Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan

by Herbert P. Bix

  From the ranks of Kokuchkai emerged military officers whom Hirohito promoted to important positions, such as Ishiwara Kanji, who had joined the organization in April 1920, after graduating from the War College, and occasionally lectured under its auspices. Ishiwara went on to become a prophet of world war and the chief plotter of the 1931 Manchurian Incident. It was not only fear of the threat to Japan’s interests in Manchuria, posed by Nationalist China and the Soviet Union, that drove Ishiwara to act but the millenarianism of Tanaka’s Kokuchkai. Honjo Shigeru, Ishiwara’s colleague and commander of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria at the time, was also a Nichiren believer. Kita Ikki had no direct connection with Tanaka’s Kokuchkai, but his family belonged to the Nichiren sect, and his own spiritual development made him a Nichiren believer.112

  The nationalistic Nichiren movement thus figures as an important catalyst in generating the phenomenon of Japanese ultranationalism. Not only did the sect influence many military men who participated in the politics of the interwar period, it also became part of the context in which the idea of Japan’s national mission to unify the world was revived during the course of Hirohito’s formal enthronement.

  5

  THE NEW MONARCHY AND THE NEW NATIONALISM

  Prince Hirohito’s regency for his father ended with the Taish emperor’s death in Hayama at 1:25 A.M., December 25, 1926. Hirohito succeeded immediately to the throne. The imperial regalia were transferred to him, and at the age of twenty-five he became, by right of blood, tradition, myth, and history, but also by authority of the constitution, the so-called 124th emperor of Japan.1 Thus, after a brief rite, Article 1 of the constitution, which stipulated that “[t]he empire of Japan shall be reigned over and governed by a line of emperors unbroken for ages eternal,” was fulfilled. Simultaneously, he became commander-in-chief of the armed forces with the authority to issue orders that required no cabinet advice.

  The privy council thereupon met and, in accordance with the custom inaugurated at the time of the Restoration, constituted the calendar by the reign of the new emperor. His imperial reign and future posthumous title would be “Shwa,” meaning literally “brightness” and “harmony” or “illustrious peace”—a name duly announced on December 28.

  That same day the new emperor issued a series of imperial edicts: to soldiers and sailors; to Prince Kan’in, Prime Minister Wakatsuki and Prince Saionji, and to the nation at large, informing all that he had succeeded and asking for their continued loyalty to the throne. Through these rescripts Hirohito let the nation know that, in his eyes, the military still enjoyed a privileged status, and that the last genr, Prince Saionji, would continue to control the selection of the next prime minister.2 He promised that he would abide by the constitution, “cultivate inherited virtue and…maintain intact the glorious tradition set by our ancestors,” starting with “Our imperial grandfather,” whose “educational developments” and “military achievements” had “enhanced the grandeur of the empire.”

  I

  Hirohito could now enter more fully into political life, intent on realizing his youthful idea of imperial rule. Firmly supporting but also guiding him was his defining community: seven polished, urbane gentlemen, all much older than himself, who exercised a continuous influence on him through their presence at court. I refer to these seven men, variously, as the “court group,” “staff,” or palace “entourage.” The members of the court group who occupied official bureaucratic positions during the late 1920s were Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal Makino, Grand Chamberlain Chinda, Imperial Household Minister Ichiki, and Chief Military Aide-de-Camp General Nara, as well as three key secretaries who functioned as heads of staff.

  On January 22, 1929, one week after Grand Chamberlain Chinda died, Makino brought in retired Admiral Suzuki Kantaro, a supporter of naval arms reductions, as his replacement. Suzuki served for seven years until his resignation in 1936. Meanwhile, Chief Military Aide Nara continued until his retirement in April 1933. Although Nara played the same role with respect to military matters that Makino played with respect to political affairs, he was less of a court man and had less political weight than Makino.3

  The three chief secretaries were Kawai, Sekiya, and (for a short period) Okabe Nagakage. They helped to resolve disputes within the government, gather information for the emperor, and exert political influence on him. Kawai began his bureaucratic career as a secretary in the House of Peers. In the summer of 1926, he entered the Imperial Household Ministry as Makino’s assistant, and the next year took on extra duties, becoming chief steward to the empress and chief secretary to the grand chamberlain. Kawai held all these posts concurrently until 1932, when he became director of the Office of Audits of Imperial Accounts. He was fastidious, hardworking, somber: a man with a keen sense of mission to serve the emperor, whom he held in awe. During this phase of his palace career, Kawai met Hirohito almost daily, maintained close contacts with the heads of the Home Ministry’s political police, and kept Hirohito informed of national trends through police sources.

  Sekiya started out as a Home Ministry bureaucrat and gained experience in the Japanese colonial empire. In 1921, after a short stint as governor of Shizuoka prefecture, he entered the Imperial Household Ministry as Makino’s trusted information collector and messenger. He participated in Hirohito’s Western tour and in the arrangements for his marriage in 1924. With his firsthand knowledge of colonial administration, Sekiya aided the court group when the Imperial Household Ministry began investing the profits from the emperor’s vast landholdings in shares of stock in colonial enterprises. Like Kawai, Sekiya was methodical, efficient, and diligent—just the sort of bureaucrat Hirohito liked to have around him. He was also as dedicated as Makino was to keeping the court an independent force, free from control by party cabinets.

  The wealthy nobleman Viscount Okabe Nagakage, the third member of the court group, played the role of liaison between court and government ministries. In February 1929 Okabe became chief secretary to Makino, concurrently holding the position of vice grand master of ceremonies. Of higher rank and social status than either Kawai or Sekiya, Okabe was both more relaxed in his personal attitude toward the emperor, and also more complacent in his assessment of political problems. He was also much less inclined to the radical right than either Makino or Sekiya.

  Interacting with these palace officials, and a part of the court milieu even though situated outside the palace, were the special guardians of the throne. Foremost among them was the venerable last genr, Saionji Kinmochi. Although Saionji’s seasoned judgment and experience carried weight, and he sometimes gave important direction to Hirohito and the court group, historians have exaggerated his influence on the politics of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Born in 1849 of an ancient family of civil nobles (kuge) of the second rank, Saionji enjoyed a special relationship with the palace bureaucrats, who drew on his advice even though he was seldom in their company.4 He was also the staunch defender of the economic interests of the Sumitomo zaibatsu, which was headed by his younger brother, Baron Sumitomo Kichizaemon.5

  During the years Makino served as imperial household minister, Saionji executed by proxy the emperor’s prerogative of recommending the successor to a prime minister. Thereafter, until May 1932, when Hirohito effectively deprived him of that control, Saionji still had influence on each succession of regime. He could also speak out on the appointment of members to the court group.6 From 1927 onward, however, whenever the court group had completed its deliberations to select a new prime minister, they would send a messenger to the aged Saionji in Kyoto, Odawara, Okitsu, or wherever else he happened to be residing. Saionji would sanction their decision, then resume his essentially nonpolitical life, far removed from the daily pressures of the court. Saionji listened well, advised carefully, but stirred himself to act personally only in extreme situations, such as assassinations and mutinies.7 Whenever he did act, however, his efforts were disastrous for the causes of liberalism and party government in Japan.

&nb
sp; Nevertheless, of the entire court group and those in its milieu, Saionji alone wanted to move to a multiparty system of politics in which the two main conservative groups—the Seiykai and Kenseikai (later Minseit), representing the interests of big landlords and big business—would control the Diet, support the orthodox view of the kokutai, and always remain totally dependent on the will of Emperor Hirohito rather than the confidence of the Diet.8

  In 1929, when party cabinets were nearing the height of their power, a sharp division emerged between Saionji and the court group (including the emperor). Saionji shared with Makino a basic ignorance of the workings of modern political parties and an aversion to the principle of parliamentarism. But where Makino and the palace entourage believed that difficult political problems could be resolved only by the emperor’s intervention, Saionji wanted the emperor to avoid political judgments.9 Saionji also looked askance at Makino’s radical rightist sympathies. Because Saionji stood outside the process of decision making at court during this and later periods, Makino and the other members of the entourage often had to persuade him to go along. Usually Saionji would swallow his doubts and assent to their decisions.

  Finally three other special guardians of the throne and members of the court milieu by reason of aristocratic birth were Baron Harada Kumao, Prince Konoe Fumimaro, and Marquis Kido Kichi, who enters the picture in 1930 and immediately begins playing an active role. They shared in common the belief, eschewed by Saionji, that the authority of the emperor should be used to solve political problems.

  Harada spent two years as a special official of the Imperial Household Ministry before becoming, in 1924, the private secretary of Prime Minister Kat Kmei. Upon resigning his government position in the summer of 1926, Harada joined the staff of the Sumitomo Company but immediately took leave to become Saionji’s personal secretary, a position he held until Saionji’s death in November 1940.10 As Saionji’s information collector, messenger, and “brain,” Harada was the go-between and adjuster of views of Saionji in Kyoto and Makino in Kamakura. He was, at the same time, a highly respected information gatherer and analyst of political trends for the three chief secretaries—Kawai, Sekiya, and Okabe—as well as for his close personal friends, Prince Konoe and Marquis Kido.

  Konoe, born in 1891, was a true aristocrat as opposed to Harada and Kido, whose hereditary statuses were products of the Meiji restoration. In early Shwa, Konoe was the rising star among young conservative and radical-right members of the House of Peers, a body he was soon to lead, first as vice president in 1931, then as president in 1933. His ideological vision of an Asian and Chinese economy dominated by Japan, and his view that Japan’s mission was to save Asia from European encroachment, had wide appeal. Konoe was on the closest personal terms with the key members of every court group from the moment he made his debut on the political stage in 1921 until his death by suicide in December 1945.11

  Konoe had been a member of the Japanese delegation at the Versailles Peace Conference. What he saw there and in travels through early postwar Europe and the United States confirmed his belief that Japan should support the spirit of the League of Nations and develop Asia in cooperation with the other Great Powers. But Versailles had also led him to reject what he called “the Anglo-American standard of pacifism.” Complicating his thought, and making his belief in the international order crafted at Washington highly unstable, were very strong elements of racism and pan-Asianism. Basically Konoe believed that, by reasons of race, history, and geography, Japan was perfectly entitled to aggrandize Chinese territory to meet the needs of its own exploding surplus population.

  At the start of Hirohito’s reign, Konoe was a member of the leading faction in the House of Peers and president of the East Asia Common Culture Society (Ta Dbunkai), founded by his father. He chafed at the Washington treaty order that allowed the United States and Britain to shut out Japanese immigrants from their territories yet distrusted Japan’s intentions on the Chinese continent. This particular feature of his thought separated him from Hirohito, who still accepted the limitations of the Washington system. Yet, in other respects, Konoe stood on common political ground with the palace “moderates.” The latter may not have shared Konoe’s dream of joining with China against the white races, but they were all virulently anticommunist in outlook and shared with Konoe the thought that it was only natural for China to sacrifice itself for the sake of Japan’s social and industrial needs.12 Last, Konoe (and the court group as a whole) worried about how to protect the essentially unstable monarchy in a postmonarchic world. The kokutai had to survive; his task was to help the emperor preserve it while using his authority to effect needed reform.

  Kido Kichi, born in 1889 and thus, like Konoe, a member of the third and least secure generation of the hereditary aristocracy, was impelled by fear that the impact of the Russian revolution and the tide of Taish democracy would sweep away his privileged class. To counter such trends he had studied the writings of Russian socialists and nobles who had groped for ways to survive the Bolshevik challenge. He had also joined with fellow aristocrats Okabe Nagakage and Arima Yoriyasu to establish and manage a night school for educating workers; and he had pushed for reform of the Peers’ School.13 In the course of these activities Kido and other reform-minded peers formed the Jichikai, a discussion group whose members aspired to take the lead in promoting political and social change. By the late 1920s, however, Kido’s fears of left-wing revolution had ebbed, and his attention had turned to governmental reform.

  Kido had state reform on his mind when he moved from the Ministry of Commerce and Industry to become Makino’s chief secretary in late 1930. He quickly proved an indispensable adviser and information collector (through the Jichikai) during the last two years of party cabinets, 1930–32. Working closely with Harada Kumao, Kido rather than Makino took the initiative in restructuring the court’s modus operandi after the rise of the military. Like Konoe he was essentially a 1930s-style “renovationist,” never a traditionalist. In 1937, when Konoe formed his first cabinet, Kido left the court to serve as Konoe’s education minister and adviser. In the last stage of Kido’s political career, 1940–45, he returned to the palace and became Hirohito’s most important political adviser, charged with the duty of helping to select the next prime minister. Kido worked tirelessly to forge a consensus between the court and the military, and was instrumental in effecting the court-military alliance that made possible Japan’s declaration of war against the United States and Britain.14

  From the beginning of the Shwa era, Hirohito’s small, highly cosmopolitan court group advised and assisted him entirely outside the constitution. It was an enclave of privilege and the nucleus of the Japanese power elite, composed of men from both the traditional ruling stratum and newly privileged and enriched groups from Meiji. Situated at the apex of the pyramid of class, power, and wealth in Japanese society, the court group represented the interests of all the ruling elites of imperial Japan, including the military. The court group cannot be understood, however, if it is set only in stark contrast to the military—as seen by Western observers at the time, and conventional academic historians since. Nor can it be understood if discussed apart from the imperial family, particularly Hirohito’s younger brothers, who often interacted closely with those in the court milieu.

  The different members of the court group collected, processed, and conveyed to Hirohito political data they had gathered from many quarters, including the British and American Embassies. The emperor had sole possession of their information plus vast amounts of political and military intelligence furnished by government and military officials who reported directly to him, orally or in writing. As head of the imperial family (kzoku), Hirohito also received secret reports on the political activities of his brother, Prince Chichibu, from Chichibu’s steward. Like a silent spider positioned at the center of a wide, multisided web, Hirohito spread his filaments into every organ of state and the army and navy, absorbing—and remembering—information provided by
others.

  His staff could spin the web and feed him their information precisely because the advisory organs of the imperial state—the cabinet, the Diet, the privy council, the Army and Navy General Staffs, and the bureaucracy—connected directly to the emperor yet were separate and independent of one another. In their own eyes ministers of state and chiefs of staff believed themselves to be directly subordinate to the emperor; in Hirohito’s eyes, as Shimizu Tru never tired of reminding him, they were all on the same level as far as their authority was concerned, regardless of their different constitutional status.

  The membership of the court group changed over time, as did their political ideas, special characteristics, and operating strategy vis-à-vis the other forces in the Japanese political structure. Yet on political issues in all periods they were careful not to get ahead of the emperor. Usually, without cueing from his privy seal, Hirohito took the initiative in spurring his entourage to diffuse his intentions (the “imperial will”) into the political process and, when necessary, to focus his will on any advisory organ or its representative. In short Hirohito “commanded” his court group, which had no power to act except because it was his conduit; and at his direction it acted by disseminating counsel and advice, which, as it was known to be on his behalf, exerted powerful influence on ministers and ministries.