The emperor, he insisted, “does not see actual conditions” and his inspection tours, which were more like “campaign tours,” served mainly to keep him in the public eye for days and weeks in advance of each visit. Worst of all, rather than democratizing the monarchy, the tours were increasing “the power and influence of the Imperial tradition.”
Kent did not dare criticize Hirohito himself for this sorry state of affairs, but instead described him as:
nervous to the point of looking physically handicapped; his gestures and movements are jerky and uncoordinated. He hesitates before speaking or acting. If not thoroughly self-conscious, he is certainly ill-at-ease…. On almost all occasions his face was devoid of any expression. He did smile a few times, when speaking to children, and when the Banzai’s assumed great proportions. He is even poorly dressed.
Ultimately Kent attributed the emperor’s uneasiness to the attitude of the imperial house officials, whom he also blamed for two incidents he found particularly disturbing. One was the emperor’s tour of Hiroshima, on the sixth anniversary of Pearl Harbor.23 The other incident that aroused Kent’s anger was the “organized widespread display of the [sun] flag” that occurred on December 11, the last day of the Chgoku tour.24
GHQ took quick action. On January 12, 1948, GHQ’s Government Section ordered the emperor’s “campaign tours” discontinued on the ground that officials of the Imperial Household Office had contravened the spirit of numerous GHQ orders. They had conducted themselves arrogantly and undemocratically, and the Japanese bureaucracy, flagrantly misusing public funds, had levied unjust taxes to finance the emperor’s touring.25 GHQ also took note of rumors of plots against the emperor’s life, involving alleged Korean Communists who were upset about the newly enacted Alien Registration Law. Unstated was deeper concern that, rather than removing all traces of the emperor’s renounced divinity and freeing the Japanese citizenry from their feeling of subjecthood, the tours were actually promoting the old idolatry.
II
On New Year’s Day 1948, Hirohito welcomed tens of thousands who gathered on the palace plaza to greet him. In mid-January he staged the popular “Imperial New Year’s Poetry Reading” (utakai hajime) at the palace. This ceremony had been introduced in the second year of the Meiji restoration, 1869, and with each stirring of democracy had been progressively opened up to more and more Japanese subjects, then to citizens. Contestants submitted waka on assigned themes, and the best waka were selected for the reading. To court officials and ideologues, such ceremonial readings served to dissolve social and political differences among the Japanese. In reality, the effect was quite contrary. As the emperor deigned to hear the merely ordinary people’s poems and the lowly people humbly listened to his, emperor and people became one. Conservative ideological and political values were thereby reproduced by the utakai hajime, and the make-believe of the nation as a classless monolith resymbolized.26
Later in 1948 Hirohito made highly publicized charitable donations and experimented with three new, truncated types of imperial visitations: short trips to attend tree-planting ceremonies, appearances at athletic events, and appearances at cultural and social projects sponsored by private organizations that worked closely with the palace.
When the emperor convoked the Diet in January 1948, the continued practice of the “crab walk” by Diet members provoked an incident. Whenever the emperor entered the Diet building through the special door reserved for his use, he would first receive the leaders of the two houses in a special audience room. Traditionally Diet members who entered that room to be received by the emperor walked to a point directly in front of him, bowed deeply, then exited walking sideways or backward to the nearest door, in this manner avoiding the disrespectful exposure of their profiles or the backs of their heads. But in January 1948, when the emperor entered that special audience room expecting to receive bows from the president and vice president of the upper and lower houses of the Diet, Matsumoto Jiichiro, vice president of the House of Councillors and Socialist Party member, failed to appear. He later explained, addressing his colleagues, “Why must I imitate the sideways walk of a crab?…Hasn’t he become [only] a human being?”
Matsumoto had revealed how prewar customs inappropriate to the new constitutional order were still being observed. Instead of being honored for his courage, however, he was sanctioned. His behavior and speech (as journalist Matsuura Sz noted) totally alienated Yoshida Shigeru and other staunch conservatives who had been fighting since the “placard incident” of 1946 to restore the crime of lèse-majesté in the new criminal code. Within a short time, Matsumoto was purged by GHQ, with assistance from Yoshida, and his political career temporarily came to an end, while crab-walking in the presence of the emperor continued.27
The “crab walk” incident clearly highlighted the need for additional reform of the rules of behavior pertaining to the new monarchy. Despite the ban on imperial campaigns, and the absence of articles about the tours in the major daily newspapers, the emperor’s efforts to court the people continued; so too did the process of circumscribing the monarchy.
On February 10, 1948, the Socialist-led Katayama cabinet resigned en masse as a result of conflict between its left and right factions. Katayama thereupon reported his resignation to the throne, although the new constitution in no way required him to.28 Four weeks later, on March 10, Ashida Hitoshi formed a second unstable coalition cabinet. Hirohito told him in good traditional imperial fashion, “[D]o something about the Communist Party.” Ashida explained that the party was quite legal and the government could not prosecute Communists unless they acted illegally. He went on to warn the emperor that his tours had been generating “mountains of letters” to GHQ and endangering the new monarchy.29 In this way, Ashida revealed his intention to continue Katayama’s unsuccessful effort to democratize the court. For two months Hirohito resisted, calling on his favorite “pendulum theory” of gradual reform.30 But, eventually, Ashida persuaded him to dismiss his top advisers. During the summer the principal stage managers of the campaign tours, gane, Kat, and Matsudaira, exited from the scene.
Meanwhile the prestige of the emperor remained under assault. In April the war crimes tribunal adjourned for the preparation of its final verdicts. Intellectuals concerned with the future of the new monarchy once again addressed Hirohito’s continued avoidance of all moral and political responsibility for his actions during the war, and for the suffering he had caused the nation. Some even expected he would use the conclusion of the Trial to declare his abdication.
The year 1948 was a time of transition in the shaping of Japanese domestic politics by the U.S.–Soviet confrontation. On October 7 the Ashida cabinet collapsed after seven months in office; a few days later the more conservative Yoshida Shigeru formed his second cabinet. One month later the Tokyo war crimes trials drew to an end. Sentences were pronounced on the afternoon of November 12. On December 23, 1948, the seven condemned to die were hanged in Sugamo Prison.
The next day MacArthur released from prison or house arrest nineteen Class A war crimes suspects, none yet indicted and tried. Included were former ministers of state such as Kishi Nobusuke, who had signed the declaration of war against the United States in 1941; Abe Genki, the police bureaucrat in charge of repressing political dissent under the Tj and Suzuki cabinets; and right-wing gang bosses Kodama Yoshio and Sasagawa Ryichi.31
Over the next few years Japanese politicians and the emperor himself would call for the release of all convicted A, B, and C class criminals, and in most instances MacArthur and his successor, Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway, would comply. By the time the San Francisco Peace Treaty with Japan went into effect in April 1952, SCAP had freed, with Washington’s approval, a total of 892 war criminals, including B and C class detainees who had never been brought to trial.32 The release of these men, followed by the swift rise of a few of them to the very highest positions of power in the postwar state, had a profoundly polarizing influence on Japanese politics throughout the 1950
s.
On December 1, 1948, National Security Council document 13/2 was transmitted to MacArthur. It formally approved the shift in U.S. occupation policy from political democratization to economic reconstruction and remilitarization. Henceforth the United States would be concerned to strengthen Japan not only economically and politically but militarily—a violation of the peace constitution. Some two weeks after receiving the document and a follow-up directive from Truman, on December 18, MacArthur ordered the second Yoshida cabinet to carry out “nine principles” designed to ensure wage and price control and maximize production for export. Early the next year Detroit banker Joseph M. Dodge arrived in Japan to implement a drastic deflationary fiscal policy projected to revive Japanese capitalism by generating massive unemployment.33 With these policy shifts mandated from Washington, MacArthur suffered a loss of power and the “reverse course” in Japanese politics suddenly accelerated.
III
Hirohito’s imperial tours resumed under new stage management in 1949 and continued until the end of 1951. At the start of that period, GHQ relaxed its tight restrictions on public discussion of the effects of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, thereby stimulating the peace movement; by its end the occupation had a new military leader and was rapidly moving to a close.
During these years the international situation in East Asia changed drastically. In 1949 the Russians developed and tested atomic weapons, and Chinese Communist armies under Mao Tse-tung defeated Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists on the mainland of China. The Nationalists fled to Taiwan. In late February 1950, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Omar Bradley, flew to Tokyo to confer with MacArthur on defense plans in the event of an emergency in the Far East. The Truman administration at that point permitted MacArthur to expand his sphere of authority in an emergency, and gave him control of a vast oceanic area surrounding Japan, including the Ryukyu Islands. Concurrently Truman adopted a provocative risk-taking strategy, as seen first in National Security Council document 48/2 of December 1949 and later NSC–68 of March 1950. Three months later, on June 25, the Korean War broke out. Largely in response to these developments, Japan rearmed, strengthened its police forces, and began to receive large infusions of economic assistance from the United States. Soon Japan experienced not only its first postwar economic boom, but also its first renewal of nationalism. Largely as a reaction to these developments, the Japanese peace movement was born, a branch of the international movement for peace.
On May 17, 1949, in response to calls for imperial visits from prefectural assemblies, Hirohito departed for a twenty-four-day tour of Kyushu.34 Two years had passed since the promulgation of the constitution that converted the monarch from ruler to symbol, and the mood of the country had altered. Yoshida Shigeru had returned to power in October 1948. In February 1949 he formed his third cabinet, the first based on a solid conservative majority. Occupied Japan, on its way to becoming the “workshop” for Asia, no longer paid token reparations to the victims of its aggression. The American occupiers no longer made efforts to democratize its economy. GHQ still dictated policies, however, and still maintained post-publication censorship of the Japanese media. But more administrative authority was gradually passing to the Japanese government, which, in May 1949, assumed full responsibility for guarding the imperial palace and the emperor. In June the Imperial Household Office became an agency (kunaich) under the Prime Minister’s Office.35
Hirohito’s Kyushu tours were less lavish in scale than his earlier travels. They were welcomed, however. Renewed media appeals for support of the monarchy, and continuous efforts by government at all levels insured that the tours elicited the greatest possible degree of very uniform, yet “spontaneous” enthusiasm from the people. Wearing worker’s clothing, the emperor inspected a Mitsui coal mine. He held meetings with journalists, academics, and famous literary figures. At Nagasaki he momentarily put the focus on the A-bomb survivors by having himself photographed at the Nagasaki Hospital standing by the bedside of dying Professor Nagai Takashi, a medical professor and victim of radiation poisoning. In early 1949 Nagai’s testimonial, The Bells of Nagasaki [Nagasaki no kane], had captured the imagination of the nation, arguing that Nagasaki had been chosen by God as a pure sacrificial offering in order to end the war. The “Nagai boom,” into which the emperor skillfully tapped, was part of a belated national discovery of Japan’s suppressed nuclear experience.
Under conditions of deepening Cold War, the citizens of the new Japan had begun learning, belatedly, about the experience of the A-bomb victims. Works such as ta Yko’s City of Corpses [Shikabane no machi], Hara Tamiki’s Summer Flowers [Natsu no hana], and Imamura Tokuyuki and mori Minoru’s The Green Buds of Hiroshima [Hiroshima no midori no me] became 1949–50 national bestsellers.36 The conjunction of increasing nuclear consciousness and deepening cold war brought a more relevant appreciation of the peace principle in the new constitution. But the gap between the conception of the state held by conservative politicians who were ruling under the new constitution, and that held by the great majority of Japanese, remained wide. As if reflecting this discrepancy between constitutional ideal and reality, the public, despite all the careful planning and organization by court officials, continued to disagree over the appropriate behavior for the emperor. Some wanted him to deepen his humanization. Others felt that if he became too “human,” the monarchy itself would be discredited.
In the summer of 1949 national athletic events such as the All-Japan Swimming Champion Tournament helped to heighten nationalism for the first time under the occupation. The emperor and empress attended, and Hirohito afterwards gave words of encouragement to the athletes. When the Japanese swimming champion Furuhashi Hironoshin established three world records at the U.S. national swimming meet in Los Angeles, he and his teammates were later granted an audience at the palace and a tea in their honor.37 National pride was also enriched that year by the award of the Nobel Prize in physics to Professor Yukawa Hideki. Once again Hirohito made a widely reported appearance in the presence of these “symbolic leaders” of the new Japan.38
Early in 1950 Hirohito published poems about his Kyushu visit and his joy at Professor Yukawa’s Nobel award, then embarked on another series of tours.39 His nineteen-day journey through Shikoku and Awajishima began on March 13.40 He visited prefectural government offices, public schools and universities, agricultural experimental stations, homes for orphans, paper mills, chemical plants, and textile and machine tool factories. As always, people responded variously. Most often the touring emperor was warmly received as an embodiment of the spirit of love, a person of benevolence, and a celebrity. A minority, however, still believed him to be a sacred presence, a living deity, and a force so powerful as to animate their very gestures and reflexes. Upon seeing him approach, they would shout banzais and be moved to tears. Their facial muscles would tighten, their bodies vibrate, and their legs tremble as if struck by a strong electric current. Emotional paralysis would follow, and they might momentarily lose consciousness of where they were. This phenomemon, the physical expression of an intact sense of subjecthood, has been repeatedly described in the reminiscences of those who experienced it.41 The common theme is the affirmative sense of having worked hard and suffered harshly together with the emperor.
On the other hand no amount of image manipulation could wipe away his war responsibility. Feelings of indifference toward the emperor were also widespread. And for a small minority on the left he remained the butt of jokes and an object of derision elicited by his inarticulateness.
American and Japanese diplomatic preparations were moving ahead swiftly toward a peace treaty that would incorporate Japan in an American-led bloc against the Soviet Union and the new Communist dictatorship in China. Hirohito now secretly interjected himself into this process, making it easier than it might have been for the United States to negotiate a one-sided military alliance with Japan that gave the Truman administration virtually everything it wanted.
&n
bsp; As reconstructed by historian Toyoshita Narahiko, Hirohito’s diplomatic interventions began right after his tenth meeting with MacArthur, on April 18, 1950. The issue between the two leaders (ever since their fourth meeting on May 6, 1947) was still the war-renouncing constitution and the weight that each man attached to it. According to the emperor’s interpreter for their ninth and tenth meetings, Matsui Akira, they had discussed the “peace problem” on November 26, 1949, when debate over the peace treaty was heating up, and at the April 18 meeting the subject was the threat to Japan from the Communist camp. On both occasions MacArthur reportedly preached the “spirit of Article 9.” Hirohito, who had never been pacifistically inclined except for public relations purposes, held that only military power could protect Japan. Perhaps feeling that his differences with the supreme commander on the future security of Japan were unbridgeable, the emperor finally decided to bypass him.
Two background factors may have influenced him. In February 1950 the Soviet Union had reopened the issue of Hirohito’s war criminality by demanding that he be brought to trial for having sanctioned biological and chemical warfare during World War II.42
And on April 6 the Republican lawyer John Foster Dulles was appointed a special adviser to Secretary of State Dean Acheson, fueling speculation in Tokyo and Washington that the peace treaty negotiations, stalled ever since Fall 1949 by disagreements between the Pentagon and the State Department, would start moving forward again. Toyoshita conjectures that right after Hirohito’s tenth meeting with MacArthur, when Finance Minister Ikeda Hayato went to Washington, he delivered a secret personal message from the emperor to Joseph M. Dodge, MacArthur’s financial adviser. The emperor’s message to Dodge was “to the effect that the [Yoshida] Government desires the earliest possible treaty. As such a treaty probably would require the maintenance of U.S. forces [on Japanese soil]…if the U.S. Government hesitates to make these conditions, the Japanese Government [itself] will try to find a way to offer them.”43 In short Hirohito, not Yoshida, made the first effort to hurry the peace treaty that would end the occupation, leave American military forces and bases in Japan, and return Japanese independence.
Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan Page 65
