An entirely new, binational stage in the movement to protect Hirohito now began. Out of the interplay of efforts by GHQ, the emperor, Japanese government leaders, and Japanese Christians with prewar ties to influential Americans, came the shielding of Hirohito from war responsibility, his “humanization,” and the reform of the imperial house. Henceforth, in the process of utilizing Hirohito’s authority for their own respective purposes, MacArthur and the Japanese leadership would have to misrepresent a vital side of Hirohito’s life and identity, just as they been misrepresented before the war.
In response to MacArthur’s remark concerning an imperial visit, on the morning of September 27, 1945, the emperor donned formal morning dress complete with top hat, left his palace, and went to the American Embassy to pay a courtesy call on the general. The Japanese people were not informed beforehand of this visit. Neither were they aware of the serious personal crises both men were facing. MacArthur’s conduct of the occupation had already come under criticism from the Russians and the British at the Council of Foreign Ministers meeting in London. Secretary of State James F. Byrnes was preparing to yield to Allied pressure for some form of group supervision of the freewheeling supreme commander. The prime minister of New Zealand had warned the American minister that “there should be no soft peace”; “the Emperor should be tried as a war criminal.”19
Moreover, the Truman administration had been taken aback by certain statements issued (and later retracted) by MacArthur’s GHQ concerning the duration of the occupation and the possibility of drastically downsizing Allied forces in Japan within a single year.20 Acting Secretary of State Dean Acheson had openly rebuked MacArthur, saying “the occupation forces are the instruments of policy and not [its] determinants.”21 Truman was particularly displeased with MacArthur for ignoring State Department policy guidelines and for failing to return to the United States for consultations, despite having been urged to do so on two occasions by Army Chief of Staff Marshall.
Hirohito’s position was also clouded and uncertain. His responsibility for beginning the war had become a controversial issue among the Allies. An unpublished Gallup opinion poll conducted in early June 1945 disclosed that 77 percent of the American public wanted the emperor severely punished.22 On September 11, following the first round of arrests of suspected Japanese war criminals, the foreign press started to report rumors of the emperor’s imminent abdication. On September 18 Joint Resolution 94 was introduced in the U.S. Senate (and referred to a committee), declaring that Emperor Hirohito of Japan should be tried as a war criminal.23 And if these were not reasons enough for the emperor to worry, the Potsdam Declaration itself had deliberately left his future status uncertain: to be decided by “the freely expressed will of the Japanese people.”
But the emperor’s position was not all bleak. He and the Higashikuni cabinet, in keeping with their resolve to protect the kokutai, had begun disarming and demobilizing the seven-million-strong army and navy even before MacArthur’s arrival in Tokyo. Their initiative made the demilitarization of Japan far easier than the Americans had expected or even imagined. President Truman had registered this important fact on September 6, 1945, when he announced the “U.S. Initial Post-Surrender Policy for Japan.” This document instructed MacArthur to exercise his authority through Japan’s existing governing structures and mechanisms, including the emperor, but only insofar as this promoted the achievement of U.S. objectives.24
Months earlier, between April and July 1945, MacArthur and Fellers had worked out their own approach to occupying and reforming Japan. In their view the principles of psychological warfare that Fellers had implemented in the Battle of the Philippines and elsewhere were solidly correct. They had played a key role in lowering Japanese morale, hastening surrender, and preparing the Japanese for occupation. Japanese military leaders alone bore responsibility for the war, and the emperor, the “moderates” around the throne, and the people had been totally deceived by them. All Japanese trusted the emperor. U.S. psychological warfare should build on their trust and turn it against them.25 These ideas, the “common sense” of American psychological warfare experts in the Pacific, not to mention Chinese and Japanese Communist leaders in North China, had become MacArthur’s fixed principles and were woven into his initial occupation plan.
Code-named Operation Blacklist, the plan turned on separating Hirohito from the militarists, retaining him as a constitutional monarch but only as a figurehead, and using him to bring about a great spiritual transformation of the Japanese people.26 Because retaining the emperor was crucial to ensuring control over the population, the occupation forces aimed to immunize him from war responsibility, never debase him or demean his authority, and at the same time make maximum use of existing Japanese government organizations. MacArthur, in short, formulated no new policy toward the emperor; he merely continued the one in effect during the last year of the Pacific war, then drew out its implications as circumstances changed. More important, as MacArthur was under Potsdam Declaration orders to mete out stern punishment to war criminals, Hirohito’s innocence should be established before the machinery for implementing that aspect of the declaration was set up.
Thus, at the very beginning of the occupation the Japanese defensive strategy for protecting the kokutai and MacArthur’s occupation strategy coincided. The two sides did not yet know each other’s thinking; nevertheless, where the emperor was concerned, they were proceeding on parallel tracks.
III
Frank L. Kluckhohn of the New York Times had earlier interviewed Prince Konoe, the vice prime minister in the Higashikuni cabinet. He had suggested to Konoe, quite probably at the request of GHQ, that the emperor send a four-point message to the American public via, naturally, Kluckhohn’s own newspaper. So on September 25, two days before the emperor called on MacArthur, he granted brief, separate audiences to Kluckhohn and Hugh Baillie, president of the United Press and a former acquaintance of Konoe. The journalists submitted written questions. They received written replies, in English, drafted by Shidehara Kijur. Two basic points were revealed: (a) democracy and pacifism (in the sense of Japan’s temporary nonpossession of weapons) were the main ingredients in the postwar imperial image for overseas consumption; and (b) the emperor wished to avoid questions about Pearl Harbor.
Kluckhohn asked “whether [Hirohito] had intended for his war rescript [of December 1941] to be used as General Tj had used it—to launch the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor which brought the United States into the war.” The emperor, answered “in effect, no, that had not been his intention.”27 So Tj, not the emperor, bore responsibility for the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, which was precisely the message MacArthur wanted the American people to hear prior to his own meeting with Hirohito. It was also the line of defense for the emperor that Princes Konoe and Higashikuni and many of the other “moderates around the throne” had been advocating since 1944.28
Although Hirohito read and sanctioned Shidehara’s reply, he could not possibly have believed it, because the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred eight hours before he had signed the imperial rescript declaring war, and he had personally taken great pains to ensure that the attack would be a surprise.29 The Japanese government subsequently issued a statement, reported by the New York Times on September 29, that altered the emperor’s words to avoid criticism of Tj. Too much may not be made of this partial retraction, other than that it indicated poor communications between SCAP and the Higashikuni government, and that the latter had not yet fully worked out its kokutai preservation policy. The latter required that the emperor be protected by designating to stand in his place not only his chiefs of staff but Tj in particular.
Shortly after the audience granted to Kluckhohn and Baillie, the emperor visited MacArthur, hoping to learn what policies MacArthur would pursue toward the imperial house. Hirohito needed MacArthur’s personal support if he was to preserve the kokutai and avoid taking legal and moral responsibility for his earlier actions as supreme commander and primary
energizer of the political system. If MacArthur, for his part, was to use the emperor to legitimize occupation reforms, then he needed Hirohito to totally disown his “evil militarist” advisers.
Certain personal characteristics furnished additional bases for mutual support. MacArthur was older but dedicated to projecting himself as youthful and vigorous. Hirohito was just reaching middle age but accustomed to working with much older advisers. Both men had received prolonged and intense military educations, and had been set apart from their peers all their lives. MacArthur, the son of a Civil War hero who had won the Medal of Honor and later served as second-in-command during the American conquest of the Philippines, was a professional army officer. He had climbed to the highest command possible, becoming the youngest general and the youngest chief of staff in U.S. Army history.30 During his rise, he had become a master at making efficient use of talented staff officers. MacArthur always felt he had been born to lead, but believed that all credit and acclaim for his accomplishments in command should accrue to himself alone. Similarly, when he failed the failure must never be his but the consequence of inadequate support or machination from above. Extremely egotistical, sometimes pompous and arrogant, MacArthur was driven by his family heritage to excel in everything he did. But nowhere is it recorded that any adult close to the supreme-commander-to-be ever sought to raise him to be unselfish and respectful of the views of others.
Both Hirohito and MacArthur valued loyalty and cultivated remoteness. They regarded themselves as their nation’s leading asset and knew how to practice deception—MacArthur of his superiors at every single stage of his career; Hirohito of the entire Japanese nation. Both men combined in their persons multiple forms of authority and knew how to use it effectively. Despite these similarities, personalities more different than those of the emperor and the general could hardly be imagined. Hirohito did not share MacArthur’s “dark side”—his eccentricity, extreme egoism, and pomposity. He was truly self-effacing, accustomed to ruling through others, by consensus rather than by dictate; and he was anything but physically imposing.
An American staff photographer was ready when the emperor arrived at the American embassy. He took three pictures of Hirohito standing with MacArthur in the embassy’s main living room, and the two then retired to a specially prepared room. There they talked privately, through interpreter Okumura Katsuz, for nearly forty minutes. MacArthur did most of the talking, and because they were both very concerned to protect the images they projected, they insisted that their conversation be kept off the record.
In the absence of a verbatim record, conflicting accounts of this private meeting were later put forward by MacArthur, by American journalists who based their reports on interviews with both the emperor and MacArthur, and by Japanese officials and historians.31 Probably the most that can be said of their first meeting is that the two men encountered each other at a moment of uncertainty and realignment in their respective positions, and each came away feeling the meeting had been a success. Hirohito was pleased that MacArthur was going to make use of him, and that he had not pursued the issue of war responsibility. MacArthur, in turn, was moved by the emperor’s high evaluation of his conduct of the occupation and by his promise to cooperate. Presumably neither man said anything about the efforts already begun by their subordinates to save Hirohito from indictment as a war criminal.
Henceforth the Allied supreme commander would use the emperor, and the emperor would cooperate in being used. Their relationship became one of expediency and mutual protection, of more political benefit to Hirohito than to MacArthur because Hirohito had more to lose—the entire panoply of symbolic, legitimizing properties of the imperial throne.32
But for the American and Japanese leaders to interact amicably and cooperatively, the emperor would have to sever himself completely from militarism and militarists such as Tj, which he was very reluctant to do; MacArthur would have to ensure that the emperor was not held accountable for any of his actions during the war, especially the Pearl Harbor attack; and both GHQ and successive Japanese governments would have to carry out a struggle to reshape the historical consciousness of the Japanese people concerning the nature of the war and the role that the emperor had played in it.
For most Japanese living in the ruin of defeat, the importance of the first emperor-MacArthur meeting was not the spirit of mutual respect and cooperation the two leaders established. Nor was it the official announcements of what they had allegedly said to one another. The one good photograph taken by the American cameraman and run by all the leading Japanese newspapers on September 29, however, created a sensation. Shot from close in, it shows the bespectacled emperor, in formal morning coat and striped trousers, standing as if at attention, necktie straight and hands by his sides, while beside and towering over him is relaxed and casual MacArthur in an open-necked uniform, bereft of necktie or medals. The general’s hands are on his hips and hidden from view. Both men are looking straight ahead at the camera.
What many Japanese saw in this picture led to renewed rumors that the emperor would soon abdicate. On August 15 his capitulation broadcast had forced his people to acknowledge the loss of the war. Now a single photograph forced them to confront the painful political implications of that loss.33 The emperor they saw there was not a living god but a mortal human beside a much older human to whom he now was subservient. Hirohito perfectly exemplified the defeated nation; MacArthur stood completely relaxed and projected the confidence that comes from victory.
With that one photograph a small first step was taken in displacing the emperor from the center of Japanese collective identity and freeing the nation from the restrictions of the past.
No Japanese could possibly have taken such a photograph. Only photographers certified by the Imperial Household Ministry were permitted to record the emperor’s image. And they had to use a telephoto lens from a distance of at least twenty meters, and usually (though not always) show only the upper half of the emperor’s body, and never his back because it was slightly rounded.34 He could not be shown smiling, for living gods were not supposed to smile. He could only be photographed standing motionless or at attention. Such photographers could be relied on not to use their photographic skills to undermine popular loyalty to the throne. Above all, they were expected to show their own personal feelings of reverence for their subject. But reverence for the emperor was an emotion few Americans at that time felt.
The Japanese government immediately banned reproduction of the picture. The reality of Hirohito’s subordination to MacArthur was too disturbing. When no photograph accompanied the newspaper articles the day after the leaders’ meeting, GHQ protested to the Japanese Foreign Ministry. The next day, September 29, the Asahi, Mainichi, and Yomiuri-Hchi newspapers did publish the censored photograph together with a “corrected” account of the emperor’s reply to Kluckhohn’s questions and Baillie’s “interview.” Home Minister Yamazaki Iwao immediately intervened, and all copies of those papers were seized on the grounds that the emperor never criticized his subjects and that the picture was sacrilegious to the imperial house and would thus have a detrimental effect on the nation.
Conflict between the Higashikuni government and GHQ now ensued, and ended when General Headquarters not only ordered the printing of the photograph but also the repeal of all restrictions on publishing.35 On October 4 MacArthur issued the “Civil Liberties” directive that abolished some of the major obstacles to democratization: the Peace Preservation Law, the National Defense Security Law, and the “special higher police.” Overnight thought control loosened, the legal taboo on criticism of the emperor broke, and the whole apparatus of laws and ordinances established in order to “protect the kokutai” came crashing down. The personnel of the “special higher police” remained at their work, however, still thinking of themselves as “the emperor’s police.”
The Higashikuni cabinet resigned immediately. Four days later (October 8), MacArthur tightened SCAP censorship of the Tokyo newspa
pers, while endorsing the emperor’s choice of Shidehara Kijr, a seventy-four-year-old former diplomat and prewar moderate, to replace Higashikuni. Shidehara, the leading candidate of the “moderates” ever since the wartime cabinets of Koiso Kuniaki and Suzuki Kantar, would follow the same policy of protecting the kokutai but rely on a less confrontational, more flexible approach.
Over the next few weeks GHQ began to attack “feudal remnants” and the emperor system. On October 10, it banned the display of the sun flag (hinomaru), a symbol that antedated the Meiji restoration, but left undisturbed the more important singing in unison of the official national anthem (“Kimigayo”), a paean to the glories of the monarchy that had been made part of daily school education in 1931.36
On October 10 and 11 GHQ freed nearly five hundred Communist political prisoners and announced “five great reforms”: emancipation of women; promotion of labor unions; and democratization of the educational, legal, and economic systems. With the announcement of these goals, the occupation passed to a new phase. The people gained freedom to criticize their government, their emperor, and the institution of the throne. Political parties soon restarted. Communists began to criticize the emperor publicly and to pursue the issue of his legal and moral responsibility for more than a decade of futile warfare.
On October 22 GHQ issued a directive ordering education reform and the dismissal of all teachers who had advocated militarism or were hostile to occupation policies. Henceforth wartime leaders in all fields were at risk. On October 30, 1945, GHQ made public the total assets of the imperial house, based on grossly understated figures provided by the Imperial Household Ministry. Emperor Hirohito’s subjects learned that he owned assets of more than 16 billion yen. Drawing income from enormous holdings of productive forests; livestock farms; corporate stocks; and national, prefectural, and municipal bonds, and with large holdings of bullion specie and currency, Hirohito was far and away the nation’s biggest landowner and wealthiest individual.37 With the public seizing on the issue of the emperor’s vast wealth, and with criticism of the most prominent war leaders appearing daily in print, and the Communists calling for abolition of the “emperor system,” both the Shidehara cabinet and politicians in the Diet soon became uncertain about preserving not only the kokutai but their own jobs.38
Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan Page 56
