Thus for Kido, who was trusted by the military and entirely willing to ally with Germany, the problem in advising the emperor would be to get him to change his thinking slightly so that no gap developed between him and some undefined “right wing.” Or, in Kido’s own words: “As with Emperor Kmei in his last years, when his entourage had completely converted to the side of the bakufu, something quite like that might come about. We must adopt a more understanding attitude toward the army and lead while pretending that we are being led.”28
Since 1930 Kido had served at court, where his responsibilities and influence had increased together with the military’s rise to power. Having aided in the birth of the Sait Makoto cabinet in 1932—the first step in the court’s entrusting of politics to the military—Kido had drawn steadily closer to both the reform bureaucrats in different government ministries and the Control faction of the army, centered on Generals Tj and Mut Akira. While serving in the Hiranuma cabinet, he had found nothing at all objectionable in a military alliance with Nazi Germany. Kido had also grown frustrated with the conduct of the incumbent privy seal, Yuasa, whom he criticized for sticking to the law on everything and not being as “advanced” as “the right wing.”29 By the time of his own appointment as privy seal, Kido knew how displeased the army had become with Prime Minister Yonai for stalling the negotiations with Germany. Last, Kido understood the sense of urgency in army and navy circles about seizing control of the British, French, and Dutch colonies in Southeast Asia.30
After becoming privy seal, Kido settled into a routine of closer daily contact with Hirohito than any previous political adviser. His task was to learn the emperor’s intentions while alerting him to problems that lay ahead as the nation girded itself for even greater military efforts. Kido’s family background, and their long prior association from 1930 to 1938, helped to cement their relationship. So too did Hirohito’s belief in the rightness of the China war and in a peaceful “southward advance.” Kido now began to move the emperor closer to those leaders in the army and navy who refused to abandon the China war and imagined they could extricate themselves from their predicament by taking advantage of the European war, in which Germany looked to be the likely winner.
At an imperial briefing on June 19, 1940, Hirohito asked Chief of Staff Prince Kan’in and Army Minister Hata: “At a time when peace will soon come in the European situation, will there be a deployment of troops to the Netherlands Indies and French Indochina?” This question revealed not only that Hirohito expected an early German victory but that he had also begun to consider the possibility of deploying troops in both Indochina and the Dutch East Indies, now that the French and Dutch had been conquered by the Germans, even if the less opportunistic side of his personality recoiled at the idea of doing so.31
When the problem of French Indochina arose again the next day in a conversation with Kido, the emperor revealed both his keen concern with appearances and his genuine vacillation over what to do about the undefended European colonies. Conscious of the ideological ideals that he, defender of the nation’s moral integrity, was expected to uphold, he remarked that, historically, “there were actions such as those taken by Frederick and Napoleon.” But “our country does not want to act in such Machiavellian ways. Shouldn’t we always try to bear in mind the true spirit of hakk ichi’u [benevolent rule], which has been our policy since the age of the gods.”32 Avowing “benevolent rule” and disavowing Machiavellianism, while simultaneously sanctioning the use of poison gas against the Chinese—these contradictory acts reveal Hirohito’s divided nature. Here he was telling Kido, indirectly, I am the kind of person who favors action on the basis of ideals but when tactical needs and opportunities arise—well, it can’t be helped. Needless to say, Hirohito’s action fit a pattern of exterminating people while enveloping oneself in moral, humanitarian rhetoric that was just as much Western as Japanese.
On July 10, when Army Minister Hata and Chief of Staff Kan’in went to Hayama to report to Hirohito on military preparations, the emperor remarked that if the latest “Paulownia peace maneuver” in China should fail, then “we will have to employ the mediation of a third country…. In the final analysis, it will have to be Germany. But if we trust them and are not careful, they might come up with unreasonable demands later on. You must act on this matter after preparing thoroughly.”33 Begun in Hong Kong in late December l939 by one of the army’s many intelligence bureaus in China, the peace overture was targeted at T. V. Sung (Chiang Kai-shek’s minister of finance) and Sung Mei-ling (Chiang’s wife). When Hirohito made this remark he no longer took seriously the secret peace negotiations with Chungking, which had been discontinued and restarted. They were floundering over the stationing of Japanese troops in China, the recognition of Manchukuo, the arrangement of a truce, and the status of the client Wang Ching-wei regime in Nanking.34 On the other hand he was not at all certain that Japan could use Germany to do its bidding in China without having to pay some unacceptable price.
The next day Kido, also in Hayama, recorded the emperor’s concern that the United States could easily cut off oil supplies to Japan. Forecasting that “Britain will probably reject our request for closing down the route for supplies to reach Chiang Kai-shek,” and that “we shall then be forced to occupy Hong Kong and might, ultimately, have to declare war,” the emperor observed that: “Should that happen, I am sure America will use the method of an embargo, don’t you agree?” Kido reassured him by saying that the nation must “be fully resolved to resist,” to proceed cautiously, and “not [to] be dragged into events precipitated by the overseas agencies.”35
Six days after this exchange Kido presided over a meeting at the palace with President of the Privy Council Hara Yoshimichi and five former prime ministers: Wakatsuki, Hirota, Okada, Hayashi, and Konoe. In record time (only thirty minutes) they nominated Konoe—the charismatic prince who in 1937 had enlarged the China war, then quit when the going got rough—to succeed Admiral Yonai as prime minister.36 The emperor sanctioned their candidate, and on July 17, 1940, issued the order for Konoe to form a cabinet. Thus Konoe was able to return to office because five former prime ministers agreed to his nomination, his friend Kido pushed his candidacy, and Hirohito continued to trust him.
For army minister Konoe chose the tough, fifty-five-year-old General Tj, the leading representative of the army’s hard-line, expansionist faction, a man bent on realizing the ethnocentric ideal of “direct imperial rule.” For foreign minister he chose the voluble, high-strung Matsuoka Ysuke, who was not afraid of either the emperor or the military, and with whom he shared many beliefs about the international order. Matsuoka promised to restrain the military abroad.
Given the absurdly contradictory mission of improving relations with the United States, strengthening cooperation with Germany, and eliminating Britain’s economic and political interests in East Asia, Matsuoka tried to gain the attention of the American public. On July 21, one day before he took office, he gave an impromptu, off-the-record interview to an American correspondent, who immediately filed it with the Sunday New York Herald Tribune. In remarks largely ignored by journalists and editors in the United States (but not the State Department), Matsuoka had declared that:
In the battle between democracy and totalitarianism the latter adversary will without question win and will control the world. The era of democracy is finished and the democratic system bankrupt. There is not room in the world for two different systems or for two different economies…. Fascism will develop in Japan through the people’ swill. It will come out of love for the Emperor.37
Matsuoka’s preaching to Americans of the demise of democracy expressed his penchant for drawing attention to himself; his “love for the emperor” revealed the protean role that emperor ideology played throughout the history of the modern monarchy. Not only did the emperor serve to justify ideologies of militarism and war, he had also become, by this time, the ideology for Japanese fascism. Defenders and opponents of established political author
ity justified their projects in the emperor’s name precisely because there had always coexisted within the official theory both a purely utilitarian view of the monarch as a “jewel” to be manipulated in order to furnish legitimacy, and an idealistic view of him that broke sharply with tradition and nurtured the fantasy of true, direct imperial rule.38 Where Tj rejected a utilitarian approach to the throne and wanted the emperor to continue playing his highly active role behind the scenes, the emperor-loving Matsuoka straddled both views.
II
Shortly after the second Konoe cabinet started, on July 26, 1940, the ministers met and resolved to conclude the China Incident based on the principle of constructing a “New Order in Greater East Asia,” and to complete war preparations as a “national defense state.” The next day, hoping to impart authority to this consensus over national policies which his new cabinet ministers had just agreed to, Konoe convened a meeting of the liaison conference—the first since its suspension as a war leadership organ in September 1938, two and a half years earlier.39 The July 27 liaison conference adopted a vaguely worded document—” Main Principles for Dealing with the Situation Accompanying Changes in the World Situation”—which formally affirmed the course of advancing to the south and tying up with the Axis powers, but left unclarified whether armed force would be used in the southern advance.
Specifically Japan would incorporate the Dutch East Indies, British Malaya, and other resource-rich areas of Southeast Asia into its “New Order” and, at the same time, strengthen its ties with the Axis states. After having been briefed on these deliberations, the emperor sanctioned the final decision as the policy of Konoe, whom he trusted, rather than of Matsuoka, whom he personally disliked. These moves placed Japan in strategic collision with the United States, at a time when it had become, for the first time in its history, a net importer of raw materials, and American strategists in and outside of government worried about who would control colonial Southeast Asia—a region they were beginning to see as essential for American national security.40 Less than two months later, in accordance with these “national policy” decisions, Japan began its long-prepared-for “Southern advance” in September by sending troops into the northern part of French Indochina and concluding the Tripartite Alliance with Germany and Italy.41
Looking closer at Japan’s decision to station troops in northern Indochina, one sees that Hirohito was briefed beforehand by Army Minister Tj and the army and navy chiefs of staff, among others, about their plans for securing bases there. He agreed to authorize their plans because he thought that acquiring bases and stationing troops in French Indochina would contribute to toppling the Chungking regime and ending the China war. But he also sanctioned the entry of the army into northern Indochina because he believed in the value of the advance-southward policy, decided at the liaison conference, even though that policy carried the risk of war with Britain and, inevitably, the United States—powers that had their advanced military bases in the Philippines, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Naturally he wanted to carry it off without provoking the United States to retaliate. Influenced by Foreign Minister Matsuoka, he probably thought that could be done given Roosevelt’s preoccupation with the European situation and his relative restraint in dealing with Japan so far.42
On July 29—many weeks after France and the Netherlands had been defeated, the huge German offensive in the West had achieved its mainland objectives, and Britain stood in danger of invasion—Hirohito summoned his chiefs and vice chiefs of staff to the palace. When they arrived he made the unusual gesture of offering seats to the elderly Princes Kan’in and Fushimi before proceeding to question Fushimi about prospects for war with the United States. Fushimi replied that victory would be difficult in a protracted war and therefore, “[u]nless we complete our domestic preparations, particularly the preparation of our material resources, I do not think we should lightly start war even if there is a good opportunity to do so.”43
Also participating in this briefing was the Army Vice Chief of Staff Sawada Shigeru. According to Sawada’s account, the emperor’s questions spanned a broad range of issues. Hirohito asked if they were “planning to occupy points in India, Australia, and New Zealand.” He wanted assurance as to how the army would handle the Chinese division that had concentrated along the border with French Indochina and appeared ready to enter the colony if the Japanese did. Mainly Hirohito wanted to know about the United States, the Soviet Union, and Germany. Could Japan, he asked, “obtain a victory in a naval battle with the United States as we once did in the Battle of the Japan Sea?…I heard that the United States will ban exports of oil and scrap iron [to Japan]. We can probably obtain oil from other sources, but don’t you think we will have a problem with scrap iron?”44
Turning to the Soviet Union and Germany, Hirohito asked:
If a Japan-Soviet nonaggression treaty is made and we advance to the south, the navy will become the main actor. Has the army given thought to reducing the size of its forces in that case?…How do you assess the future national power of Germany?…Both Germany and the Soviet Union are untrustworthy countries. Don’t you think there will be a problem if one of them betrays us and takes advantage of our exhaustion fighting the United States?45
As his interrogation of his chiefs drew to a close, Hirohito observed:
[I]t seems as though you people are thinking of implementing this plan by force because there is a good opportunity at this moment for resolving the southern problem even though some dangers are involved…. What does a good opportunity mean? [To this question Sawada replied: “For example, if a German landing in England commences.”] In that case wouldn’t the United States move to aid Britain?…Well, I’ve heard enough. I take it, in short, that you people are trying to resolve the southern problem by availing yourselves of today’s good opportunities.46
Hirohito’s questions indicated his belief in the likelihood of continued Anglo-American cooperation but also his uncertainty as to what, at that juncture, constituted “a good opportunity.” For Sawada and the army general staff it had to be Britain’s defeat and military occupation; for Hirohito the good opportunity was some sort of readjustment of relations with the United States. On the other hand, Hirohito knew how deeply divided his army, navy, and the Konoe cabinet were about fundamental strategy for implementing the decisions of the liaison conference. He was troubled by the disunity, strife, and vying for leadership among the different bureaucratic organs and overseas military units wishing to carry out the advance south. Moreover, Kido claims that the emperor told him the next day, July 30, that:
Prime Minister Konoe…seems to want to shift the nation’s dissatisfaction caused by the lack of success of the China Incident toward the south. If there is a good chance, the Army wants to go south, leaving the China Incident as it is. The Navy seems to think that unless the China Incident is resolved first, they are not going to deploy military force in the south.47
Kido’s account of what the emperor told him errs seriously in claiming that the admirals would not “deploy military force in the south” unless the war in China was resolved. Indeed, the war planners on the Navy General Staff had already begun to develop plans to secure Indochina predicated on fighting a war with the U.S. and Britain should it ever become necessary. The navy worried not about the stalemate in China but only about provoking war with the United States.48
Contrary to the hopes of the emperor and the bureaucratic groups responsible for the decision to advance militarily into Southeast Asia, the Roosevelt administration immediately interpreted Japan’s move as a direct challenge. American policy planners, both in and out of government, believed that this area, Southeast Asia and the Indonesian archipelago—unlike China—had to remain open primarily for its beleaguered European allies, but also, in the longer run and more important, for commercial and financial control by the United States. Japan could not have ventured on a riskier course.49
The Konoe cabinet’s professed reason for the entry of the army and navy in
to northern Indochina was to complete the encirclement of China—if possible through diplomatic agreement with French officials in Hanoi or with the pro-Nazi regime in Vichy France, but if necessary by the use of force. The real reason was to prepare bases and concentrate troops and ships for eventually striking farther south at the surrounding countries rich in oil, rubber, tin, and the resources needed for self-sufficiency in the age of total war. Hirohito’s role in this expansion of aggression was to remain above the conflicts among his military elites and the Foreign Ministry, led by Matsuoka, while helping them to achieve consensus so that the policy-making process did not break down.
Kido’s important diary entry of September 14, 1940, registers Hirohito’s concern with the disunity between the high command and Matsuoka, but also his belief that it was best to go ahead and implement the advance, for “if we procrastinate, the machinations of Britain and the United States will become increasingly intense and there is a possibility of them joining up with French Indochina or with China.”50 Shortly afterward the emperor issued Imperial Headquarters Army Order Number 458, ordering the area army to begin the entry into French Indochina. Once again he had dealt with a situation of elite conflict at home by sanctioning new aggression abroad.
No war was declared, but Japan had now expanded its war in China by definitely stepping into World War II. The Roosevelt administration, which had in place a “moral embargo” on aircraft shipments to Japan, responded, symbolically, by embargoing scrap iron and aviation gasoline. Henceforth Roosevelt would seek to counter Japan by applying economic sanctions incrementally, by aiding China just enough to keep Japan bogged down, by negotiating with Japan on an informal basis, and—most important—by rapidly rearming and preparing the U.S. army and navy for war against the Axis.
Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan Page 39
