A Choice of Evils

by Meira Chand

Even before Hirohito’s ascension to the throne, the name Manchuria spelt magic. Across the water it beckoned with limitless land and resources. Its acquisition was the natural beginning of Hakko Ichiu, that mythological vision of a united Asia under Japanese leadership which Hirohito cherished. Within his court, distanced from the world of men, Hirohito dreamed his dreams. But in a modern and aggressive age, the vision of Hakko Ichiu had become for many fanatical right-wingers a megalomaniacal symbol of world domination through military force. The young militarists about Hirohito looked not to the south but to the north to begin this march towards an Empire. They aimed to secure Manchuria in readiness for a strike at Russia.

  Hirohito distanced but did not deter the young militarists about him. Silence was the constitutional course and for Hirohito silence was convenient, both as a weapon and as a screen. Ambiguity had its uses. Officially, he could not be seen to agree to a plan that might commit Japan to a future of unknown ramifications. Unofficially, the young officers involved in preparations for the taking of Manchuria assumed they had his backing.

  There were differences of opinion upon this subject in the army, and political unrest in the country. Keeper of the Privy Seal, Count Makino, begged Hirohito to be prudent. Prince Saionji, finding army attitudes increasingly unreasonable, argued the sense of going to war. He was also not always happy with the opinions of his Emperor who appeared in turn to blow hot then cold upon a variety of matters. As the band of aged Western-leaning moderates like himself grew smaller, it appeared to Saionji that the influence of fanatical young officers and upstart radicals about the monarch grew ever more dangerous, even though Hirohito continued to act with propriety. He was particularly alarmed by a rumour that Hirohito planned to encourage the moving of troops to Manchuria without official sanction. Eventually a compromise was reached in the Diet, the Japanese parliament, and the war was sanctioned. The nation knew nothing of these plans. As anticipated, the conquest of Mukden, capital of Manchuria, was bloodlessly over in a few hours on 19th September 1931. It took only a further few months before the whole of Manchuria was under Japanese control, and the new state of Manchukuo proclaimed on 1st March 1932.

  Some years later on New Year’s Day 1936 Hirohito wrote a short but apprehensive poem about the future.

  As I

  was visiting

  the Shinto Point in Kii

  clouds were drifting far

  over the sea.

  His private life was on an even keel. Nagako had given birth to a second son, but his reign had textured since its early days, and events piled up in complexity. The army’s expansion from Manchuria into China continued unabated. The strength of the Military could no longer be denied, nor the difficulty in ruling it. Its ranks were subversive and divided, filled by officers from poor rural areas whose minds were crammed by schemes of grandeur. Whatever early support Hirohito had given the army seemed to have gone to their heads. There were those in the army who now wanted an Emperor who could be presented to the people as a monarch but manipulated by those in power behind the throne. They condemned all liberal elements in Japan which encouraged the Emperor to think of his role as more temporal than divine.

  An ugly mood grew in the army and soon after the election of the new Diet, on 26th February 1936, a revolt began. Murder squads went out to eliminate any government leader or elder statesman who was seen to advise the Emperor too liberally. Old men who had served Hirohito were cut down. The former Keeper of the Privy Seal, Count Makino, escaped, as did Prince Saionji. Those in the army who favoured caution were shown no mercy by the revolutionaries.

  Within the Palace, Hirohito was beside himself with anger, appalled at the murders, and the terror suffered by his closest advisors at the hands of radical restorationists. ‘The army are using silken thread to suffocate me. I want this rebellion ended, and its instigators punished. Do this,’ he ordered his War Minister.

  The revolt seethed a while and was put down. Hirohito wanted no martyrdom for those involved and would agree to no compromise. He was particularly upset that Prince Chichibu, whose right-wing radicalism had grown apace, had supported the rebels. Prince Saionji did not discount the fact that, had the coup been successful, the rebels might have put Chichibu on the throne if Hirohito were not compliant enough. ‘Japanese history has . . . considerable examples where, urged on by hangers-on, a younger brother has killed an older brother to ascend the throne,’ Saionji said.

  Hirohito’s wrath shook those about him. Executions of the culprits were without formality and no ashes returned to their families. Many others were sent in disgrace to cool their heels in Manchuria. Such tactics of strength from the usually passive Emperor shocked the army command. He had asserted himself as never before. Even those who disagreed had obeyed him.

  By the following year the thought of war with China could no longer be avoided. Chiang Kai-shek had joined hands with the Communists against Japan. This alone was a terrifying thing, and pushed Hirohito towards compromise with his rebellious army. The army feared a Communist bloc of Russia and China, if it ever came about, would eventually annihilate Japan. Already a pact with Hitler pledged Japan to act with Germany in resisting the spread of Communism. The war the militarists sought at last coincided with Hirohito’s own dreams of mythological conquest. There was also the Emperor’s added desire to safeguard his homeland from any threat of Communism, however remote, coming over the water from China.

  In spite of Hirohito’s brief assertion of strength after the 1936 February revolt, the power of the rightists and the army was now established to such a degree that prime ministers rose and fell in quick succession when they did not meet army requirements. Finally, in 1937, Prince Konoye became Prime Minister. As a child Hirohito had admired Konoye. He was one of the ‘big brothers’ introduced by Marquis Kido when Hirohito moved into the Akasaka Palace. He was elegant and debonair and had the audacity to sit with his legs crossed before the monarch. Beneath this show of sophistication, Konoye was a man who lacked judgement and dithered. He did what he could to seek a negotiated resolution with China, but was powerless to control the flow of events. One month after his investiture, Japanese troops clashed with Chinese outside Peking at the Marco Polo Bridge. An era was begun from which there was no turning back.

  War, as it now evolved, might not have been of Hirohito’s making but, conscious always of his duty, he turned his precise mind to its detail. Those heroes of childhood, his uncles by marriage, Princes Asaka, Higashikuni and Kitashirakawa, were tough professional soldiers who held important posts in the army. Even though they were many years older than himself, Hirohito was now their Supreme Commander. He ordered a Supreme War Headquarters to be built in the Palace, to personally oversee on maps and tabletops, each battle as it grew. All moves were to be reported to him. The ultra rightists and the militarists who now had his ear were delighted with his enthusiasm. The ideals of pan-Asianism, absorbed as a child from his teenage friends at the Akasaka Palace, the stories of battle told by General Nogi, those dreams of colonisation passed down from Emperor Meiji and before, and his own dull, circumscribed life, came together now for Hirohito. On a tabletop in his War Headquarters, Hirohito plotted strategy. He watched the tiny flags of advance push down on the map deep into China. Tientsin was taken and then Peking. The sudden offensive of the Chinese military in Shanghai further forced the Imperial Army to look south to protect its interests in that city. Then, Chiang Kai-shek’s new capital of Nanking appeared the ultimate glittering prize.

  From the sidelines Prince Saionji, now eighty-eight, watched sadly. His life work appeared destroyed. He had envisaged a modern, internationally minded Japan, and had encouraged the Emperor towards this. Instead, he had seen Japan become a pariah nation after the conquest of Manchuria, withdrawing from the League of Nations. He had condemned an arms race and watched money poured into war preparations. He had advised friendship with Chiang Kai-shek and instead saw the Emperor agree to war against the Generalissimo. He advocated close rela
tions with Britain and the United States, and instead the anti-Comintern Pact had been signed with Nazi Germany. People of dubious worth were being promoted about the Emperor, cutting him off in a ring of security as never before.

  When he heard of the elevation in court of people whose views he considered extreme, Saionji sighed. ‘It comes as no surprise . . . that is the trend of the times and there is nothing to be done. It is a great pity for the Emperor’s sake.’ Saionji’s grumbles were distant. Hirohito did not hear.

  Emperor Hirohito spent each summer at Hayama. In this fishing village thirty miles from Tokyo, he forgot the weight of monarchy. He became a man, walking the beach, trousers rolled above his ankles, fishing, swimming, his mind wandering from affairs of state to wider reveries. The greatest irritant in this idyll was an excess of mosquitoes.

  The Summer Palace was of weathered wood, modest compared to the house of an American neighbour a distance along the beach. There were no telephones, refrigerators, electric stoves or air-conditioners. At dawn in the garden Hirohito relaxed by chopping wood. In rock pools he gathered the marine specimens on which he was an expert. Years before upon the beach he had discovered a spotted red prawn. This creature had been overlooked by the cataloguers of marine biology until Hirohito’s identification. The discovery of sympathiphae imperialis had been a proud moment in Hirohito’s life. So introspective and bizarre a hobby as marine biology, was earlier deplored by Chamberlains when Hirohito was Crown Prince. Only when Hirohito’s interest in military history reached a level of equal obsession, did murmurs of displeasure cease.

  In the summer of 1937 the Emperor left Tokyo and drove once again to Hayama. The weight of war in China depressed him. It was more, he had discovered, than a game upon a map, more than dreaming the dreams of his Imperial ancestors or the glories of General Nogi’s tales. At moments the reality came through to him. His subjects suffered. Young men in droves must be shipped off to die far from home. Taxes burdened his people to pay for the war in Asia and to float the Japanese Fleet. In his name the common people must suffer all manner of hardship. These were things not thought about in the rush to enter China. Even this annual visit to Hayama had been forbidden at first by court officials. It appeared ostentatious for Hirohito to relax when men were dying on the battlefield. But the vision of Hakko Ichiu superseded all other considerations. For such a dream some sacrifice was inevitable. Hirohito was still impatient for the fall of China, still impatient to move on, to Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaya. His mind was filled with strategy and an ultimate glory.

  Now, briefly, at Hayama he could forget the events of the day. He stood once more on the deck of his motor launch in a white linen jacket and straw hat and dropped starfish and sponges into his pockets. He read Aesop’s Fables on the beach, picnicked, swam, built sandcastles and raced with his children. He spent many hours at the microscope studying the specimens caught at Hayama; there he entered the only world in which he was truly happy. By mid-August he relinquished these pleasures and returned to Tokyo, to the khaki uniform he now wore. It had been decided by the army chiefs that he should make Iwane Matsui, an ageing, retired General in the reserve, Commander in Chief of Japanese forces in Central China.

  It was an honour, but also a mystery to General Matsui, why he of all people should be reactivated from the reserve to take command in China. He was sixty, frail and tubercular. His weight on a five foot frame was down to no more than a hundred pounds. He was given to recurrent fevers and coughs. He had been retired at his own request four years before in disapproval of the army’s outrageous plotting to conquer China. He espoused the Strike South, but also recommended friendship with China. In retirement he had set up the East Asia League in Japan, a society to work for a united Asia and prevent a war with China. He had gone to Peking to establish a branch of this society but the Chinese were suspicious; Manchuria had given the Japanese a bad name. Asia for Asiatics sounds like Asia for the Japanese, they told him as they turned away.

  Now that war was upon them, General Matsui could no longer talk of prevention. His speeches to the East Asia League advocated a quick drive up the Yangtze to take Nanking. Once in occupation Japanese actions must be exemplary. They must persuade the Chinese a Japanese administration was preferable to the deviousness of Chiang Kai-shek.

  Everyone knew Matsui’s convictions. He took his new command to be a sign of temperance on the part of the army and the Emperor. If a man of his mind was being reactivated when others, both active and able were bypassed, it must mean a change in attitude by the high command. Perhaps now they saw the wisdom of a negotiated settlement with China. That wheels within wheels still turned in the Military, or that to all he appeared a dispensable man, did not occur to the General. In the Phoenix Hall of the Imperial Palace, Matsui’s medal-encrusted uniform weighed heavily in the August heat and his sword knocked against his knees. His face twitched uncontrollably. He bowed then knelt before his Emperor to receive command of the Imperial Army in Central China.

  On his departure from the Palace, General Matsui shared a car with Prime Minister Konoye. Matsui was still dazed by the honour thrust upon him, still warm with thoughts of all he must do.

  ‘There is no solution except to break the power of Chiang Kai-shek by capturing Nanking. That is what I must do,’ General Matsui promised.

  There was to be no delay. Two days later the East Asia League gave him a hurried farewell dinner. General Matsui made his last speech.

  ‘I am going to the front not to fight an enemy but in the state of mind of one who sets out to pacify a brother.’

  In the magnificent Phoenix Hall of the Palace, with its motif carved in silver or wood, painted on lacquer or woven into brocade, Hirohito became on important occasions the nation’s high priest, unapproachable, speaking in archaic words and voice. As Matsui prepared to leave for China, the Emperor prayed for Japan’s success. After the General’s departure, Hirohito walked back to his workroom in the Imperial Library. In that room he was a man and fallible, and he could discuss events with other men. The sincerity of Matsui was unmistakable. If his health held up, it would be good to have such a man in the field. Hirohito wanted the war over quickly. What had to be done, had to be done, but he wished the nastiness finished as soon as possible and China swiftly under his thumb. Only then could the rule of Showa begin to spread Enlightenment over greater Asia.

  2

  Tokyo

  1928

  Kenjiro Nozaki put down his pen and listened to the sound of his father’s return from Kyoto. The powerful voice carried through the house before it died away. Beyond the room a spider’s web spread under the eaves of the verandah. Beads of rain from a recent shower hung within it, like jewels against old lace. Such an intricacy of construction, he thought, for the harbouring of death. In the morning a maid would sweep it away, and the insect begin its work again.

  As he watched, old Chieko appeared, hobbling painfully upon arthritic feet about the verandah of the house, her white hair pulled back into a thin knot. He saw her glance up at the spider’s web, noting the need for demolition. She had looked after Kenjiro from birth, and grown old in the Nozakis’ service. There had been, he remembered, the perfume of soap about her. It had stung sweetly in his nostrils as she nursed him to sleep. She still fussed about him as if he were a child. At his window she stopped with a toothless smile, and knelt to chat of Naomi’s doings. The odour of rotted teeth hung about her now.

  ‘Naomi is nothing like you. You were a terror. You must marry again and give her a mother.’

  ‘Go away, old woman. I’m not ready to remarry. Leave the shutters open. And don’t disturb that spider’s web,’ he ordered.

  Old Chieko sighed and stood up. She pulled the heavy wooden doors half across the window in compromise to his request.

  ‘Once you would never have spoken like that. You wanted my breast, not your mother’s. And what is this about leaving the windows unshuttered? Is this what they do in foreign lands?’ She hobbled away, p
leased to have scored a point with him.

  At each window about the wings of the house Chieko stopped to drag the shutters from their boxes. One by one the windows were closed for the night. The bright pictures of life Kenjiro watched were cancelled, like the slamming of a cover on a picture book.

  He switched on the reading light and tidied the papers on his desk. A maid had already laid out a yukata to wear after his bath. His father would take some time, he had first privilege in the bath, Kenjiro would follow and then his mother. He looked down at the page of writing before him, and wondered at its value. Why was he saying these inflammatory things? He was neither journalist nor revolutionary. His first article had been published some days before in a leftist magazine. There had been telephone calls immediately from unexpected people, mostly Communists, asking for interviews, further articles or his allegiance. By attacking the numerous extreme right-wing organisations in Japan, and especially the dubious personality of Shumei Okawa, Kenjiro had put himself in danger. With Mitsuru Toyama of the Russophobic Black Dragon Society, Okawa controlled the dark, reactionary infrastructure of the country. Instead of fear, Kenjiro felt only exhilaration. He waited as a swimmer waits for an incoming wave before a rocky shore. He chewed the top of his bamboo brush, the tang of the wood pricked his tongue. From the inner garden beyond the verandah came the scent of wet stone and leaves. He turned his attention to the writing again. The long list of right-wing associations lay before him. The Cherry Blossom Society, the Dark Ocean Society, the Stars and Ocean Society, the South Seas Association, were only the most influential. Besides these were more sinister organisations that he had yet to touch. The name of Shumei Okawa hung like a shadow over much of this list.

  A maid slid open the door. ‘The master asks that you join him after your bath,’ the woman announced, kneeling. Kenjiro frowned. His father rarely spent an evening at home, preferring to relax at a few select teahouses or the premises of his mistress, Oyasu. He must wish to discuss the Emperor’s Coronation from which he had just returned. He would use his invitation to the event as an object lesson, dropping names with which to impress his son of the importance of secular power. Kenjiro put down his pen in annoyance. A summons from his father could not be refused. The maid rose and began to lay out quilts for the night. He heard Naomi crying.