empress Sadako (later Dowager Empress Teimei), with the names of three princesses he felt would be suitable partners in marriage for the crown prince. She chose Princess Nagako, the daughter of Prince Kuni Kuniyoshi, to be Hirohito’s future wife. Then as now, the engagement of a crown prince was considered a major national event requiring much advanced preparation. Since Hirohito had already met Princess Nagako and liked her, and she had all the qualifications needed to become an empress, Hatano informed Prince Kuni by letter, in January 1918, of his daughter’s selection as the crown prince’s fiancée. The Kuni family thereupon hired Sugiura, Hirohito’s ethics teacher, to begin giving her weekly lectures in ethics.

  The imperial engagement ceremony was scheduled to be held at the end of 1920, but in June 1920 the most powerful of the remaining genr, Field Marshal Yamagata, attempted to have the engagement canceled on the ground that color blindness existed in the Shimazu family, on Nagako’s mother’s side. On June 18 Yamagata forced Hatano to resign—ostensibly for not having thoroughly investigated the matter but also in order to expedite sending Hirohito on a foreign tour—and began to install his own Chsh-faction followers, starting at the top with Gen. Nakamura Yjir as the new minister of the imperial household. Supporting Yamagata was Prime Minister Hara. He too was troubled by the possibility that the Taish emperor’s chronic ill health and mental debility might have been caused by genetic defects in the imperial family, but he was also hoping to strengthen his influence in court affairs by cultivating good relations with Yamagata. Thinking of a healthy imperial family in the future, rather than the maintenance of the purity of the imperial bloodline for its own sake, Yamagata wrote to Prince Kuni asking him to “withdraw out of respect for the imperial house.”23

  Instead of submitting, Prince Kuni dug in his heels and secretly fought back, enlisting the support of Empress Sadako and Sugiura. It is doubtful if Hirohito, who had been involved in Nagako’s selection, was aware of all that happened next. Sugiura tried to rally officials within the Imperial Household Ministry by maintaining that breaking an engagement would set a bad precedent for the imperial house and also scar the crown prince for the rest of his life. When his “ethical” arguments failed, Sugiura proceeded to mobilize the families of the nobility and titled peers on the Shimazu side of the Kuni family, hoping that once they became involved against Yamagata, they would exert their influence on high officials descended from the old retainer band of the Satsuma fiefdom.

  Sugiura’s attempt to manipulate the genealogically based marriage networks that linked the Satsuma clan failed to yield results. Yamagata and Hara continued to worry about the future of the imperial family, and their rational concerns could not be easily discounted. Makino Nobuaki, the second son of the great Restoration leader Ōkubo Toshimichi, had just returned to Japan from the Paris Peace Conference and was considered a leader of the Satsuma clique. After Sugiura’s disciple Shirani Takeshi, an elite bureaucrat and head of Japan Steel, had visited Makino to discuss the problem, he reported to Sugiura that Makino “is having a hard time deciding.”24 Admiral Yamamoto of the Satsuma clique was also cool to Sugiura’s importuning.

  Despairing of being able to overcome the most powerful genr, Sugiura decided to escalate his conflict with Yamagata by informing another former student, Kojima Kazuo, then a member of the House of Representatives and a leader of the Kokumint Party, of Yamagata’s attempt to break the crown prince’s engagement. Kojima thereupon informed Kokumint president Inukai Tsuyoshi, and soon Ōtake Kanichi of the Kenseikai Party also learned of the trouble. If the Kokumint and Kenseikai Parties—the two leading enemies of Hara’s Seiykai—had been willing to break the silence that surrounded the l
ives of imperial family members, they could have used this explosive issue against Hara at a time when the suffrage issue was before the forty-fourth session of the Imperial Diet, which had convened on December 27, 1920. Also, the media had learned of Sugiura’s resignation of his position at the Ogakumonjo, officially for reasons of ill health, yet with only a few months to go before the crown prince’s graduation. Apparently the more isolated, powerless, and desperate Sugiura felt in trying to change the situation, the more he alerted others, and the more politicized the issue became.

  Finally Sugiura told his old friend Toyama Mitsuru, the ultranationalist leader of the “old right,” that Yamagata hated Prince Kuni and intended to aggrandize his own power at the court. In 1881 Tyama, with Hiraoka Ktar, had formed the Dark Ocean Society (Genysha), a pressure group with allies in government, business, and the universities, which sought to make Japan the center of an Asian confederation to combat European imperialism.25 Tyama’s comrades in the Amur River Society (Kokurykai, founded in 1901), as well as members of Uchida Ryhei’s Society of Masterless Samurai (Rninkai), now began to harass Yamagata physically. Sometime in January 1921 two pan-Asianists of the “new right,” the Orientalist scholar Ōkawa Shmei and the China “expert” and Nichiren Buddhist thinker Kita Ikki, learned about Yamagata’s attempt to annul the crown prince’s engagement. Ōkawa had recently formed, with Professor Mitsukawa Kametar of Takushoku University, a nationalist, anti-Marxist discussion group, the Yzonsha (literally, the “pine trees and chrysanthemums”), which Kita later joined. From its ranks rumors spread of a plot to assassinate Yamagata.

  In early February 1921, with the forty-fourth Diet still in session and the problem of the kokutai threatening to surface as a weapon in the hands of the opposition parties, Prime Minister Hara withdrew his support for Yamagata. Fearful of losing control of the situation and of being labeled a “national traitor,” Yamagata, one of the most powerful figures in the Japanese political world, yielded to the forces centered in the civilian right wing. Imperial Household Minister Nakamura also submitted to Sugiura, as did another Yamagata backer, the high court official Hirata Tsuke. Faced with all these losses, and sharing Hara’s deep concern about the growing politicization of the crown prince’s engagement (not to mention the activities of the Rninkai and the threat to his own life), Yamagata gave up the struggle.