Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan Read Online Free PDF Page A

in the Sea of Okhotsk, and these were praised as his epochal achievements.
    Hirohito entered the world right at the dawn of this new era of imperial rivalry in Asia and the Pacific, and under him the drama of Japanese politics reached its disastrous conclusion in war and defeat. We can gain new perspective on Japanese politics by seeing how this man, who was so often out of step with his people, ignorant of their lives, never entirely sure of their real support, survived war andoccupation, and how he maintained his place on the throne to continue the imperial tradition well into the second half of the century.
    Hirohito and the Japanese nation formed a political unit based on sentiment and ideology, as well as shared memories of war. In looking at his life, we can see how he and his nation stood beside each other in a deeply symbiotic relationship, the manipulation and exploitation of which came chiefly from the emperor’s side. Before, during, and immediately after the trauma of war and defeat, he presented himself to the people as a “traditional” exalted being, looking down on them while manifesting only their ideal features, never their shortcomings. They in turn were supposed to hold him in awe and trembling as a living deity and a model of the ideal father. They were to assist him in the construction of his authority, and to take responsibility for his exercise of power because he, in theory, could not. Never were the people to discuss where this model and organizing principle of their national life fell short of perfection. (Nevertheless, in every single period, some of them always did.)
    Following Hirohito’s enthronement in 1926, politics in Japan became enflamed over foreign and domestic policy issues. Political and military elites began to debate the meaning of the national polity, or kokutai . Centered on the imperial house, kokutai meant the best possible principles of Japanese state and society. As dissatisfaction with society deepened, the belief spread that reform could be achieved by utilizing the emperor’s authority. In this context a new, spiritually driven, and powerful nationalism called the “imperial way,” kd , arose and spread widely. The “imperial way” was a motivating political theology sprung from the idea of the emperor as the literally living embodiment of Japan past and present, a paradigm of moral excellence all should follow. The term denoted a kind of ideological warfare but also, on the other hand, an action plan. It was designed to make Japan free of all externally derived isms, such as Western democracy, liberalism, individualism, and communism. Free to be itself only, the nation would regain self-esteem and be able to wage a “holy” war of ideas against Western political doctrines. Although the roots of kd went back to the crisis of the mid–nineteenth century, its revival at the end of the 1920s, and its actual application in real-life Japanese diplomacy during the early 1930s, helped Japan break with its immediate past—and also greatly narrowed the nation’s range of possible choices.
    The “imperial way” became a formula for overcoming the Japanese people’s keen sense of spiritual and economic subjugation by the West. It provided channels for thought and emotion in all areas of life, not just the military. It worked to make people insensitive to the hurts imposed on others by wanton aggressiveness and self-righteousness, just as its American counterpart—the rhetoric of “Manifest Destiny”—had done in certain periods of aroused American nationalism. Almost overnight the spirit of international conciliation disappeared from the deliberations about and conduct of Japan’s foreign policy. In its place came expressions of the Shinto impulse to purify Asia from the polluting influences of Anglo-American political culture. Also embedded in the “imperial way” was the millenarian belief,