After the Kant earthquake incidents of lèse-majesté increased and culminated in the infamous Toranomon incident in Tokyo, causing a further postponement of Hirohito’s marriage. On December 27, 1923, a young anarchist, Namba Daisuke, fired a small pistol at Hirohito’s carriage as he was en route to the Diet to deliver his inaugural address. The bullet shattered the glass, cutting his chamberlain but leaving Hirohito untouched. Namba, the son of a Diet member, had employed a weapon commonly used for shooting birds. Had he not targeted the crown prince, he would have been charged with the lesser crime of attempting to inflict bodily injury.28 Because he had intended to harm the future emperor, however, his action went beyond the parameters of lèse-majesté and sent a shock wave through the entire nation.
This incident quickly caused the highest officials of the land, from Prime Minister Yamamoto and his entire cabinet to the head of the national police, Yuasa Kurahei, to submit their resignations. Ordinary policemen in the area of the incident were dismissed en masse. Thereafter the strategy of displaying and guarding Hirohito in public was completely reevaluated.29
The day after this incident, December 28, at the start of the Forty-eighth Imperial Diet, the House of Peers held its first secret session in sixteen years.30 Discussion focused on Namba’s motivation, social background, and the need to tighten controls over thought. Diet member Nakagawa Yoshinaga observed: “Once people awaken socially [to defects in society] and [those defects] become unbearable, they will erupt, and it will be too late to do anything about it.” He urged the “renovation of unjust institutions.” Another peer, Tsuchiya Mitsukane, observing that Namba had been reading articles written by national university professors in magazines such as Kaiz [Reconstruction] and Kaih [Liberation], urged the government to strengthen controls over dangerous thoughts.31
Namba was charged under the criminal code and speedily tried by the Great Court of Cassation. The chief judge in the case, Yokota Hideo, reportedly urged Namba to repent in the hope that his statement could later be used to bolster popular respect for the imperial house. Replying tartly, Namba asked whether the chief judge really believed in the emperor’s divinity or merely professed such belief out of fear. When Yokota refused to answer, the would-be assassin reportedly declared, “I’ve proved the joy of living for the truth. Go ahead and hang me.”32 When his death sentence was read, on November 13, 1924, Namba shouted three banzais: to the proletariat and Communist Party of Japan, to Russian socialism and the Soviet Republic, and to the Communist Internationale.33 He was executed two days later, and on November 17, 1924, eleven months after his crime, secretly buried in an unmarked communal grave.34
Makino’s diary entry on the day of the Toranomon incident registered the “tremendous change in popular thought” behind Namba’s assassination attempt. “Even concepts connected to the kokutai have undergone astonishing change among some people,” Makino observed. “Of course they are still a very small minority, but I am more worried about the future now that a person has emerged and actually tried to act out his ideas. I fear that the people might lose their presence of mind by witnessing such a great act of lèse majesté.”35 Hirohito reacted more calmly to the shooting; later, when Nara informed him of Namba’s execution, he is alleged to have said to Chinda Sutemi and Grand Chamberlain Irie Tamemori:
I had thought that in Japan the relationship between his majesty and his subjects was, in principle, a monarch-subject relationship, but in sentiment a parent-child relationship. I have always devoted myself to the people on that understanding. But seeing this incident, I am especially saddened that the person who dared to commit this misdeed was one of His Majesty’s loyal subjects. I want this thought of mine to be thoroughly understood.36
At age twenty-three Hirohito was emotionally detached and thought of the imperial system in ideological terms dunned into him since early childhood: The emperor is to the people as a father is to his children. Interestingly, military Aide-de-Camp Nara advised Hirohito not to make his sentiments public, for they would only provoke more dissent from socialists and communists. Whether Hirohito was persuaded to change his mind or (less likely) the entourage ignored his wishes is unclear; but no statement by the crown prince on the assassination attempt was ever issued.37
While the Toranomon incident was still being widely discussed, further acts of less unusual lèse majesté occurred as some ordinary people expressed their lack of appreciation for the prince regent’s efforts to come into closer contact with them.38 According to Hirohito’s earliest biographer, Nezu Masashi, there were thirty-five such incidents during the six years between 1921 and 1927.39 These episodes deepened concern among government officials about the spread of communism and other “dangerous thoughts.”40 They also exposed the fragility of Hirohito in the role of “crown prince for the age of the commoner.”
Nevertheless the idea of popularizing both him and the imperial house remained alive during the early regency years. When the moment for Hirohito’s wedding finally arrived at the beginning of 1924, he and his aides decided that a lavishly staged imperial wedding would be out of place in a physically devastated capital that was just beginning to reconstruct. Sensing that ordinary Japanese sought stability and continuity in a time of rapid economic and social changes, Hirohito tried to meet their expectations. An imperial wedding with a modest display of monarchical dignity and an emphasis on traditional court practice was sufficient for him, and would also serve to bring him closer to the people.
Crown Prince Hirohito and Princess Nagako celebrated their marriage in a series of short ceremonies on January 26, 1924. In an ancient tradition dating back to Heian times, the marriage was preceded by a carefully choreographed exchange of love poems. A court chamberlain in full dress coat and top hat delivered Hirohito’s sealed poem (written on light pink paper, placed in a white willow box) to the Kuni family mansion, which had been specially decorated with red and white bunting. A few hours later a servant delivered a similar box to the Imperial Palace containing Nagako’s reply.41
On the day of the wedding Princess Nagako rose at 3:00 A.M., went outside to a small garden shrine, and prayed to her family ancestors. After her bath and a light breakfast, she spent three hours having her hair arranged in the Heian manner and dressing in the heavy ceremonial robes of a lady of the court. At 9:00 A.M. she said farewell to her entire family and classmates and was driven off in a car sent from the imperial house.42 Hirohito had arisen at 5:30, prayed to his ancestors, breakfasted, and put on the full-dress uniform of an army lieutenant colonel. They left for the Imperial Palace at about the same time in separate carriages, preceded and followed by mounted honor guards, and were cheered along the way by large crowds. Arriving at the palace, Hirohito donned the special saffron-yellow robes reserved for an imperial Shinto priest and performed religious rituals in the “Place of Awe,” where they notified the gods of their marriage.
Thousands of people lined the heavily guarded route of their carriage procession after it had crossed over Nijbashi (double bridge) and proceeded back to the Akasaka Palace. Hirohito and Nagako bowed to the crowds that cheered their arrival at the crown prince’s residence, decorated with red-and-white bunting, then proceeded into the palace for further marriage rituals and a dinner that lasted late into the night.
Forty-seven military airplanes flew over the capital on their marriage day, dropping small parachutes with messages of congratulations. There was a 101-gun salute from the Army General Headquarters and a 21-gun salute from the battleship Nagato, anchored at the Yokosuka Naval Base. The Osaka Mainichi reported that the imperial house was using the occasion to bestow monetary awards on distinguished individuals, including about 258 Japanese settlers who had made contributions to society in each of the colonies. It also announced Emperor Yoshihito’s pardon and commutation of sentences for criminals, his bountiful funding of social projects at home and abroad, and his grant of imperial property to Tokyo and Kyoto for public parks and museums.43
Thus the young coupl
e, on Makino and Saionji’s recommendation, used their wedding to obtain political support for the throne and to strengthen the groom’s image as a benevolent prince. Imperial almsgiving on this and many other occasions was a way to recover the emperor’s declining authority and to bring the imperial house closer to the people. Income from corporate stock dividends was now occupying an ever-larger part of imperial finances, and as the economic power of the throne increased, so too did Hirohito’s bestowal of benevolence money and resources, along with other giftgiving connected to his enhanced diplomatic activities.44 Though the giving of charity was a standard way for monarchs to diffuse their authority, what remains unclear, even today, is whether Hirohito’s benevolence was paid for by his subjects’ taxes or by his own imperial house assets.
Seven months after their wedding, when the nation had begun to recover from the great earthquake, Hirohito and Nagako departed the capital for a month-long retreat, a honeymoon of sorts, in the countryside. After two nights in Nikk they journeyed to Inawashiro Lake in Fukushima prefecture, where they stayed at Prince Takamatsu’s country villa. They played tennis, went fishing, climbed in the mountains, and enjoyed moonwatching.45
In December 1925 Hirohito became a father. He ordered Makino to arrange a series of court lectures for him and Nagako on child rearing and child psychology. Four years before, on becoming regent, Hirohito had put Makino on notice that someday he and Nagako intended to rear their children in the palace and not entrust them to servants.46 His mother, Makino, and genr Saionji had resisted, but by persisting Hirohito had gotten his way, making clear to Makino and others that he had no higher priority than his own “household.” He now had the satisfaction of seeing Nagako breastfeed their own children, starting with daughter Teru no miya, and raise them until the age of three.47 And because the wedding had been used as the occasion to reform the old system, whereby women of the inner court household lived in the palace instead of merely serving there during the day, Nagako was not surrounded by uneducated ladies-in-waiting who Hirohito feared might exert a harmful influence on her, not to mention leaking to outsiders any improper remark he might make.48
In this way Hirohito secured a sphere of private life free of constant surveillance. This achievement came about through his total ending of the practice of imperial concubinage and cutting back the number of ladies-in-waiting. These actions did not make him a court reformer, however, any more than his public performances during the regency made him a “child of Taish democracy.” Even in his young manhood Hirohito was a champion of nationalism and tradition against Taish democracy. This was true also in his attitude toward the three wars Japan had fought since 1894. Though proud of the victories, he was open to the viewpoints of those in his entourage who had attended the Paris Peace Conference at the end of the Great War, and understood the dangers of renewing a naval race and expanding too vigorously in China.
III
The regency period saw Japan’s foreign policy shift focus to reliance on multilateral treaties, the League of Nations, and the “peace code” embodied in the Covenant of the League.49 To appreciate the boldness of this move away from an international order based on militarism, imperialist spheres of interest, and bilateral treaties, one need only recollect that during World War I Japan’s leaders had secretly embraced “Asian Monroeism.”50 Led by the navy and supported by Prime Minister kuma and his Anglophile foreign minister, Kat Kmei, they had resolved to participate in the European war by expelling the German military from Tsingtao, one of China’s most important ports, even before the British government requested that they do so.51 At different times while World War I unfolded, Kat and the high command—acting in opposition to some of the genr—had formulated secret and grandiose war aims that anticipated Japan’s strategic expansion during the late 1930s: All of China was to become a Japanese protectorate, the Russian sphere of interest in northern Manchuria was to be pushed back, the resource-rich Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia) were to be wrested from Dutch colonial control, and the West was to be put on notice that Asia should be controlled by Asians (that is, Japanese). Although Japan was allied with Britain, Japan’s army strategists had hoped that the Western powers would be sufficiently weakened by their internecine strife as to be unable to oppose Japan’s aims in postwar Asia. These war aims had to be set aside, however, when Germany was defeated and the United States, on which Japan depended for imports of capital, steel, and raw materials, put pressure on it to respect American and Allied rights and interests in China. But they offered a good foretaste of the future policies Japan would implement in the 1930s.
At the Washington Conference (November 12, 1921–February 6, 1922), Prime Minister Takahashi’s Seiykai government had signed three treaties designed to establish a new basis for Japan’s relations with the great European powers and the United States, which had emerged as the de facto world power. The Four-Power Treaty replaced the Anglo-Japanese Alliance that had been the backbone of Japanese diplomacy since the Russo-Japanese War; it also guaranteed the Pacific possessions of its signatories: Japan, Britain, the United States, and France. These powers plus Italy then pledged, in a Five-Power Naval Arms Limitation Treaty, to reduce their mainline battleships and aircraft carriers, while Japan agreed to limit its capital ships to 60 percent of the U.S. total, or a 10:6 ratio in naval power vis-à-vis the United States.52
The signatories to the Nine-Power Treaty vowed to respect the territorial integrity, sovereignty, and independence of China, and to abide by the “open door” and “equal opportunity” for all the powers in China to exploit China’s natural resources and cheap Chinese labor. This had been the professed policy of the United States toward Asia ever since Secretary of State John Hay’s “Open Door Notes” of 1899. Other resolutions called for convening a conference to restore China’s tariff autonomy, and for the establishment of a commission to consider the question of extraterritoriality, on which rested the whole structure of unequal treaties with China.
During the 1920s young Hirohito, his entourage, and the Shidehara faction in the Foreign Ministry supported this American-led reorientation in international relations, with its emphasis on cooperation with the West in China, arms reduction, and the abrogation of Japan’s previous military alliance with Britain. To be sure, they knew the postwar world order was far from just. The Great Powers had rejected Japan’s modest request for a racial equality clause in the Covenant of the League; the United States had designed the Washington treaties to restrain Japan in China and roll back the advances it had made there during World War I. Still they supported the new order, just as they supported the League, in the hope they might thus be able to lessen the excessive arms spending that was driving the government to the verge of bankruptcy. In addition, although the United States had changed the rules of the game, organizations like the League of Nations and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) embodied the principle of the equality of nations which Japan itself had espoused in Paris in 1919. The new order did indeed recognize Japan as a great power (even though it did not recognize the principle of racial equality). This was reason enough for Hirohito and Makino to support the Washington Conference.53
In addition the new international order appeared to build on, but not change, the special international status of China under the “unequal treaty” system. It allowed for the possibility of China developing into an independent nationalist state, but ensured the hegemony of the “treaty” powers in Asia. For Japan, therefore, cooperation in this new Anglo-American order, however unjust and inequitable, at least promised stability, and was less a matter of siding with democracy than opposing the disorder associated with antimonarchist Russian Communism, and its spread in China.
Nevertheless, the schema of the white and yellow races locked in conflict and competition, which Hirohito had learned in middle school, had stayed with him. It was an intensely held belief that had also served as the premise of Japanese strategic thinking and war aims during World War I. The passage by the
U.S. Congress of the blatantly racist Immigration Act of 1924 reinforced his awareness of racial conflict. Similarly Hirohito retained the knowledge he had received during the early 1920s from civilian court lecturers such as Shimizu Tru, who rejected any urgent need for arms reduction. To counter the antimilitary mood arising from the Washington Conference, Shimizu had emphasized to Hirohito that “In a situation like the present, where the nations of the world vie with one another, every country must possess armaments to defend from danger.”54 This was the view of the entire entourage; it was Hirohito’s view as well.
Hirohito’s embrace of the idealistic Washington Conference goals of arms reduction and lasting peace also reflected the political influence on him of Makino, Chinda, and (to a much lesser extent) Saionji. They, together with the diplomat Shidehara, had directly participated in constructing the postwar framework and in tying the imperial court to conciliation with the West. Yet none of them ever gave his total, unqualified endorsement to the postwar “peace code,” or to the notion that peace and international cooperation were ends in themselves. The imperial court’s support of the Washington treaty system, in other words, rested on unstated assumptions regarding internationalism, and the economic advantages to be gained from diplomatic cooperation with Britain and the United States.
Essentially the entourage assumed that a cooperative, peaceful foreign policy would be compatible with defense of Japan’s colonial interests, especially in Manchuria. They also believed Japan could go on developing the “rights and interests” it had extorted from China in “Manchuria-Mongolia” by earlier faits accompli, and that it could do so regardless of Chinese nationalism—a phenomenon for which none of the Washington treaty powers at the time had much regard or understanding. Another shared assumption was that China would not defect from the Washington Conference framework and repudiate the older system of unequal treaties that had been built up ever since the Opium Wars.
Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan Page 16
